It is no secret that, even though I sew, I prefer to buy clothes for my kids. Lots of reasons: it saves time, they're rarely more expensive than raw fabric (I'm picky about my fabric), sewing in multiple sizes is boring, and I'd rather go to the park or sit with my husband at the end of the day or make cardboard stuff, really.
Costumes, though, I prefer to sew. Lots of reasons: they're very expensive, the workmanship is shoddy, the fabric is scratchy or inappropriate in other ways, sometimes they're immodest, often they're only toddler-sized, and the fit is so poor that I can't even bear to look at the models in the photos, let alone my own children in them.
A couple of months ago, we were minding our own business in Target, and we saw a very cool costume. It was plasticky and stiff and expensive, but it was clever. And even though it was sized for someone half her age, Emily wanted it. We had dress-up wings at home but they were the nylon-stretched-over-a-wire-frame type that have already disintegrated, not to mention never flapped or actually stayed in place. This one, I reasoned, would therefore be quite a different -and probably longer-lasting - addition to our wing arsenal. So I stared at this clever plasticky winged skirt for a long time, deconstructing it in my head, and then went home and (slowly) made our own. However, by the time I finally got around to drafting them, I'd forgotten how the original ones looked, so I did whatever made sense to me or that I could remember.
They're wraparound skirts
that unfold
into wings
that are hinged to open really wide
The skirt was semi-fitted, meaning that it had a flat front,
and an elasticized back.
Also, the wingspan had to fit the armspan of each child
to spread them as wiiiiiiiiiide as they wanted.
So each pattern had to be custom-drafted. It was not as nasty as it sounds.
Here, I'll show you -
First you do a fitted A-Line skirt draft for the front. The yellow arrow is a quarter of the exact waist measurement.
Then you do a gathered-skirt draft for the back i.e. it's a rectangle. The greeny-yellow arrow is one quarter of the hip (including some comfortable ease) measurement.
Then you make sure that the length of the back piece matches the slanty side of the front piece because they're going to join each other at the side seam of the skirt (the yellow arrow).
And that's the pattern for the skirt! Easy. Here's an old tutorial that is very similar, if you need more instruction.
The wing was a bit more fun to do.
It takes a bit of visualizing:
(i) the wing attaches to the center back of the skirt
(ii) it folds into itself and wraps around the entire skirt.
So it's wing-shaped while being skirt-shaped. It's also slightly differently-shaped for each wearer, depending on the shape of their skirt draft.
Here's an annotated photo below:
- The red section is the part of the wing that wraps around the front of the skirt. You draft it by tracing around the whole front skirt pattern.
- The yellow section is the part of the wing that wraps around half of the back of the skirt. The other wing wraps around the other half. Note that by "back of the skirt" here, I mean "after the elastic has been inserted, so that it fits the back waist. Another way of drafting this section is to trace the half front skirt pattern, which has this fitted waist.
- The length of the wing is found by measuring your child's armspan.
- The purple arrow is the edge that actually gets sewn into the back center seam.
- The lower lobe of the wing (between the purple and blue arrows) gets folded into itself
like this -
leaving only the upper lobe
for wrapping around the skirt.
All this wrapping means quite a few layers
so I experimented with different fabrics to get a nice overall unbunchy ensemble - twill for the skirt, muslin/cotton for the lining, satin or 100% polyester lining fabric for the wings,
and fleece or cotton for the applique.
To make the applique patterns, just sketch directly onto the wing pattern when you're done cutting out the fabric pieces until you get something you like. Then cut the paper pieces out and use those for applique patterns. I made the mistake of inviting suggestions from the kids - I thought they would just pick their own colors for the radial rainbow design but - alas - they wanted swirlies.
To get the lower lobe to fold nicely, you can sew down the pleats, pin-tuck style.
The wing tips have ribbon loops to fit over fingers, and the skirt fastens with little velcro squares.
And that's how these skirts were made -
regular girls one minute
butterfly fairies the next.
Fly away, little ones!
Incidentally, I drafted these on newspaper because the wings were so big, and also because I like to throw away my patterns when I'm done with them. I dislike saving patterns because they take up so much space. Also, the girls grow and change body proportions so rapidly that the old patterns are practically obsolete anyway. I reckon that they're already in my head and I can always redraft them if I need to (not that I'm planning to make more of these wings).
I was just about to crush these templates up and throw them in the trash when I wondered if any of you might want them. If so, I can put them in an envelope and post them to you. My only condition is that you use these patterns for your own, non-commercial projects. Leave a comment to let me know which one you want. If there is more than one interested person per pattern, I'll turn this into a giveaway and draw one name at random for each pattern by the time I write my next post. FYI: Emily is a very tall, slender 6.5 year old (i.e. she's more like a 7+ year old with a 6-year old's waist). Jenna is tall 4.5-year-old and Kate is 3. I don't remember their waist measurements which seem to change with each meal anyway. And I'm not providing instructions with the patterns, or seam allowances or symbols or anything like that. You get just three pieces of newspaper, and you can wing it (Oo, bad pun) from there, OK?
