Many people, when first learning to sew, are shocked by the price of fabric. This is especially true for those choosing to sew with stretch as opposed to woven. Now, I know a lot of beginners will choose to start out by purchasing fabrics from stores like Pound A Metre, and others will buy items from the charity shop to practice on, but what if you really want to buy the pretty jersey fabric you’ve had your eye on for a while and can’t stop thinking about?
The good news is that, if you’re careful, you can actually get quite a few items of clothing from one metre of fabric. To clarify, I am purely talking about baby and children’s clothes here as you’d struggle to make something for an adult I think. Over the weekend, I set to work on one metre of cotton jersey fabric I purchased from Myfabrics for £10.95. I managed to get four items of clothing from it for my newborn and my two year old. The results are below.
Items 1 and 2: Waves and Wild Four Seasons, and Brindille & Twig Flutter Tee – Both in Age 2-3 Years
When starting out with a small amount of fabric, I always find it’s best to create the biggest pieces first – in my case this was the items in age 2-3. I originally bought this fabric to make my two year old some pyjamas, and for these, my favourite patterns are the Waves and Wild Four Seasons and the Brindille & Twig Flutter Tee. I made the long sleeved version of the tee but omitted the flutters. The Four Seasons also tend to be a bit too long for my daughter, so, on these, I omitted the cuffs and hemmed them instead.
Item 3: Waves and Wild Over It Alls in 0-3 Months
The third item of clothing I decided to make was a pair of Waves and Wild Over It All’s in size 0-3 months. As you can see from the photo, I did need to use some scrap plain fabric for the lining, and I also opted to use ribbing for the cuffs. Although I did have enough of the patterned fabric to cut out some cuffs in this size, ribbing is so much easier to sew on the baby sizes. The only other items I needed to make these were some KAM snaps and some interfacing. This is going to make a great Christmas present for my new nephew, and technically only cost around £3 (plus an hour of my time) to make.
Item 4: Waves and Wild Harem Pants in 0-3 Months
Finally, the last item I made was a pair of Waves and Wild Harem Pants for my newborn. These don’t require much fabric at all and so are ideal for those times when you want to use up scraps. As you can see from the photo above, I even opted to make the tiny little cuffs with the patterned fabric (which was fun to sew, I can tell you).
So, aside from the lining for the Over It All’s all four of the above outfits were made fully with one metre of fabric. The fabric was your standard width too. I hope this post goes to show that you can actually monetarily make cute clothes for your kids for cheaper than you can buy them on the high street. However, obviously your time is valuable too and I haven’t factored that in to the cost. All in all, these items took me about four hours to make on Sunday afternoon.
Why not set yourself a challenge of seeing how much you can get from a metre of fabric? I’d love to see how you get on in the comments.
