Paw Patrol Vest Pattern

Hello, all!

This is a quick announcement to let you know that you can download the Paw Patrol Vest pattern from that earlier blog post here.

I decided to tag it the original post so that anyone visiting that post in the future can access it immediately without having to jump to a second link. Please also note that it is not a full tutorial - it literally is just the templates and some notes, but it's a straightforward enough garment, so you should be good to go.

Anyway, here's the original PP post again. Happy making!

Paw Patrol Vest, or the one in which LiEr uses a commercial pattern for the first time

Happy new year! 

Bit of a slow start to the year. How was everyone's holidays? How is everyone managing this winter madness? Here in Minnesota, we had a lot of snow and a lot of ice. Some days were sunnier than others, and some days were downright trying. And we put on our snow boots and got in our cars and went to the supermarket and the gym and church and school and walks and kept our chins up and fixed our thoughts  on warmer days ahead. Spring will surely come, as it does every year. Winter can only hold us captive for so long before it, too, must yield.

On the blog front, some housekeeping has been happening. Photo-editing has been come-and-go for a couple of years (which partly explains why I haven't been posting a whole lot) but this winter I think I've finally found a system that will work henceforth. With that new stability, I'm anticipating more regular posts (hurrah!) and sharing of projects. 

Also, I've been migrating email subscribers and feeds from the now-dead Feedburner to follow.it so some of you may have gotten emails from them to let you know about the move. It's not spam, and if you've followed the instructions to verify your email address, you should be receiving my posts again. If not, you can re-subscribe by entering your email address in the follow.it widget in my sidebar. 

Moving forward - I have a fun project to share!

As the title suggests, I used a sewing pattern for the first time. Whoo!

If you're new to the blog, here's some background: I learned to sew in Singapore where I grew up. People there - and other Asian countries, I've since learned - tend to draft directly from measurements rather than use commercial sewing patterns. It could be that back in the day, sewing patterns weren't as easily available as they are in the US or UK. Or it could be that it was how it was always done then, and enough people did it that it was an accessible skill to learn from a grandmother or mother, or even Homec class (all of which were sources of my own learning). Anyway, I learned to draft and sew without commercial patterns. I would say it's a very liberating thing but having never learned the alternative (i.e. commercial patterns), I have nothing with which to compare - it's just all I've ever known.

Until this past Christmas, when I wanted to sew a Paw Patrol vest for my small nephew who lived out of state and who's a huge PP fan. Typically, when I sew for a person, I'd grab that person, measure their dimensions and draft a specific garment pattern for them. It's always worked for me because I've only ever sewn for people who either lived in the same house, or whom I could access physically by visiting them. My little nephew, however, was hundreds of miles away. I only knew his age (almost 3), which in a drafting capacity, meant absolutely nothing. With a commercial pattern, however, that number might translate to a particular size, which then could be useful.

So I called a friend whom I knew had once upon a time sewn a vest for her young son who, if I were lucky enough, might have been 3 years old. Did she still have that pattern? Yes, she did.  

Full disclosure: if you're not new to this blog, you may have remembered that this isn't my first first brush with a commercial sewing pattern. In this ancient post, I participated in an uproarious blog party in which various sewing people were given an ugly vintage sewing pattern and asked to un-uglify it. It was eye-opening, let me tell you. I learned things about sewing patterns that haunt me to this day. So traumatized was I by the ridiculousness of that particular pattern that I ultimately failed to actually utilize it, and had to draft something entirely from scratch. And so I was back to square one - the score was still Commercial Sewing Pattern: 1; LiEr: 0.

Unlike that ugly sewing pattern from days of yore, however, this one from my friend looked quite sane. It was true that there were men featured on the cover along with the boys, all proudly modeling vests, suggesting that with the contents of the package, one could, if one were undiscerning, mistakenly sew a vest in a catastrophically inappropriate size. This was frightening, but I persevered.

My friend, bless her heart, averted this disaster by culling the piles of crinkly tissue and extracting the set of tracings which looked the most like something a boy of 3 would wear. I also had my sister-in-law take two simple measurements (shoulder width and shoulder-to-hip length) so I could have a starting point to draft the eventual vest. Here are some photos of my draft beside the original pattern.

