Topkids Archives - Handmade by Carolyn

Arthur’s backpack

27/12/2021 3:12 pm \ 1 Comment \ Carolyn

I also made a back pack for Arthur, for Christmas …

I’ve made this pattern a couple of times before, for my own children, and Tim particularly loved his backpack when he was tiny. He wore it all the time and would toddle about the house with it on his back, with a few precious toys stashed inside… it was very cute! and he still has it today. It was Tim who suggested one for Arthur too.

Fortunately I still have all my Topkids magazines, including the one the pattern was in! I still flick through them sometimes, and while some of the patterns might be considered a tiny bit dated, especially some of the ones for older kids; there are still plenty of cute ones in there. I’m never throwing them out! Love my Topkids magazines!

I had the dark grey denim in my stash already, and also the red check cotton I used for lining throughout… the latter given to me by Mum when she cleaned out her stash.

I hand drew the letters for his name… transferred them to interfered cotton, cut them out, and stitched them to the pocket piece with narrow, closely spaced zig-zag stitches. I had the velcro, wadding, D-rings and little swivel clip for closure already, but had to buy all the other pieces for the backpack; the red webbing, stops for the straps, and cording. Still though, it’s been amazing to me what I do have in my stash already and am capable of finally putting to good use!

If you’d like to see Tim’s own backpack, I blogged about his yonks ago here, back in the early days of my blog. He still has it today and loves it! This is so heartwarming to me, and I just hope Arthur loves and enjoys using and wearing his own backpack too. If I get a nice picture of Arthur wearing his own backpack I will certainly update here, and put it in 🙂

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: arthur, backpack, bag, Tim, Topkids

Weddings, parties, and other special events…

27/08/2011 4:23 am \ 11 Comments \ Carolyn

… seem to be the only times we ever took any photos of our family. So thank goodness for those!
I didn’t do a heck of a lot of sewing when I had three tiny children. I do have an excuse. I had three tiny children…
But I did manage to churn out a few little things. Oh including, come to think of it, the quilts for all our beds. They were major. So I guess I still got a lot done.
Here are some other things:
Book Week wasn’t a big thing when my children were little like it seems to be now. But I recall a few sporadic requirements for costumes. I didn’t make this fabulous dog costume, loaned from a friend, but I did make the little top and pinafore that my grubby little daughter is wearing in the background. Another TopKids pattern.

Here on the left is an outfit made just for Sam (see, he didn’t miss out!), a tartan button-up shirt and some navy corduroy jeans with some of the tartan using in the detailing, to make it a co-ordinating “outfit”. I was into “outfits” for my kids back then, and always made tops and bottoms to match each other. Both were using TopKids patterns.

Following are three little dresses I made for my daughter, using the same Simplicity pattern, a very nice design which had a button-up front bodice, and a sash inserted in the side seams to cinch in the waist with a lovely big bow at the back. Or a rough knot of some kind, depending on how busy her mother was that morning…

I customised the pink gingham version with lace edged pockets. It was one of my favourite dresses for her at this time.

The blue one here had gold stars printed on the fabric, and I sewed on a single star shaped button at the top, like a brooch. In this picture, her first day at pre-school, she is standing beside a white wooden chair that Craig made, and I painted. It was made of jarrah, so it weighed a tonne!

And my brother and sister-in-law’s wedding… I made the two bridesmaids dresses and the flower girls dress. And yes, now I do wonder at my own sanity at attempting this feat when I had all those little children underfoot at home… but I managed it! (Sorry about the grainy picture, but this is the only one I have of all three of us)

(This isn’t necessarily illustrating any extra in the way of handmade-ness, but I included it because I just really love this picture. This is my wonderful family, including my parents, my two brothers and my two sisters-in-law)

