mama urchin

You know, I’ve been meaning to try using fold-over elastic (FOE) for a while. Ottobre patterns often call for it and there’s no secret about Amy‘s and Melissa‘s love for it. I’m so lazy and I hate gathering — like at a neckline — so I often substitute a casing and pull some elastic through. I figure elastic in children’s clothing is a positive. The thing is though, pulling elastic through a casing is also on the list of things I get annoyed doing, it’s just generally less annoying than gathering.

This outfit is all about the elastic. The pants are elastic waist with a casing. The bottoms are trimmed with crochet lace — I bought a whole bunch of it on clearance. The top is the same top as this one but with FOE on the neckline and sleeves. It’s super-fancy expensive seersucker FOE — the only brown at my fabric store — and has less stretch than normal FOE. That would be the reason the neckline is big. Oh well, this fabric has been hanging around for over a year, I’m just glad it’s finally in a wearable form. This morning we woke up to cooler temps so with any luck we’ll have wearable weather soon too.

When Katie told me that she wanted some clothes like we gave Gabrielle it reminded me that I had a peasant skirt for her cut out from the same Heather Ross fabric. I told my mother-in-law, who was here visiting, that I had stalled on it because I loathe gathering. So she gave me a hint and guess what, it was no problem at all. After conquering that issue the skirt came together very quickly.

Then yesterday while the kids were occupied I made a matching skirt and t-shirt for Katie’s recently acquired My Friend Jenny doll. I actually won a couple of lots of clothing patterns for this doll — one of the greatest things about the My Friend dolls — on ebay and should have them soon but I was just winging it when it came to this doll outfit. Katrina’s face when I showed her Jenny wearing the new outfit was priceless. So a puppy tea party was immediately planned and even though Onyx is far from a puppy, she got to attend too. Pip, pip, cheerio!

EDITED TO ADD: Okay, so what my mother-in-law told me was this… sew two lines of basting stitches and then on one line pull the top thread to gather and on the other line pull the bottom (bobbin) thread. Sorry I didn’t share at first but after she told me that it seemed so obvious I figured you all knew anyway!