I always forget that commercial patterns come with seam allowances added, which I then had to remove. My drafts never have SA - I was taught to draft this way and I find that it allows me to easily mark sewing lines and points directly on the fabric, and make adjustments.

This is the finished vest. Paw Patrol was new to me and I had to do research to understand what it was, who the characters were and what they did. Apparently, there are dogs - a large number of them - all of whom wear special badges, and there is one boy who rules them all. Or something to that effect. I had no idea of which of the dogs my nephew adored most, or if he might like all the badges so he could take turns at pretending to be one dog each day of the week, or even if he secretly hated some of the dogs. So to be fair to all the dogs, I picked none of them and instead chose the Boy King, whose name was Ryder and who had a fancy vest with all these fun colors.

Obviously, the sewing pattern had none of these details - the sleeve bindings, the stand collar, etc. I used it simply to draft the approximate vest shape and size for a boy whose detailed body dimensions I didn't have, and then modified the seams and amount of ease as necessary. There's quite a bit of piecing, which translates to scratchy seams on the WS, so I lined the vest with some jersey fabric. 

I don't have any photos of my nephew wearing the vest, but I've heard it fits him and he likes it, so that's all good. I've returned the commercial vest pattern to my friend but I think I might still have the PP vest drafts lying around in my sewing room somewhere, so if anyone has a PP-loving kid you'd like to sew this for, let me know and I can try to trace it out and post it here for you to download. 

Hope your year is off to a good start! 

Edited Feb 20 2023: 

I've had some requests for the pattern for this vest, so am including it here at the end of the post as a download. Some things to note:

1 Please see the sketch for the dimensions of the child this pattern was drafted for. It only comes in one size (for this child).

2 This pattern does NOT include seam allowances (SA) i.e. the solid outlines are the stitching lines themselves. Please add your own SA when laying out and cutting out.

3 I did not include a template for the sleeve, which was cut as a very narrow cap sleeve. It was cut on the fold (to make it double-layered), widest at the section at the shoulder and tapered to be narrowest at the side seam. Then it was sewn into a loop, and attached to the armhole with RS together, the same way you would attach a knit waistband (see this post).

4  Regretfully, I am also not including instructions for piecing, laying out, fabric yardage etc. I am hopeful that by looking at the photos in this post, you might be able to connect the dots on your own. Thank you for understanding.

Click HERE to download the Ryder Vest.

Halloween 2021

Thought I'd share what the kids wore on Halloween. The oldest no longer dresses up to go Trick-or-Treating, and prefers instead to hand out candy at the door, welcoming the neighborhood kids and admiring their costumes. It's so much fun to see the tiny princesses and puppies and dinosaurs and superheroes and bioluminescent sea creatures come toddling up the walkway, with their parents a prudent arm's length behind, smiling proudly. We love the handmade costumes especially - and I'm always doubly impressed when these handmade wonders are also toasty warm. It brings up memories of sewing for my own kids, when I was inordinately obsessed with protecting them from hypothermia. There was always the danger of the additional insulation compromising the overall aesthetic of the final product, with everyone possibly looking like the Michelin Man instead of a princess, or fairy, or whatever fantasy creature they'd hoped to be. 

In recent years, my two younger girls have been making costumes for themselves and a neighbor with whom they do the candy circuit as a themed group. They know they're a little overage, and they assure me it's more about the dressing up with a friend than the snagging of sweets. On my part, I am well aware that their Trick-or-Treating days are numbered, and I marvel at how those years of manic October sewing, when my sewing room would be a disaster zone of satin and organza and fleece and sequins, and which I was convinced were never-ending, were so fleeting in hindsight. Friends who have Little Ones, I tell you now as an Old Parent: take photos. Take lots of photos, and enjoy the mania. For one, it's acutely temporary. For another, it's good practice for when those same Little Ones are Teenagers and Young Adults and Soon-To-Be-Marrieds. Those outfits are going to require higher-stakes work, and you'll be glad for the dry runs that were the Halloween costumes of yore.

Anyway, this past Halloween, two of my girls were frogs. They tell me that these particular outfits, which Kate designed and made, are more interpretative than literal. There are hats (which we bought online so as to save time instead of sewing them from scratch like we did the year before) to which Kate added puffy eyes and facial features; T-shirts with a subtle black-felt fly glued on, and tutus, which we made together.

