Bartacks and Singletrack: Girl on the Go

We've been a whole family on the go really. October flew by without a single blog post.

Moving back into our renovated house (and having no internet connection for weeks) meant October just disappeared. But I had been busily making things (to avoid those tedious, but important jobs, like unpacking) and so now I have lots of catching up to do.

Almost as soon as we'd moved into the house, and barely a week after the kids had finally returned to school (in the physical sense, rather than the homeschool imposed by Covid19 restrictions) it was announced that it was Bookweek. My usual enthusiasm for a last minute costume was "somewhat lacking".

After telling me she wanted a simple white dress, A changed her mind and did something else with what she already had. But I had been led to get out the Girl On The Go dress pattern from Oliver + S which I'd never yet sewn, and now I was curious.

It's a nice, basic T-shirt dress with a boat neck shaped neckline finished with a facing. Ties are sewn into the side waist and can tie in the front or back. I made a straight size 10 as per her measurement with no alterations and it fits perfectly. A bit slower to sew than a T-shirt, but not by much.

The fabric was a remnant from a dress I made myself way back here, and is a lovely quality Froy & Dind knit that came from Maaidesign. I was delighted to find it was just enough leftovers for this dress and is now all used up

We took these pictures on my phone one day between racing around doing stuff, and decided to try our new courtyard vertical garden as a backdrop. The garden is made with a giant piece of felt attached to a backboard, then little slits are cut into the felt and the plants tucked into little pockets. It's supercute as it looks like every plant has a little sleeping bag of felt.

She was enjoying wearing that dress a lot, and I had an idea for another in a bold print that I'd picked up in Spotlight from their discount rack. This time, to maximise the print, I left off the waist ties and gave the dress a bucketload of swingy flare...

It's really easy to take a pattern that you like and slash and spread it to get the swing skirt. There's a blog post with instructions here.

I may have gone overboard with the amount of twirl, but this light, drapey rayon knit needed volume

Her favourite colour at the moment is orange, So I used a bright orange thread for the stitching around the facing and hems.

The vertical garden is growing really well - maybe because it's on an automatic watering system and so not reliant on us to remember it. Here's hoping we can keep some other plants alive elsewhere around the place!

We've certainly been feeding and watering the kids sufficiently. They're growing so fast!!