Burda 9505: birthday shirt

So as I said last post, it was Toby's second birthday last Saturday. It sort of snuck up on me with all that's been going on lately, but I did manage to make his birthday shirt last Friday night. Luckily I've made this pattern before so it took less than 3 hours which isn't too bad for the fiddliness that little people clothing involves!

I used view B of Burda 9505, which was gifted to me by Steph and I used View A for Toby's first birthday shirt too (here). This will probably be the last time I use it too since it only goes up to 18 months in size and this shirt is rather a slim fit on him. It's actually quite a good pattern, drafting wise, because I have found that kids patterns are usually way too big but this one is spot on. Unfortunately it's now out of print, but if you have this in your stash I can highly recommend you use it if you have a little one in your life.

I chose to use an elephant print cotton poplin that I bought from Spotlight a while ago mainly because I figure he has the rest of his life to wear stripes or plaid or solid colours and when you're two you should wear a really fun print! Plus I wanted to use up the rest of this fabric in case there wasn't another occasion for it in the future and it stayed in the stash forever.

The pattern is pretty straightforward - it's just a normal shirt sewn on a smaller scale. I noticed that the instructions for view B aren't as detailed as the instructions for view A - there aren't any instructions to finish the sleeve or the tab other than doing a narrow hem to the edge. It wasn't difficult to figure out, but it just seemed odd to leave it out given that the other steps are spelled out. I also French seamed the sleeve edge because the seam edge would be visible when the sleeve is rolled up, which the pattern also didn't suggest but looks much better than having a serged edge showing.

I used snaps instead of buttons because they not only took less time than buttons but they also make it easier to get Toby into and out of this shirt because he can be very squirmy sometimes. I left off the back yoke and instead cut the back as one single piece so that I didn't have to match those elephants at the back - pure laziness but it's not really a noticeable feature in this fabric anyway:

And how good is my pattern matching at the front edge! The birthday boy seems pretty happy with his shirt and his birthday presents - he's a bit obsessed with Peppa Pig, dinosaurs and soccer balls at the moment so he was quite easy to satisfy. If only they stayed so innocent and little for longer!

And this is last year's shirt when he turned one - I can't believe how much he's changed!