Mission: Secret Squirrel and a Pattern Review Thrown In

 Have you heard about Secret Squirrel? Well if not, go check out what he is all about.  Basically, he's a world traveler who gets to visit various lucky bloggers and give out secret missions(5 acorns). Sounds kind of fun right? Well being the geography buff that I am and loving a good challenge to tie things together, I've been meaning to sew along for the past couple of months. But as always, life happens and my ideas never quite make it out of my head.  

This month however was different, because each of the things I envisioned were things I already had plans to make. Convenient, nah(that would be German for 'Right"...it's getting late here and I'm a little loopy)?

First up let me tell you the "Acorns":

Those would be 1. Where the Wild Things Are, 2. Blue, 3. David Bowie, 4. Pockets and 5. Great Britain.

Now on to my creations...you probably can't see them all that well in the lousy photos, but it was dark and I haven't figured out the camera's flash. While it doesn't do the outfit justice, I think the yellow glow effect looks kind of cool.

Here they are:

1. Furry vest

2. Blue button on the pants and a blue zipper as well(I only had a navy blue 4" zipper so this was by default)

3. Ruffly white shirt...think of the movie Labyrinth. That's the first thing that came to mind when I thought of David Bowie.

4. Pockets on the pants with...

5. A British flag sewn on to them.

And here's the cool thing, the pants I had already lined up to review, the vest was from the dress pattern that I just reviewed and I promised to make Sophia a furry one from it and the white shirt she needed for an upcoming chorus concert. The only thing I really had to think about was how to add Great Britain and on the black stretch denim I think the flag looks totally trendy.

So how did I do with Secret Squirrel's mission?

 The shirt is a completely made up pattern and the ruffles were made from circles. I'm trying to decide if the vest even warrants a review...it was so easy and simple. I used the vest pattern from Simplicity 1787.

As for the pants (you can see the blue in the button) here's the run down:

Pattern: Burda kids 9500

Again, it's one I picked up at JoAnn's a little while back because Sophia wanted some skinny jeans. It comes in sizes 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13jun and 14jun. I'm assuming the 'jun' means junior and I'm not sure how that changes the sizing by adding that. I sewed them up in a size 10. 

Special Materials: You'll need a 4" zipper, button and some interfacing and the fabric called for is stretch blend fabrics. I used a stretch blend denim with some spandex in it. It was a dream to sew with...stretchy like a knit but sewed like denim.

Skill level: I would say intermediate. Burda is not heavy on the pictures or explanations when it comes to their directions. I think they assume you know a lot going into a pattern like this. That being said, I think you could figure this one out even if you've never sewn a zipper fly before.

I pretty much stuck to the pattern...until I realized it was not fitting well. Which leads me to the good, bad and ugly.

Good: A great classic of a pattern with a great skinny jean look.

Bad: My legs were kind of wonky looking and were twisting around...probably my fault, but I've noticed that some of my store bought skinny jeans do this, so maybe it's a skinny jeans problem. Any thoughts? Also a bad, Burda has you basting EVERYTHING before practically each step...I skipped this a lot.

Ugly: The rise is really too low in the back and the rear end didn't fit quite right. I ended up taking the back seam in by another inch to help it fit better. If I were to make this again, which I will despite this all, I will add a couple of inches to either the back yoke or back leg pieces to bring the back up a little bit and I will take off some from the width.

 Overall I'll give it and 1/2. I gave it the half because I think it is such a classic pattern and it really wasn't that hard to put together.