Sykkelkjole / Bicycle Dress

Fireåringen (fem til hausten) plukka ut stoff ho ville ha kjole av. Då eg designa den, var eg klar over at det ville bli ein sporty type kjole, men det var fyrst då ho sette seg på sykkelen, at eg såg at det var den perfekte sykkelkjole! Litt som tennis-kjole; ein topp forlenge ned til eit veldig kort, men vidt skjørt. Når ho sit på sykkelen, heng skjørtet ned som ei søt gardin rundt setet, og stoppar ovanfor bakskjermen. Dessverre fekk eg ikkje noko bilete av ho på sykkelen, men eg naut synet av kjolen bakfrå då vi sykla på tur til Slottet (forresten ganske utruleg å tenkje på at vi bur sånn til at vi kan sykle til slottet! Det er så mykje gøyare å sykle på tur i Oslo enn heime i Kristiansand!)

The four-year-old picked the fabrics, and asked me to make her a dress. When I designed it, I was aware that it was going to be a sporty dress, but it was when she got on the bike after the photo shoot, that I realized that it was the perfect bicycle dress!. In fact, it looks like a tennis dress, and they got some of the same features; a top extended down to a tiny, but wide skirt. When she rides the bycycle, the skirt falls neatly like a curtain around the seat and stops just above the rear fender. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo of her riding, but I enjoyed the sight of the dress from behind at our bycycle ride to the norwegian royal palace yesterday.

Kjolen er såpass kort at den skal brukast saman med “sykkelbukse”/lårkort tights. Desse er sydd etter tut’en for guttetughts, men i staden for å leggje til bevegelsesvidde, har eg trukke frå 4 cm frå hoftevidda og livvidda, og fire cm frå lår-vidda. Men eg må ha gjort nokre feilmålingar (skummelt å måle medan barnet halvvegs ligg i sofaen…), for lårvidda på buksa blei i praksis lik lårvidda på barnet. Lengda er liv-kne minus 5 cm. Det blei kortare enn eg trudde, men dette kan også ha å gjere med at buksa drar seg opp meir enn den ville gjort om beina var trongare?

The dress is so short that it’s supposed to be used with thigh short tights.

About the dress construction (for those interested):

Block used: “Tee shirt block close fitting” pg. 48 in Winifred Aldrich’s “Metric pattern cutting for children’s wear and baby wear”. I found this block in several sizes in my archive. It is originally constructed with chest measure minus 1,5 cm, but I chose one size up, so the dress is chest + 1 cm. I.e. she is size 110, but I used block size 116.

Modifications: I extended the block down to hip level size 110. At hip level I widened the pattern corresponding to hip measure + 6 cm, rounded off to nearest whole cm above. The skirt is something like a quarter circle in front and a quarter circle at the back. It’s 14 cm long from hip to hem line. The neckline is lowered about a cm before drawing the upper front pieces.

Cap sleeves: The the figure illustrates how I made the cap sleeve patterns. the black pattern is the original, the dark red pattern is on a paper sheet on top. I eyeballed the rotation around the top of the sleeve, the measure “x “ turned out to be 2,5 mm (i.e. the cap of the cap sleeve is at total of 5 mm narrower than the original cap).

Sewing the cap sleeve: I cut the front pieces and back piece with seam allowance 1 cm all around the armhole. After stitching shoulder seams, stitching the front pieces together and finished the edging at the sleeve bottom, I stitched the sleeves to the bodice*. Then pressing the free seam allowances to the wrong side and stitching a coverstitch seam all the way along the bodice.

*NB: The overlocker can eat much of the  seam allowances that you need to make a “arm hole hem”, so make sure you set the seam allowance on the overlocker to max. Or, like I did this time, start and end the sleeve seam with zigzag on the sewing machine and use the overlocker in between. (Of course, zigzaging all the way is also possible…)

Stoff/fabrics: Jersey (cotton) frå tidlegare Cetho Designs, hugsar ikkje kvar dei einsfarga kjem frå (samme leverandør?) Apene/monkeys er designa av Johanna Ahlard. Knapp/button: Textart.no