Wayward Girls' Crafts

Custom-fit ruched swim coverup

2013-05-24T07:00:00.000-05:00

My girls weren't the only ones who got new swim duds!

I sewed this ruched swim coverup myself from very lightweight jersey knit. And here's how I did it!

First, you need very accurate measurements--and a lot of them.

High bust
Bust
Under bust
Waist
Hip
Lengths: high bust to bust, bust to under bust, under bust to waist, waist to hip, and waist (or hip) to desired skirt length, top of back of bodice (a bit below underarm height) to hip

Once I had my measurements, I subtracted a square for the back. (You can measure from side seam to side seam for an exact measurement--I wouldn't just divide all the numbers by two because the side seam will be farther forward on the bust than the waist.) You probably want to bring in the sides a bit at the small of the back:

You could sew the whole bodice as a tube, but that makes it hard to add the ruching, and generally in a sleeveless top, the back is lower than the front, so keep that in mind!

For the front of the bodice, take your other measurements, subtract the square, and divide that answer by two. If your fabric is really stretchy like mine was, you'll need to subtract another inch or two here to create negative ease. "Ease" is the difference between the fabric measurements and your measurements. Normally you want at least a couple inches so you can put on the clothing and move in it.

In a knit fabric, you can use negative ease to have a very fitted garment. Or, in this case, one that stays up. I definitely need more negative ease in mine!

Once you have all your measurements ready, using the length measurements and your halved and adjusted front bodice measurements, make the pattern (I believe this is similar/identical to making a sloper, a personal generic pattern). I use a piece of newspaper to make my pattern, laying out the adjusted widths spaced according to the lengths. Connect the measurements with curves.

Then you use this half pattern on a fold, which will make the bodice top:

Cut one piece like this. Then, to create the ruching, take your regular pattern and draw horizontal lines across it. I did mine about 1.25" apart.

Cut the pattern along these horizontal lines, and space the pieces evenly to double the overall length of your bodice. You'll have to redraw the curves here.

Cut one long piece like this. Sew two lines of long basting stitches along each edge (mine also required two sets of basting stitches down the front of the bodice). Pull the threads to gather the fabric to match the regular-length bodice. Stabilizing stitches for the ruching are your friend.

Then sew the back and front together.

For the skirt, draw a straight line on the angle from the waist to hip measurement. Extend this line to reach the desired skirt length.

My research favored a six-gore skirt, and the bodice is only the front half of your dress, so you'll want to divide that original skirt trapezoid into three even gores to get your final measurements or pattern pieces.

The full pattern will look like this:

Cut six gores and sew them together, then sew them to the bodice!

Here's a closeup of my bodice. You'll probably be able to see the lines of stabilizing stitches:

And just for fun, I got some cool pictures of the finished product on a breezy day before heading to the pool at our RV campground outside of Bryce Canyon!

Happy summer!

Kids' Towel Coverup: the Wayward Way!

2013-05-23T07:00:00.000-05:00

As part of my Summer Sewing Spree two years ago, I made . . .

Wayward Kids' Towel Coverups!

I found this adorable terry towel coverup for kids, and I fully intended to sew something equally cute for my daughters. But a major time crunch hit and I ended up having to go the super-fast route. So here's the ~~quick and dirty~~ wayward way to make a cute, fast towel coverup for a child, boy or girl.

Step 1: Measure!
You'll need two (or three) measurements. The first is width around the chest (girls) or waist (boys). You'll want to add at least four inches for overlap. If you want to use elastic in the back (I recommend this for boys, but it doesn't seem to affect my girls'), you'll want to add more width to account for the gathering. Decide how long you want the elastic to be, then add that to the width. Remember this one, too! (Also keep in mind that the elastic will need to fall between the shoulder straps for girls.)

The second measurement is length--for girls, that's from underarm to however long you want the cover up to be (mid-thigh or knee length works well); for boys, that's from waist to the bottom of his swim trunks. (Which is often not his knees. Don't make the same mistake as me!)

Step 2: Materials!
You'll need:

A towel at least as big as the rectangle formed from your measurements.
A piece of cute fabric 4" wider and 2-4" longer than your measurements.
Sewable Velcro (or snaps)
Elastic (may be optional for girls' coverups; at least 3/8" wide)
Thread
Pins
Scissors or rotary cutter
Iron
Sewing machine

Step 3: Cut the towel!
Use your measurements to trim down a towel. Towels can be hard to cut, so I would use scissors or a rotary cutter to get through the hem, then rip the towel.

