Valhalla Dress

With all that is going on lately I haven't been doing a lot of sewing.   My normal sewing space is down in the basement, I have it set up with my sewing machine, my serger, my ironing board etc.  Unfortunately the other half of the room is my husbands computer room.  With him working from home now I don't feel comfortable working down there during the day so I moved my main sewing machine up to the dining room table.  Unfortunately I can't leave it set up there as people keep needing that space for other things - craft projects, science experiments, baking, board games - you know the tools of a corona virus lockdown (well they are here anyway).  Every now and then I've taken a day and spread myself out and done some sewing, but most days the machine is left on a chair in a corner.

But that's ok.  It's not that I'm not creating - nope I couldn't do that - I've just been focusing on my knitting instead.  I had some beautiful wool in 4 different colourways and I wanted to knit a sweater out of it.  I'd made about half of the bodice in one stitch when I realised that there was no way I was going to be able to finish it with the amount of yarn I had - and I had no way of getting more yarn - so I ripped it out and started again.  I sketched out a new design and then realised that it was going to require me to work with something like 15 bobbins of yarn, yikes - but hey it's keeping me busy.

But back to sewing - Most of the small amount of sewing that I've done so far has been for the kids. 

My daughter has created herself an alter ego. She's written numerous stories about her, sketched and drawn her and at all times this character - Valhalla is her name - is always wearing the same outfit.  A red dress, black knee high boots and a cropped black leather jacket.

On occasions she has also tried dressing up as her - using my black knee high boots which fit her perfectly, my black leather jacket - which fits her a lot better than it fits me these days - and my red dress which doesn't fir her at all.....

So a while ago we decided that we would have to make L her very own Valhalla dress.  We went shopping and found some fabric in the right colour and weight - a solid red in a light weight scuba fabric. Then we needed a pattern.  After consulting with L we  made a pattern out of her standard T- shirt pattern, cropped off at the waist, with a half circle skirt added onto the bottom.  One day, when she had to come with me to one of my sewing lessons, she started cutting out her dress, but then it got forgotten about and has been sitting in the sewing room ever since.  I decided that I should probably finish it off.

Since she had already cut it all out (though I did have to recut the neckband as she had not cut it on the stretch) and basted it all together, it was just a matter of going back and neatening up some seams  and serging it, plus adding the neckband.

I did add pockets to the side seams too which I had originally left out of the pattern as I didn't want to make it too difficult for her.

I didn't bother with hems on the sleeves or the bottom as this fabric really doesn't need it (and it ended up shorter than I expected to I didn't want to remove any length).

But of course it needs the knee high black boots and black leather jacket!

So here is one of her sketches of Valhalla as a hedgehog.

And now Valhalla the person!