Ballet Sweater and a new sewing friend

In a stroke of self-perceived genius, I thought I had solved the perpetual spring sweater wearing problem with Clover. After seeing this adorable version of the Heidi and Finn ballet sweater on Flickr, I thought Clover might wear one of those without a huge fight. 

As it stands we have this routine of my telling her it's chilly outside and begging over and over for her to put on a coat or sweater, and her not wanting to wear anything over her outfit anyway, telling me defiantly "It's nice outside I think" before marching outside and declaring herself freezing. By then I've had enough and won't go back in to rescue her from her four year old stubbornness.

(yes, I took Violet out in public this morning in that outfit. and she looked crazy adorable, thank you!)

As you can see, she is NOT wearing her new sweater, which I started last night and quickly finished up this chilly morning when it seemed a good day to have one. 

There were a couple of problems I think. First, I tried to get her to wear her new green halter from kids clothes week, which she has turned on and says is "not beautiful" and spoiled her already testy mood towards getting dressed.

Then either because of the dress she was wearing under it being the wrong undergarment, her squirming and fidgeting, or the sweater really being undersized for her, she seemed uncomfortable and said it was too small. (though, had this been in pink with sparkly ties, I think she would have found a way to overcome.....just sayin) I sewed the 4T which is usually too big for Clover in kid's patterns, but unless I totally missed it I don't think the pattern came with kid measurements to go by. So I just went with her size by age. One thing was certain - the ties really are too short and wouldn't wrap all the way around twice like they are supposed to. They are even too short for Violet. 

The other thing was that the place the ties came out from out of the bottom band wound up being wrong. They are supposed to come from the sides, and they poke out from too low and don't allow it to wrap right. So I think I need to pick them out and re-situate them, adding more length. It would probably also be a good idea to add two little loops on the sides of the bottom band for the ties to loop through.

Despite the Clover fail, and it being too big on Violet, I still think Violet looks pretty adorable in the sweater. It's nice to have a kid who is still willing to get excited about most of what I make. 

This fabric was really nice to work with. I got it at Finch Sewing Studio in Leesburg, which I discovered during Kids Clothes Week. It's kind of the coolest thing to come from KCW for me, because I happened to click on a picture in the Flickr pool that I thought was cute and noticed that the description had "Loudoun County Sewing Studio" in it. Thinking it was just a different Loudoun county, but being curious anyway I went to the website and realized that it was in LEESBURG. I was like whaaaaaat?

Upon further investigation while I was looking for location and hours, I noticed the phone number for the studio had a Portland area code, and wondered if we had 503 numbers out here too. But it turned out that Nicole, the owner of Finch moved here from Portland. And not just that, she used to teach at Modern Domestic with Shelly Figueroa, right down the street from my fave fabric shop Bolt. We also have kids who are of similar ages, and she happens to have amazing taste in fabric. The couple of shelves of fabric in her little studio are packed with more I would want to buy than I think I've ever seen in Northern Virginia ever! Hello, she even has shot cotton!

How dangerous is it to make a friend who has gorgeous fabric available for sale every time you get together?......

She's got her fabrics for sale on etsy too, and the knits are all beautiful and high quality. For 9$ a yard. You can't even get ugly knits at Joanns for 9$ a yard (honestly, I've found some cute stuff there for good prices with coupons, but their knit selection makes me want to cry). And if you're a stripe lover like me, she's got some really great ones. This is a cotton/rayon, and feels very delicate but is actually kind of resilient to work with. It didn't get sucked into my feed dogs or stretch out all weird when I was sewing, pinning, or ironing.

That was kind of a long post about one little sweater that didn't quite work out like I hoped. But I think it has potential, and I want to make another with some tweaks. So much for being sick of sewing after KCW, right? I claimed to be "so done" and then must have been propelled by the momentum of the previous week. Plus I have this pile of knit that just wants to be made into things.