Many towels have decorative weaving near the ends. I cut out the towel between these lines, and save the weaving to form the straps. I also kept the top hem intact.

Step 4: Cut the fabric!
Add 4" to your width and 4" to the length of your rectangle (I added 2" to my length and used the selvage to form the long top edge on some of the pieces), then cut out a piece of fabric that size.

Step 5: Sew them together!
Center the towel on the fabric, wrong sides together (ff your towel has a wrong side). (If you're using the selvage on top, make sure the top edges of the fabrics align.) Fold over the edge of the fabric to meet the edge of the towel, and press. Then fold that folded edge of the fabric again, overlapping the edge of the towel:

Sew along the folded edge where it overlaps the towel (indicated by a dashed line above)--but do not sew the top edge of the fabric to the towel! (You can, however, sew the hem of just the fabric along the top if you're not using the selvage.)

Step 6: Place the elastic! (May be optional for girls; didn't really make a difference for mine)
Remember the elastic measurement we used in step 1? We need it again. Cut that length of elastic. If you want the finished product to have 4" elasticized, we need to work with 8" of fabric. Find the center of the towel & fabric, and measure out 4" (or whatever your chosen # is) on either side. Mark both of these points.

Pin either end of the elastic between the towel and the fabric at the points you've marked. Sew in the elastic (more details here).

Last year's coverup almost fits this year...

Step 7 (girls only): Place the straps!
Either cut 2" strips from the towel remnant, or get the decorative woven strips you saved earlier. If you placed elastic in, pin the straps between the fabric and towel on either side of the elastic. Otherwise, you might want to have your child try on the cover up to determine the best placement and length for the straps.

Measure the strap length twice!

Sew the straps in place between the towel and the fabric. (You can use a reinforced box stitch pattern for this if you'd like.)

Step 8: Velcro/snaps and finish!
If you're very picky, you might want to sew the Velcro or snaps on the front flap to only the towel, so that the sewing lines don't show through. But let's face it, if you were very picky, you wouldn't be doing it the wayward way, would you?

Place the Velcro or snaps on the front flaps. Remember that the inner flap will have the Velcro on the outside (fabric side)! Sew in place. Sew any unfinished edges along the top. And voila!

Grownup sunhats!

2013-05-22T07:00:00.000-05:00

Last summer, I went a little nuts with sewing. I've shared my daughters' reversible toddler sunhats, but the one I made for me wasn't quite the success theirs were. I wanted to love the result, but, well . . . I didn't quite.

I started off fantastic: a yard of gorgeous, emerald green 100% linen and a free sunhat pattern from BurdaStyle.

Only once I opened the file, it was less a pattern and more just instructions. I am not a sewing wiz. Frankly, I ~~wasn't smart enough~~ was too WAYWARD to follow the instructions well. The results? Also wayward!

So let me just tell you how to custom size your sunhat, wayward style!

First off, measure your head!! Measure around your head where you want your hat to fit. Please don't think that just because the pattern says you should make the hat 24" circumference and your head is 22", you should follow the pattern and your head needs "ease." It doesn't! Do not follow the pattern! Follow your head circumference! (Oh, and write it down.)

Top stitching on the crown

Second, measure your head!! And not just in the measure twice, cut once way. (And oh yes, I cut more than once.) Measure your head from forehead to the base of your skull, where you want your hat to hit. Also measure from ear to ear, where you want the hat to hit. Be sure to measure those lengths by wrapping the tape over where you want the center point of the hat to be. Take the average (i.e. add those numbers and divide by two). Write that down, too.

Now, you have your head measurements. The crown of the hat is made in six sections. So, if your head is 22" in circumference and your ear-to-ear/front-to-back average is 12", we'll need to divide that up into the sections. The ear-to-ear/front-to-back average is divided in two to give 6" as the crown height.

The circumference has to be divided by six, giving us the ugly number of 3.67" for the width of each piece.

Don't go cutting yet!

First, add the seam allowance to the measurements, 5/8" on each side. This brings our width to 4.92" (okay, rounding up will make the hat 1/2" larger around), and the crown height to 7.25".