Here they are, just before heading out on their rounds. 

Interestingly, their hats turned out to be versatile beyond just Halloween. Some days after, during a swim meet, the athletes who were not on the roster for the day dressed up as Disney princesses in support of their teammates. Jenna turned up with her frog hat as her only piece of costumewear and when asked whom she was impersonating, she replied, "Tiana - as a frog". Hee!

Halloween 2020

Boy, was Halloween weird this year. The younger children were pastel cows from the game Roblox, together with their neighbor who isn't in the picture. The cow spots are handmade, yes. And also the bucket hats (and their cow spots), using a pattern we borrowed from our neighbor (thank you, S!) Kate cut out all the cow spots with the good intention of stitching them on herself but the time crunch - not to mention the inanity of the task - moved me to help, which turned into Mother sewing on all the cow spots and Kate half-stitching and half-gluing the cow faces. It is not fun to sew cow spots on sleeves, let me say. 

On the plus side, so that the girls can reclaim their clothes for other non-theatrical occasions, the cow spots are removable. The cow nostrils, sadly, not so much.

The costumes, though, were not the weird part. By that, I mean compared to some of costumes from past years, pastel cows are amusingly benign. And I loved working alongside Kate, not to mention only spending one night on the outfits instead of the typical three or four manic weeks. The weirdness in question was setting out a buffet table of candy for the neighborhood kids to help themselves from while the doorbell stayed eerily silent. The eldest child, who as of last year had decided she much preferred greeting trick-or-treaters at the door to going on a candy round herself, thus found herself obsolete this year, and stayed in her room working on her Etsy shop orders instead. It was all kinds of sad in a year already overrun with strangeness. That said, it's interesting what you discover when you let kids pick their own candy - judging from the copious amounts left on the table at the end of the evening, our neighborhood doesn't care for Twizzlers or Starbursts apparently. Even free, and set out where the house owners couldn't see you grab the whole bunch if you so wished. Huh.

Sometimes I cheat-draft

Now that the snow is all gone (hurrah), how is everyone doing?

I have so missed being here on this old blog!

Just last night, as I was mentally composing this post, I wondered, "Does anyone even write blogs anymore, or is that just too old school?" 

After all, it's all Twitter and Instagram and Pinterest these days - it sorta feels like if we can't say what we want to say in a witty hashtag or via single snapshot, no one's going to take the time to read it, doesn't it?

Blogging, I realized with dawning horror, could thus well be obsolete.

I mean, who has the attention span to digest entire paragraphs? Or peruse a tutorial that isn't a videoclip with tinkly music and all the real-time (i.e. slow) bits edited out?

Regardless, I shall blog on. First, because I have old school genes, and second, because I don't do succinct very well. Sad fact.

But you might be wondering about that random panda-face photo. And maybe even that weird title.

Let us begin by saying that my children are older now than they were when I began writing this blog. I remember sewing a lot of child-needed things then, like clothes and costumes and gifts and toys. Those were the glory days of handmade everythings, at least in our family. Inspiration was frantic and abundant and I had both the time and desperate need to turn idea into reality (and then shamelessly brag-blog about it).

As many of my long-time readers might know, I don't use commercial patterns, for reasons that are largely cultural (if so inclined, you can read about it here). In the context of sewing clothes for my kids, this translated to drafting from scratch whatever I needed to make. And as my kids kept growing and needing new clothes every few months or so, that meant a lot of drafting. 

Loads of fun, it turned out. For one thing, it was liberating to be able to make something wearable out of literally just numbers. For another, there was a comforting method to it: locate a child, measure the child, draft her sloper (typically valid for one year, or until the next growth spurt), adapt that into specific garment patterns, sew clothes. 

As needed, I still draft my kids' clothes now, but it's harder because the kids in question are seldom at home to measure and fit. Which is a disappointing inconvenience particularly around a deadline. And then there are those weird occasions when you want to make an outfit for a secret gift but don't want the recipients wise to your intentions. Obviously, dragging a measuring tape up and down their body would be a dead giveaway.

