Simplicity Hannah Montana pattern 2294

Having seen me at the sewing machine a lot recently, Eldest was keen for me to make her something, again. I gave her a range of patterns to choose from, one of which was this one. I also took her to the fabric department in our local John Lewis, just to get an idea of the type of fabrics she likes. Nearly everything she chose was jersey and unsuitable for the pattern she had chosen, so we had a look at wovens and she chose a pinkish madras check.

Hoping that I would be able to get something similar at the Fabric Fandango, I held off buying the fabric straight away. Unfortunately, I could not find anything suitable, so ordered it from John Lewis. I bought plenty (4 metres) in case Middlest wanted something as well. I checked Eldest's measurements against the chart on the back and decided to make an age 12 (she is not quite eleven).

The whole shirt went together well, the main difficulty being trying to shrink out the ease in the sleeve head. I thought that the front placket might be tricky, but that seemed ok.


Also, having done a few practice buttonholes, I happily went ahead with my first one using the buttonhole attachment, unfortunately I thought that the stitching on the reverse leg looked terrible and that I was going to unpick and start again..... half an hour later.... I tried again, without the buttonhole attachment and did a much better job! (I was too frustrated to take any pictures)

When we tried it on her we realised that

a) she needed help putting it on,
b) she needed more help getting it off and
c) when it went on it looked almost too small

none of these things were good. She was quite worried about breaking the seams trying to get it on and off over her head.

However, as mentioned earlier I bought plenty of fabric so, I could make another one and also Middlest was to hand to try it on. It looks a little big on her as a shirt (she tried tucking it in to the top of her jeans, but looked like she had a rubber ring in her clothes), but perfect as a tunic dress.