Kid Sewing with a Teen

My 13 year old niece, Isabella, came to visit in July. She is the niece who is interested in sewing, so she wanted to sew a dress while she was here. She researched patterns on-line and chose a Burdastyle magazine pattern from June, 2016. A very cute, vintage style dress suitable for a cotton fabric. That issue just happened to be in my 10-plus year Burda collection, so I traced out her size (based on her measurements) and she bought what we hoped would be a suitable fabric from Hart's online.

And here is the result! We went from cutting out to mostly finished dress in just the few days she was with us. And that was worked in around a bunch of sightseeing and dinners out!

Here is the photo-shoot of the pattern from 2016. Cute, am I right? And not too challenging, I thought.

But, sadly, I didn't look at the pattern as closely as I should have. Take a look at the line drawing. See those inset corners that do most of the bust shaping? Not the kind of thing that you want to spring on an eager and interested young sewist. 

Isabella wasn't phased though. She's an extraordinarily neat and careful worker.

By the time she had to pack up to return to Chicago we were able to finish everything except for hemming and closing the straps at the shoulder.

If memory serves, this is the third dress that she and I have sewn together. Each one was a Burdastyle pattern. The first two were knits. This is her first woven dress, with darts and a side zipper and everything. Even a lined bodice!

Dress #1, from 2018 (8 years old!)

Dress #2 from 2022

And her most current project. She's looking forward to getting her own sewing machine in the near future. Nothing will stop her, I'm sure!

My pattern review is on PatternReview.com here.