In such situations, I cheat-draft. This means different things to different people but to me it means I take an existing garment my child owns and which she miraculously has not yet outgrown and use that as a starting point in place of actual body measurements. I have her put this garment on and then note which parts fit well, which parts don't, and the exact numerical changes that need to happen to those sub-par parts. Then I trace out on paper the various sections (front, back, sleeve, etc.) of that existing garment and adjust the seamlines, hems and other features to reflect those numerical changes to make the new, custom pattern. I think of this as a first muslin, one which I didn't actually have to sew but which I'm butchering anyway in order to perfect the fit.

Interestingly, drafting this way isn't necessarily faster than drafting from scratch, much as it may so sound. The tracing, for instance, easily goes awry - it is challenging to lay an assembled 3-D garment flat enough to replicate accurate seam lines on paper, let alone isolate the various sections so they don't accidentally overlap. I often find myself re-tracing and re-plotting and re-measuring. Unspeakably inefficient, but we do what we can - ultimately, it's still better than guessing (which I've sometimes also had to do)!

Today, I thought I'd share a recent instance of such cheat-drafting at chez ikatbag. Quick digression first: there are times when I've scrolled through other sewing blogs and marveled at the technical language and almost architectural precision with which a clothing pattern is drafted. Having some drafting experience myself but having it not come from reading modern drafting books, I might get the gist of it but most of it typically goes way over my head. I also find myself asking, "yes, that's a formulaically-faithful rendering of seam-lines and adjustments but what does it look like and feel like on an actual wearer's body? Are they comfortable? Can they freely move their limbs?" 

Then I think about my own drafting posts and how confusing they might be for my readers. Consider: not everyone deconstructs things in their heads the way I do. Or gets excited about the conceptual relationship between a curve on a paper pattern and the distribution of flesh around someone's armpit. Maybe what I consider layman's terms (which I regularly make up) like "seam shaping" and "darting the hollows" sound to other people like I'm throwing around technical jargon, too. And remember that series on women's slopers? The one in which we converted one kind of sloper to another without ever producing an actual garment pattern at the end of it? Summa y'alls must've been, "What is this even."

So: cheat-drafting today, okay? No jargon, but we'll still discuss fit, because fit is the essence of any kind of good and useful drafting. Think of it as a short cut, an everyman's (or woman's) approach to garment making. 

A few years ago, Kate decided she liked onesie PJs, particularly the sort that doubled as an animal disguise. I believe it began as a Halloween costume idea (finally one of the more sensible styles for a Minnesotan-temperatured Halloween). You guys might remember this hilarious and charming ensemble of human-as-animal and animal-as-vegetable. 

I drafted this outfit from Kate's then-dimensions. I don't remember much about the process other than what a fun change it was to draft something that didn't require a to-the-skin fit. Obviously it had to sit well on Kate's frame without inappropriate and uncomfortable sagging or pulling, 

but it was forgiving enough to have been worn by any other similarly-sized child.

Note that the legs and sleeves end in simple hems, which are congruent with the clean lines of this outfit. Later iterations of this onesie design (which we'll see in the coming photos) swop in cuffs for hems.

Fast forward 3 years to Halloween 2018, when Kate reprised her animal onesie costume theme and asked to be a deer.

Obviously, the draft from 2015 was no longer viable, so I started from scratch. And in grand Halloween tradition, I procrastinated, so that by the time I was ready to draft the outfit, Kate was in school and unavailable for measuring.  No numbers to work with and no model to fit. Curses!

Enter cheat-drafting. At the time, Kate owned a thin store-bought unicorn onesie that she was on the brink of outgrowing: not sloper-tight, but still sufficiently close-fitting that it provided a good representation of her natural dimensions. I dragged the thing onto huge sheets of drafting paper, laboriously traced out the seams of each part (without unpicking any) and then set to adjusting the overall fit. I made it a little bigger - not only because Kate had grown since, but also because she'd requested it be suitable for accommodating cartwheels and other acrobatic acts (as deer must surely perform in their natural habitats), and the fact that it had to be worn over regular clothes. So more give in the leg-to-crotch length, as well as a roomier girth, plus cuffs at the wrists and ankles to keep the limbs from riding up when she was upside down. 

Still relatively clean lines, apart from the puddling at the ankles and wrists because of the cuffs.

Two months later, one of Kate's sisters floated the idea of another bunny suit for a Christmas gift. After all, we reasoned together, the 2015 bunny suit was too small now, but while it did fit, it was much loved, and extensively used. It would be a quick sew - I'd use the deer pattern and simply give it bunny features. 