The two bridesmaids dresses were from a Vogue pattern, and had boned bodices, with a lovely and very flattering folded portrait neckline. I hand-sewed on all that gold lace, and miraculously got the motifs to fit perfectly on the two different sizes so I would not have to chop any in half. Cassie’s little flower girl dress was adorable, and had a miniature sweetheart neckline, big puffy sleeves, cascading ruffles down the back of the skirt and a big bow tied in the small of her back. Sigh… both my dress and hers have been passed on, and I only have C’s dress (the other bridesmaid), which is pictured below. It is a bigger size than Bessie who is modelling it here, thus necessitating Cassie’s hand you can see there unobtrusively pulling it in at the back to illustrate what it actually looks like when it fits the wearer.
Of course now I look at it and see multitude little imperfections, but at the time I was pretty darn proud of myself.

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: ancient history, bridesmaids, Cassie, childrens, dress, Sam, Tim, Topkids

Oh, this old thing…

17/08/2011 11:16 am \ 18 Comments \ Carolyn

… and a few more old creations. (Don’t worry, these are drawing to an inevitable endpoint, as I go forwards through time and eventually wind up at “now”, at which point these posts will finish and you will be seeing new stuff only… It’s just that one of the goals I set myself was to document as much as I could of my handmade things in this blog, so bear with me here. This is a finite process…)
This is our little family (Sam on the way) in more stuff I made; Tim’s (Topkids) overall has been seen before here. I made my dress, completely inspired by the dress (below) in Beetlejuice, do you remember this? I basically fell in love with this loose long floral dress and set out to make myself close to an exact copy of it for myself. Fortuitously it worked well as a maternity dress too. I felt lucky that dropped waist blouse-y Laura Ashley numbers were quite fashionable during the years I was producing children…
The blue floral dress with lace trim that Cassie is wearing is a TopKids pattern.

source

Below is a four generation picture; my grandmother, mother, Cassie and me. Cassie is wearing a dress made to the same pattern as the blue one above. It is interesting how the very different fabrics used give each dress a completely different feel; this one seems kinda “smart” while the floral and lace above give a far more “pretty and dressy enough for a party” feel, no? Perhaps this tiny set of two dresses makes up another miniature rogue’s gallery (like yesterday), seeing the different looks you can get from one pattern by varying minor details; in this case the fabric.

This little romper is literally the only thing that I made for my own children and passed on to other little relatives that was returned to me (!) but unfortunately without the little blouse I had made to go with it. It had a really cute pink blouse to wear underneath, with a Peter Pan collar and full batwing sleeves gathered into elasticated wrists. The little floral romper here has a zip up the centre front and tabs with pearl snaps on the pockets and shoulder straps. From TopKids patterns.

Below is a picture of Tim and Cassie on Tim’s fourth birthday (Sam is around by now, but is not in this picture!) Cassie is wearing a dress that was truly one of my favourites, out of all that I had made for her! It was of a lovely floral brushed cotton in very pretty shades of blue, green and violet, and had a sailor collar of soft ivory brushed cotton, around which I topstitched on a pale blue satin ribbon edging to enhance the sailor-y look. I loved seeing her in this dress…. she looks so pretty, doesn’t she?

Below; I am with Tim and a fairly brand new Sam in a baby sling… Tim is wearing a red-and-white fair isle jumper knitted by my Mum, and I am wearing a blue, turquoise, red and pink cardigan with black and white geckoes that I knitted from a pattern, the details of which are unknown, sorry. It is knitted entirely in the intarsia method, with each section of colour in each row, in individual balls (ie, that is 15 different balls for some rows…), and is possibly the most complex thing I have ever knitted. Each row of the pattern was different from each other row, as you can imagine. Even the two sleeves were different from each other! The main of the knitting is in stocking stitch, but the red and pink sections are in reverse stocking stitch… my modern-day me is actually pretty impressed with my olden-day more-patient me.
I am embarrassed to admit that I went on to lose all appreciation of my own time and effort, and painted the entire interior of a house while wearing this thing, which explains some tiny spots of white paint now adorning the front. Also it has gone camping with us (and I recall wearing it 24/7 including sleeping in it on one particularly cold camping trip) and it has been a bed-jacket too. I still have it, but needless to say don’t really wear it anymore. It has slightly felted, through bad washing.
(Later edit; in reply to some comments, it’s a bit hazy in my memory now but I’m pretty sure I made this before I had little kiddies underfoot… just no pictures!)