NOW you can cut your paper pattern of a 4.92" x 7.25" rectangle. Lovely. Now, fold your paper pattern in half (making the rectangle even narrower) and sketch a curving, convex line, starting about 1/3rd of the way up the long edge and ending at the top midpoint. I might have used an iron as a tracing guide. Cut along the line and open to reveal your very nice, symmetrical pattern piece!

Cut 6 of these (or 12 if you want to line your hat; I did).

Now, cut out your brim. You'll need two of these. Again, don't make the mistakes I did!

Brims tend to hold up better if they're not quite a full, flat circle. Leaving out a segment of the circle gives the hat dimension and the brim shape. But remember that the inner circumference of the brim must match the circumference of the sewn crown!

I forgot that and drew a circle with an inner circumference to match the crown, then hacked off a bit of the end to make the not-quite-circle. My brim was too short to go all the way around my hat! Fortunately, I had some extra fabric and was able to fix it, but I was not happy!

So, let's say you want to omit 4" off the full circle (the more you cut off, the further down the hat brim will droop. Personally I wouldn't do more than 4"-6"). You'll still need to end up matching your 22" crown, so here's what you gotta do: add the amount you want to cut off the circle to your head circumference, bringing us to 26". Now, do some math (sorry!) to find the radius of that circle: 27"/(2*3.1415) = 4.30".

Using a protractor (or two pencils and a piece of string 4.3" long!), draw a semicircle with a radius of 4.30" on the edge of a piece of pattern paper (or newspaper, if you're me).

Top stitching and satin stitch along brim edge

Decide how wide you want your brim. Wider isn't always better--it can also be heavier, even too heavy to support its own weight! The Burda pattern also made the brim asymmetrical, 1/2" narrower in the back than in the front (6" in front, 5.5" in back). However, I feel like the interfacing used just isn't strong enough to support the brim and it ended up too floppy. To reinforce a wide hat brim, you might consider Timtex or buckram.

Draw a second circle to finish the brim (or 2 more circles, if you're changing the brim width) by adding your brim width to the original circumference to get the outer circle radius: 6" + 4.30" = 10.3".

NOW, on the INSIDE semicircle of the brim, measure in 2" (half of the length we're trimming from the brim) from the edge. (If your brim will be asymmetrical, make sure to do this on the narrower/back side.) Sketch a line from this point out to the outer circle. (You need this to be large enough that you can fit the hat together, but the larger the angle this line would form with the edge of the paper, the more the brim will angle/droop down.)

Add your 5/8" seam allowance all around and label the angled end "back". Place the non-angled end against the fold and cut two whole brims.

Now you have all the pieces ready for your custom sunhat. The BurdaStyle directions from here are very helpful. Hopefully it will fit you better (and come together with less trouble) than mine!

Outdoor sewing room photo by NormaNack

Reversible toddler sunhat

2013-05-21T07:30:00.000-05:00

Two years ago, we had a Wayward reunion at the beach—and I had big plans about all the crafts I wanted to make for our cute beach gear.

Top priority was a sunhat for my girls. I found a cute free toddler sunhat pattern with ruffles and ties online at Merriment Design, and I used a photocopier to blow it up to adjust to my 3-year-old (I think I sized it up very slightly for my 1-year-old, too).

The pattern is adorable as is, but . . . I'm wayward. I can't just sew according to a pattern! I have to do something! So I adapted Merriment Design's pattern to make the hat reversible. You can see a peek of the inside fabric in this shot:

For the most part, the changes are pretty easy, but be sure to read the notes at the end!

Materials needed:

Merriment Design's pattern (first link in her materials list)
1/3 yard (approx/depending on size) each of two fabrics
Rotary fabric cutter, self-healing cutting mat and clear acrylic ruler
Fabric scissors
Iron & ironing board
Thread
Pins
Sewing machine

Cut out your hat!
Using Merriment Design's pattern:

Cut 4 triangles from fabric 1
Cut 4 triangles from fabric 2
Cut 4 brims (2 top, 2 lining): Fold fabric 1 in half, right sides together. Cut 1 brim pattern on doubled fabric (making 2 pieces). For the second brim, fold fabric 2 in half, wrong sides together. Cut 1 brim pattern on doubled fabric (making 2 pieces).
Cut 1 strip 25″ x 2″ for ruffle in each fabric
Optional: Cut 2 strips 16″ x 1″ for the ties in each fabric (I used ribbon for my 1-year-old's hat, and omitted the ties for my 3-year-old's)

I won't copy all of Merriment Design's instructions, but following her directions, sew together the 4 crowns in each fabric, and then sew the two pieces of the brims together in each fabric (you will end up with four separate pieces at this point: a crown in each fabric and a brim in each fabric).