Alas, I'd tossed out the deer draft. 

Since I usually just whip up new drafts from the kids' most current measurements whenever I need them, I seldom save paper patterns. Especially when I don't foresee making the same outfit a second time (who does that?)

Curses again.

More cheat-drafting, then - for reasons of secrecy, this time. Decided to trace the deer suit itself, since it fit. Besides, how much could a child grow in 2 months?

The child, it turns out, not so much. The pattern, on the other hand . . .  

When you cheat-draft a pattern from a previous cheat-draft, quite a bit gets lost in the translation, as it were. Note that armhole seam, for instance - already jutting beyond Kate's natural shoulder point in the deer onesie (first generation cheat-draft), it had in this bunny suit (second-generation cheat draft) slid unceremoniously down her bicep. 

Which, had I the opportunity to actually fit Kate before completing the garment, I'd have shrieked at and immediately corrected. Sadly, the first time I beheld it on Kate was on Christmas morning after she'd unwrapped it. 

And because Kate was thrilled, I forced my inner (cringing) seamstress into reticent submission and chose instead to celebrate her joy.

Better voluminous than too tight, I further rationalized. Especially for PJs.

Weep not, friends - redemption forthcometh. Read on!

Bizarre shoulders notwithstanding, I saved the paper pattern this time - a fortuitous decision because this past weekend, Kate turned 11 and announced, "For my birthday, I would like a panda suit next," as if there existed a bucket list of animal outfits she were checking off with each milestone celebration.

I gleefully obliged because - whoo hoo - I had the pattern all ready to lay out!

Until I googled "panda" and observed the distinct black and white color blocking on a panda's body. Apparently, while its limbs are black against an otherwise white torso, the black of its arms continues over its shoulders and into a band over its upper back. 

Raglan sleeves it was, then. The original set-in sleeves, with their mysteriously-migrating sleeve caps, needed a major overhaul anyway.

A quick armscye conversion later, we had those black panda arms-and-shoulders.

And here is Kate in her panda onesie. Again, no opportunity to fit her beforehand because it was a secret gift. And while it's still voluminous,

(the better to represent the fullness of real-life panda bodies, one might say)

it's all good for the obligatory calisthenics.

And now you know the story behind that panda face - 

and its moral: while it is liberatingly okay and sometimes even advantageous to cheat-draft, repeated and cascading cheat-drafting is like taking a photo of a photo of a photo: if you squint hard enough, you might just about make out what the original looked like.

Still, as there is no doubt that this is merely one of many more animals Kate will add to her list, I declare this method adequate and - because I saved that pattern - time-saving :) 

Deer & Fawn

Kate and Bunny were a deer family this year for Halloween. 

In recent years, Kate has had me make Bunny a costume that coordinates with her own. In 2015, Kate was a rabbit and Bunny was a carrot. In 2016, Kate was a fairy and Bunny was an elf. Last year, Kate was Ginny Weasley (from Harry Potter) and Bunny was some kind of personal pet. Four years later, I think I've figured it out: if Bunny has a costume, then Bunny can accompany Kate to any and all Halloween-related activities, including the fall parties at school. Could it be?

Kate, grinning smugly, confirmed that yes, it was exactly so.

Kate's deer costume (not reindeer, she cautioned me when we were designing it together) was simple enough to make. It's essentially a sleeper PJ thing, like her rabbit suit and many other animal-themed onesies that are found in stores like Target and Walmart. But where her rabbit had sleeves and legs that ended in simple hems, Kate wanted elasticized cuffs for this deer suit. She explained that they kept the fabric from riding up her limbs, which was very helpful for cartwheels and tumbles. Which, apparently, deer do a lot of.

The hood is the only part of the outfit that's lined - mostly for structure so that it doesn't degenerate into floppiness. There are stuffed antlers and fuzz-lined ears that insert in seams in the hood construction. The rest of the outfit is a single layer of fleece, and because fleece doesn't fray, I didn't even bother to serge the SA on the inside.

The outfit has a central front zipper that runs through the furry belly panel (this is simply a large applique patch).

