The Flora Tunic

My baby is 8 now.  I've been thinking a lot about what I make for her.  I read so many blogs and see many Instagram posts about how sewists' kids don't want to wear their handmade garments as they get older.  For some reason, I haven't had that problem. 

One thing that I do is only sew things that I believe my kid will wear.  I try to choose patterns that will work for her, and fabric that she will like.

When I saw the new pattern from Elegance and Elephants I knew it would work for my kid.  The Flora Dress and Tunic is a fairly simple silhouette, with a bunch of options - dress or tunic, and bodice options.  Plus, bonus, no closures!  Heidi has struck the right balance of a low-ish back neck and a perfect front neckline so the garment just pulls right over the kid's head.

Here's how my version started:  I had pulled some velour out of one of my many plastic boxes, leftover from sewing for my 3 older kids.  My daughter spied this gorgeous velour, and wanted her next garment made from that.  Ok, so fine.  I decided on tunic length, and would line it with pink cotton lawn.  I decided to size up based on the heavy fabric and hoped it would work.  After printing, taping and cutting, I laid out the pattern on the fabric and - you guessed it - not enough velour.  Even with my best Ninja cutting, it wasn't going to work.

Onto plan B.

Since I have fabric yardage lying all over my house, my next thought was some very nice double gauze.  Being lazy, I didn't re-print the pattern - I just used it in the size 7 with 9 length that I had previously cut.  It's probably a bit big, but definitely worked.

I added a bit of piping to accent the front seams, otherwise this is straight up sewn as is.  This will last her a while - and she loves it!  We took pictures after school yesterday and she asked if she could wear it to school today.  She came downstairs to breakfast, and notified me that she had even worn it to bed!  So, it passed the test!