VFT London aka the twirly summer dress!

Hi! I made something for my daughter for a change so thought I’d pop on and show you! I made it with the intention to sell the style, so I was allowed. 😉

It’s the Violette Field Threads new pattern – the London dress. I made the most of the couple of days of sunshine we had!!

I made it in a gorgeous Liberty of London cotton lawn that’s adorned with sweeties! So cute! I realised how apt it was to be making a London dress out of Liberty fabric afterwards. 😀

The dress features a ruffly hem but I left that out (who’s got time for all that ruffling haha… I’m really not a ruffles and frills person) and just added 3″ to the length of the skirt.

It’s got the teeniest bodice, a really full skirt, and tie-up straps. A quick and simple sew, with just a few techniques required – gathering, bias binding, and the usual seams and hem!

In true matchy matchy Pink Bobbins style, I made a matching bow hairband, and it’s safe to say little A loves the outfit and wants to wear it ALL THE TIME!! 🙂

Can you blame her? Just look at the spin effect!

I totally recommend this pattern, it’s brilliantly written and the outcome is just so gorgeous.

Of course if you don’t want to make your own you can always by mine at Pink Bobbins. 😛

Beth x

Pink Bobbins catch-up!

Hi everyone! It’s been a while… I feel the need to post something…. so here I am with a quick catch-up of the goings-on round here!  I’ve been super busy with my little children’s clothing business, Pink Bobbins, and  I can’t remember the last time I sewed something for myself! So this will mainly give you an insight into Pink Bobbins. Enjoy!

Dinosaur prints are really popular. Annoyingly for me the High Street seems to be cottoning on to little girls’ love for them; I’ve seen dinosaur clothing for girls crop up more and more in stores. Luckily at the moment my dinosaur clothing is still going down well… particularly with customers abroad!  This is one of my most recent skirt and headband sets:

These basic skirts are definitely my best-selling item, in all sorts of prints.  Now I’m also pairing them with matching birthday t-shirts, which have been really popular these past few weeks – so many birthdays this time of year!

The most popular choice of dinosaur fabric is definitely this; girly dinosaurs! These dresses (and skirts) do really well. It’s the only fabric I buy from abroad and I can never keep up with the demand! The long shipping time is frustrating!  

As well as that style of dress, I also make lined pinafore dresses; this Peter Rabbit one is one of my latest and it’s just gorgeous!  I don’t use copyright fabrics but Peter is in the public domain, which is great! 😀 This fabric has been discontinued but new ones are coming next month so I’m looking forward to that! 

I offer a few more styles of dress, including the party dress (pattern by Cottage Mama), which is just so beautiful!  This got a lot of love on my Facebook page!

I also make hair accessories… mostly to match outfits  (you don’t get that on the High Street!) but also sell bow clips in sets; can you guess what uniform these ones match?  

OK one more photo as I love these.. these girly jumpsuits are just the sweetest (pattern by Tadah Patterns; Vintie Overalls).

Aren’t they so pretty?!

So that’s just a snippet of Pink Bobbins… if you’re interested you can always check out my Facebook page and/or etsy shop. Or follow me on Instragram @pinkbobbins – I know some of you do already and I am on there more than I am on here! 🙂

Happy sewing til next time…

Beth x

Clothkits Skirt – Rob Ryan ‘Hold Me’

My lovely Stitching Santa gifter who I now know is the lovely Kate at Fabrickated gave me a clothkits skirt kit for Christmas. I really liked the idea, and seeing as it was Christmas/New Year and I didn’t have as much to do, I thought I’d sew it up sharpish. And to motivate me further, The Monthly Stitch’s first theme of the year is ‘Not Stashed’ (use up fabric before it reaches your stash) – challenge accepted!

If you’ve not heard of Clothkits, they basically print a pattern directly on to the fabric, so you just have to cut the pattern in your size from the fabric!

The kit was designed by Rob Ryan, and is called ‘Hold Me’.

So during Chrimbo Limbo (you know the bit between Christmas and New Year) I sewed it up!

I cut the size 10 and it fits perfectly.

The pieces included are: 2 x back panels, 1 x front panel, 2 x back facings, 1 x front facing.

I like how there’s not an extra waistband; you just sew the facing right sides together with the skirt pieces and flip it over. I just stitched in the ditch (at both sides seams) and that holds it in place.

I inserted a concealed zip in between the back panels of the skirt, sorry there’s no back view photo!

You can add a lining if you wish, but for time and laziness sake I didn’t bother. The fabric is a lovely corduroy, so it’s not see-through at all to warrant a lining for that reason. Perhaps it would have benefited from one to prevent it kind of sticking to my tights, but I’m happy enough without!

I decided I didn’t want a line of stitching around the hem so I took the extra time to slipstitch the hem in place, so that nothing is visible on the front. I’m really happy I did that!

All in all, I would recommend you all to get a Clothkits kit! It was lovely to be able to cut the pieces straight from the fabric, and it took no time at all to sew up!

Now back to old fashioned pattern pieces…

Beth x