Here is Bunny's outfit: also a zip-up onesie suit. The antlers and ears are edge-stitched felt rather than stuffed fleece - for doll-sized features, I try to avoid creating structures that must be sewn WS-out and whose SA then clog up the sharp points and other narrow parts of the finished shapes when turned RS-out.

A few more differences: one, Bunny's suit has raglan sleeves. Reason: Bunny has indistinct shoulders, which make it challenging to determine the position of shoulder seams so as to set in regular sleeves. Also, in place of cuffs, the sleeves and legs end in enclosed "mittens". They saved me the effort of turning hems, and it's not as if Bunny needs to actually use her hands and feet. 

And finally, Bunny's hood is differently-shaped, entirely because Bunny's head is much flatter dorso-ventrally than a human head. This is a trivial observation, I know, but I wanted to share that weird fact so we understand that not all hoods are sewn the same way. If you are so inclined, look at the hoods on the various coats and sweaters in your (and your kids') closet(s): some are simply two pieces (left and right) sewn together along a central seam; some are three longitudinal panels (symmetrical left and right pieces connected by a central 'gusset') which hug the back of the head more closely; some, like Kate's and Bunny's here, are a combination of transverse and longitudinal seams that allow inserts like horns and ears and other anterior features, and design elements like drawstrings and snaps.

Here is the back view: both suits have a little tail that attaches in a shallow dart (not a seam) in the fabric itself.

So deer and fawn this year. I can't wait to find out what Kate will pick for herself (and Bunny) next Halloween!

Air Dancer

Emily was an air dancer for Halloween this year. Air dancers, sometimes called tube men, are those funny inflatable tubes with faces and streamers which stand outside stores and other establishments and wiggle in the wind. My kids used to call them the asparagus men and would exclaim in glee whenever we spotted them at car dealerships and strip malls. 

While I haven't actually examined an air dancer to determine how it works, I believe there is a kind of fan in its base that blows air upward, filling the tube and making it shimmy and flap its streamers. The combined visual effect is excellent for attracting attention.

It's well and good for an advertising prop standing in one spot, but a little more challenging when one has intends to walk around the neighborhood encased in what is essentially a fabric cigar. Also, one also needs a peephole through which to look, so as not to walk into a trashcan, parked cars, other neighbors, or anything else one might inadvertently encounter while candy-gathering in the dark. 

Then there was the issue of the tube not collapsing into itself as one moved around in it. Fabric, after all, clings and drapes (not to mention falls down). And while actual air dancers have a stream of air to help the walls stay apart and aloft, we really didn't care for our hindquarters being enthusiastically ventilated by a fan on a cold pre-winter night. As we walked around the neighborhood. In what was essentially an enlarged drinking straw rendered in the cheapest fabric we could find.

Thus, we decided: why fight gravity when we could harness it to our advantage?

Behold: The Cardboard Headdress.

This is, in essence, a helmet-crown hybrid. The lower hemispherical section is the helmet, which sits on Emily's head. The flat upper platform is the crown, raised above the helmet by dowels. 

This extra elevation served two purposes. One, to elongate the tube further so that the height-width ratio even more closely  approached that of a real air dancer. Two, to raise its top by enough distance to turn the air dancer's mouth into a peephole for Emily's eyes.

And it is from this flat platform that the entire fabric tube (with a closed circular top) hangs. Not unlike a fitted tablecloth for a disproportionately tall table.

Even without additional structural reinforcement, the fabric cylinder kept its shape quite well. However, we added a couple solid rings in the lower region around Emily's legs. In the same way that a hoop skirt works, these kept the cylinder open so she could walk without kicking the fabric out in front of her. I sewed two narrow channels all around the inside of the tube, then bought dollar-store glowsticks and connected them into a couple of large rings to push into the channels. 

The main structure thus accomplished, we finished off the costume with simple details. We put the tube on Emily, marked the position of her eyes, cut out the  air dancer's mouth and sewed black athletic mesh fabric over the opening. We also cut out armholes and Emily wore a coordinating fleece sweater for instant arms. Much easier than trying to fit sleeves, we thought. The streamers are fabric strips glued onto short sticks that Emily is holding.

You can see the streamer-sticks in her hands in this next photo. They're like mini twirling-ribbon-sticks.

This was one of the quickest costumes to make, and the funniest!