Toddler Pinafore Smock Top, Day 3

What's a pinafore?  It's for wearing!  Ha ha, bad joke.  Might need a rewrite.  But really, a pinafore is basically an apron that young girls wear over whatever outfit they are wearing. 
If you ever watched Little House on the Prairie, then you've seen a pinafore.  Laura would usually wear one when she went to school.  And Anne Shirley was wearing a pinafore when she famously walked the ridgepole of Moody's kitchen roof.

From Sullivan Entertainment's Anne of Green Gables

I'll be making this pinafore for my little girl, let's call her Darcy, with some fabric that my mom brought back from the Philippines.  The pattern calls for one yard of fabric, and I had just enough of this cute pink flowered fabric to do it.

One-Yard Wonders includes tissue paper patterns for most of the projects.  Often times with tissue patterns they'll have markings for several different sizes right on top of each other, so if you cut a size 2T out of the paper, you'll cut through the other sizes and won't be able to use them.  The other thing about tissue patterns is that they tear easily.  I solve both of these problems by making a copy of the uncut pattern with all the sizes, and then cut up the copy.  That way I'll still have the original to make the other sizes later on.

Part of assembling the bodice included sewing around the armholes.  Yep, curves, and even though I covered curves a couple of weeks ago with the Simple Circles Table Runner, this was a little different because it's for a garment, and the curve doesn't stay the same all the way around.  I would constantly have to check my seam allowance measurement.  The best way for me to deal with this was to chalk up the 1/2" seam  wherever I was going to sew.

1/2" seam allowance marked with blue chalk.

I also needed to clip the inside curve.  I have no idea if I did it right.  Is it possible to have too much clipping?

Before stitching the lining to the exterior piece, I added some topstitching to the shoulders.  A topstitch is literally any stitch you sew on the outside of your sewing project, whether it's a garment or blanket or anything else.  It can be decorative or just a plain, straight stitch, but with garments, it usually means to sew a straight stitch close to a seam (also known as an edgestitch).

In this case, the pattern didn't call for it, but I like the look of topstitching on garments, so I added a 1/4" stitch to the shoulder seam.  As soon as finished the first line of stitching, I wished I had stitched a little closer to the seam.  Oh well.

Finished topstitch on left side of seam.

This project was coming along quicker than I expected.  Then it came time to attach the ribbon.  The directions were a little confusing to me, and even though I read them and reread them and read them once again out loud, it still wasn't clear to me where and how I needed to attach the ribbons.  The main reason for this was because of the use of the term "right side."  Did they mean the exterior side of the fabric, or the right-handed side of the garment?  This happens with knitting patterns, too, using the terms "right side" and "wrong side" of your work, and it has caused confusions for me there as well.  Some knitting patterns have started to use the  terms "public side" and "private side."  It'd be great if sewing patterns did the same.

So I did my best guess and just in case it ended up a shambles, I took a picture, so that way I would have on record the exact moment of when things started to go south.

The beginning of the end?

Just as I was attaching the ribbon, I thought to myself, "You know, they really ought to have a diagram if they're going to have such confusing steps."  And as I looked back to the page to figure out what the next step was, I said, "Oh."  Yep, there it was, plain as day, right on the top of the page.  A diagram.  Ugh.  Someone needs to get more sleep.