Make the reversible ruffle!
Match the 25" x 2" strips and pin right sides together. Sew a seam along one edge.
Press closed, then press open, then fold back and press flat:

Using two rows of long basting stitches along the raw edge, gather the ruffle to fit along the outside (larger in circumference) edge of the brim. Matching fabrics, pin right side of ruffle to right side of one brim, with raw (gathered) ruffle edge along outside brim edge (larger in circumference). Sew down.

Place the other brim right side to right side, "basically making a ruffle sandwich with the two right sides together" as Merriment Design describes it. Sew along outside edge.

Always being careful to match fabrics, sew the crowns and brims together using Merriment Design's instructions. If you're using ties, I recommend sewing those to the matching side of the brim before sewing to the crown. When the ties are on the "wrong" side, you can tie them in a bow at the back of the crown.

Notes!
Between the extra fabric from enlarging the hat and the added weight of the ruffle seam, the brim of my 3-year-old's hat was a little extra floppy. She loved it, but I would recommend lining the brim using interfacing.

There are two ways to do this:

1. Iron fusible interfacing onto the brim fabrics before cutting out brim pieces.

2. Fold interfacing in fourths and cut 1 brim (making 4 pieces), sewing the two pieces of each interfacing brim together, then adding those pieces to the outside of the ruffle sandwich and sew, being careful to match the asymmetrical shape of the brim.)

Rebecca with a friend

I made my girls' hats with a total of 3 fabrics: one fabric for both girls' hats so they could have a matching pair, and the other side in two different fabrics to match each of their towel coverups.

Unfortunately, the beach didn't agree with my one-year-old and she hates hats. But Jaime was kind enough to model for us (okay, she was making a face, but you get the picture here):

What do you wear to the beach?

DIY Summer Camp

2013-05-20T07:25:00.000-05:00

Nobody in my house is more excited for summer vacation than I am—I can hardly believe our summer vacation begins next week!

The first weekend of summer will be consumed with MOVING TO A NEW HOME about 20 minutes away. We're sad to leave our neighborhood & friends, but excited for our new home, and getting to know our new city. We've already signed up for a pool pass and swimming lessons, and I'm looking at all the fun summer activities coming up, from the city festival to movie nights to open air markets. So I'm adapting our Summer Family Fun Plan from last year to create this year's DIY Summer Camp!

Once again, I'm very worried about spending the whole summer vacation in front of the TV and computer. Last summer, a perfectly timed email from The Power of Moms gave a great example of how to avoid the couch potato summer, and we made up our family fun plan.

We started with a summer bucket list--a list of all the things we want to do, all the places we want to visit, all the things we want to learn, including experiences that no summer would be complete without:

This year I'm starting with our themed days of the week. For 2013, our days are:

Make it Monday: arts and crafts
New Town Tuesday: visit or research something fun to do in our new town, such as the library, local restaurants, and other attractions
Wet Wednesday: play at the pool or lake or in the sprinklers, get slurpees
Thoughtful Thursday: acts of service
Fun Fridays: trips, movie nights, game nights

Last year's DIY Summer Camp, also had activities the kids need to do every day, like reading and writing practice (my 6-year-old wrote stories or journal entries, or practiced his full name; my 3-year-old did letter worksheets from Confessions of a Slacker Mom; my 2-year-old . . . mostly ran around ;) ) and chores. This year we'll build on that with more of a set schedule. I'm thinking we'll tackle chores—which now include homework—from 9-10 each day, then head to the park for a little while before swim lessons.

Last summer, we also came up with a list of their favorite fun things to do, which would go great in an "I'm Bored" jar.

Everyone is excited for our summer plan, and I love the flexibility and structure it offers. I have ideas for fun things to do every day all ready to go, and I can plan ahead for them.

What do you do in the summertime?