Master Five

In my last post I shared Mathilda’s birthday outfit, this post is about Jonathan. Jonathan has his birthday just one week after Mathilda, they are exactly 53 weeks apart. Jonathan has just turned 5. He’s recently become a little bit more particular about what he wears, although he still does love it when I make things for him. Here he is on the day of the birthday party.

He didn’t wear anything I made that day, but he did make the strange looking combination of plastic containers and cardboard tubes that he’s holding – its a submarine! He makes them at kinder and brings a new one home most days.

I did make him cake for his birthday.

I got the idea and inspiration from pinterest. Its a chocolate slab cake, covered in chocolate frosting. To do the “5” I made a template with baking paper, just drew it freehand and cut it out to make a stensil, which I then filled in with the crumbs from some plain sweet biscuits that I put into the mini food processor. I kept a few larger bits in there too, to be the rocks. And then I arranged a set of construction toy cars that I bought for him so it looked like they were making a road! Probably, one of the easier cakes that I’ve ever made, but also one of the most popular.

I also used various ready-made sprinkles and decorations to add some different “rocks” and “gravel”.

I also made some cupcakes for Jonathan to take to kinder on the day of his birthday, to share with all his friends. They were again chocolate, with chocolate frosting, and with some ready-made dinosaur sprinkles.

The Shirt

I did make Jonathan a shirt for his birthday. With a construction theme.

Pattern

I used a pattern from the recent Ottobre Design magazine 3/2015. Number 24 is safari-style shirt for boys with differnet options for the pockets and back pleat. I did a variation on that, by using an embroidered panel on one side.

I made this one up in a size 110. Jonathan is about 105cms tall, so I thought that the 110 would fit just right, with a smidgen of growing room, meaning that he could wear a long sleeved t-shirt under it now, while its winter, and then it would fit beautifully without that for summer. But its actually a little too small. Jonathan is very long through the body, but this shirt is even small across the shoulders. So, if I make it again, which I think I will, I’ll be making it in a bigger size.

Overall, the pattern was really good. The pieces fit together with no problems, the instructions were mostly quite easy to follow. I do love this kind of collar where the stand and collar are all one piece, I know that it doesn’t quite sit the same way as a collar with a stand, but this is a casual shirt for a little boy, so I think its better this way.

This pattern also has lots of options for creating your own unique variations, because of the way it is pieced together – there is a front and back yoke, different pocket options and separate pieces for the button bands.

The Fabric

I have about 10 metres of this bright orange cotton poplin. Fortunately, orange is Jonathan’s favourite colour, and fortunately it goes really well with a construction theme. I used the orange for one side panel of the shirt, one of the button bands, the pocket flaps and the underside of the collar.

For the main body of the shirt I used a really soft blue/white check, it feels lovely to touch and should be really comfortable for my Jonathan to wear.

Machines

I used my 20 year old Brother My Star 3 to do all the garment construction. Its not the fanciest machine that there ever was, but its just so reliable. I’ve never had any issues with it, and it continues to consistently do its job. Simple.

For the embroidery, I used my Singer Future CE350. It worked just fine with this fabric.

The design is quite simply called “Backhoe” and is from emblibrary.com. Jonathan is very much into construction machines at the moment, but not the cartoon type, he’s into the real things. He really loved this.

I used my Lumina overlocker to finish all the seams on this shirt. It doesn’t really seem to sew that well on its own, but it does do a good job of neatening all my edges.

This one is not really a machine, but I thought I would share it here. A couple of years ago I splurged on myself and bought a pair of heavy duty pinking shears. They are fantastic. I always use them jobs like this – the curved edges of the collar!

This photo shows the collar before I turned it the right way out. You can see that I’ve trimmed all the internal edges with the pinking shears. This will help them to sit flat, without bulk, along all the curved edges and corners. A very useful tool.

Another tool that I used was my KAM snap pliers. I love them. For this shirt I used some grey star shaped snaps down the front.

Jonathan

As I mentioned above, Jonathan didn’t want to wear this shirt on the day of his birthday party. I was beginning to think that he wouldn’t wear it at all. But yesterday he did. Which was nice, because it was actually a little celebration for my birthday.

I nearly forgot to get any pictures of him wearing it, but here are just two that turned out okay.

Thanks for reading.