more clothes for the girl that does not sleep

Little Anna has an ear infection at the moment, which those of you who have/had children know that means very little sleep is going on. Well for Anna that means less sleep than usual, and for me it means crankiness, tiredness and very little sewing going on....

But I did manage to finish up another shirt for her last week. I had an image burned in my brain of a little girl's floral blouse with red buttons, possibly from one of those cute Japanese sewing magazines that I browse but never buy (they look more bewildering than BWOF). I just had to sew it up before I lost the idea.

Using the vintage Butterick 422 that I used for the purple gingham shirt, I managed to eke out a blouse from a remnant size piece of lovely light coloured floral cotton I had in the stash picked up in an opshop. I changed the collar from the oversized pointy one to a peter pan rounded collar by cutting out a collar piece from another pattern because just rounding off the ends doesn't quite work out! A peter pan collar is shaped a bit like a jelly bean, and is very differently shaped to a normal collar. I left off the pocket because I didn't have enough fabric left, in fact I had to cut the facings out of a different fabric altogether (some lilac poplin) due to a shortage of fabric, but it actually looks quite cute.

I put some red ric rac trim on the collar and cuffs, and put red buttons down the front even though trying to get her to sit still to do them will drive me insane - but style won out over sanity. Unfortunately my model wasn't being very cooperative when I tried to take her photo. First there was a bit of flapping of arms:

Then there was some bendy mid tantrum poses:

And then there was some silliness with her hat:

And finally there was some serious head shaking going on, the kind that swivels her head from side to side in an emphatic no:

So here is a photo of the blouse laid out flat, the best I could do peeps!

And aren't these buttons cute, I picked up a whole tube in an op shop one time:

Even thought this pattern was the same I used for the purple gingham shirt, the floral shirt looks much larger on her, but I guess she can grow into it.

Well that's it for me, I'm off for an early night because I know I'll be hearing screams soon enough that will go on for at least 2 hours before she settles back into another short sleep. Plus I sat through, no endured, a six hour meeting at work today so my brain is definitely overtired. Yes that's right SIX hours! Plus lunch was catered for so there wasn't even any escape at lunchtime...........