Tween Tunes

Now, I don't know about you but I do cringe at some of the clothing available in the shops for Tweens. Skulls and broken heart prints and the shortest of shorts.. meanwhile the boys' boardies are getting longer and longer. I cannot help but wonder who these designers of Tween clothing consult!

My daughter is 11 and while she's growing tall, in her heart she's still a little girl wanting to wear fairy dresses and everything pink.  But being a Tween, she's also growing into her own sense of style and I just love being a part of this journey!

Recently, while browsing through my favourite blogs for inspiration, I came across this very cute skirt and tutorial by Ross from Sew Delicious.  She calls it the "Peggy Skirt", adapted from a character on the television show "Mad Men".  Celine loved it but suggested her own version. She picked a couple of fat quarters she liked at a closing down sale of a little fabric shop (really, really sad about that.. loved that shop!).  The fat quarters were all about music, and paired with black cotton, turned into a cute little "music skirt".

Of course no skirt is ever complete without a matching top, so the challenge was on to see if Mum can create her vision!  She drew me a treble clef and basically want that to be main feature - cut away to reveal the same material as the skirt as the background image. 

Not that a music note drew on a sticky note is much to work with but you get the idea.  Luckily there's always free music templates somewhere on the Internet and I found this one that is large enough for her idea.

After cutting out around the music note, we've decided - 1. we need to use another t-shirt because if Mum "stuff it up", it should be on a shirt that's not too precious and 2. the music note looks better on an angle. Re: the "stuff it up".... as every sewer knows, it's actually called "practise makes perfect", isn't it?

Then I sewed through the paper following the lines to mark the pattern out on the t-shirt but also to act as a reinforcement. Some advice on the paper - use the thinnest you're printer would print on, it makes it much easier to remove later without pulling the stitching.

After stitching the pattern, I removed the paper and traced along the sewing line with chalk.  I then pinned the backing fabric on the inside and following the first line of stitches and chalked outline, stitched the backing fabric to the t-shirt.

This is what the inside of the t-shirt looked like after the pattern has been stitched.  Trim the inside to get rid of the excess fabric.  I used "Stop Fray" around the edges as the cotton would probably fray a fair bit over time.

On the outside, carefully cut away the t-shirt material between the stitching lines to show the background fabric and it's done. One unique t-shirt to match one cute little music skirt!

And here's the end result. Celine loves it although she would have liked the skirt a bit longer... one can only hope she'd still have that opinion about skirts when she's a teenager!

Little Ladybug