below; the wrong side, showing the intarsia method of knitting used…

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: ancient history, Cassie, childrens, knitting, Sam, Tim, Topkids

Thanks for the memories…

08/08/2011 9:17 am \ 11 Comments \ Carolyn

…and all I can say that if it wasn’t for Christmas and birthday family get-togethers I would have almost no photos of my children in the clothes I have made them… these photos are all from the albums of our extended family, since we took very few ourselves!, and please be aware that the photos I have here on my blog represent about ten percent of the clothes I actually made for my children! Of course I am disappointed that my photo taking was pretty slack in those days. Photography wasn’t really on my radar back then. Too busy taking care of my little ones and the household, no doubt. Oh, and er, fitting in a bit of sewing too, I guess!
In the Christmas gathering pictured here, Tim is wearing a little ensemble comprising a white collarless button up shirt and tartan trousers. The tartan pants have contrasting white piping in a curved insert in the side of the legs, and along each front pocket; and the shirt has tartan piping in the buttonband, plus a few tartan patches for good measure to really tie the whole outfit together.

The children’s cousin Michelle is wearing a little pink dress I had made her for a previous birthday; it had a button-up front, dropped waist, an attached white petticoat, and white sleeve cuffs and collar. In the middle picture I am wearing white shorts and a big oversized (in the best 90’s tradition) blouse, both made by me.

Cassie is wearing a little dress and a big floppy gingham hat, both made by me. The dress has smocking and embroidered grub roses on the front, and is one of the very few pieces of children’s clothing I have kept so I can include a close-up. I was pretty proud of the smocking, and I can still recall obsessing over mastering the perfect grub rose in between chatting-while-supervising, fruit-cutting and nappy-changing sessions at playgroup. The partially finished dress lived in the nappy bag so that I could be sure it accompanied us wherever we went and I could snatch a few more minutes working on it if the opportunity presented itself…
All the children’s patterns are TopKids patterns, except for Cassie’s smocked dress which was some sort of heirloom pattern, the exact details of which I have no memory.

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: ancient history, childrens, Topkids

Another trip down memory lane…

31/07/2011 8:59 am \ 6 Comments \ Carolyn

… Remember when I said I had only once before made Cassie and myself matching clothes? Well this is Cassie’s dress, that was made from the leftover scraps of a dress I had made myself. Her little dress, made using a TopKids pattern, has a white Peter Pan collar, and a miniature faux man’s tie in turquoise fabric, itself the leftovers from these shorts (so you can see how long I hang onto scraps…!) I’m sorry it’s not a very good picture, and what’s more I have no pics of my own dress in this fabric; but imagine this maroon, deep turquoise and red large-scale plaid in one of those 90’s style shirt-dresses with a high small collar, long sleeves and a big full gathered skirt. Something like the red version of this pattern at right… yes, very very very 90’s. I hope I haven’t shattered any delusions of myself as a style maven now! At least I never liked shoulder pads so never used them.

So I’ve got that going for me… (Can anyone recognise that quote?)

Tim is wearing here a little jumper here that I knitted for him using scraps of wool from other projects… rather cleverly eked out if I say so myself, so that the front, back and both sleeves had the same colours and in the same proportions! Knitters will know this is not necessarily a simple thing to achieve when you are working with scraps… It went from the dark shades of purple, blue and green at the bottom through grey, then pale blue then the palest yellow and back to navy blue at the top, and the colours were not in defined stripes but faded together in an ombre effect. I did this by knitting two colours together per row in the fair-isle knitting method.

In this picture, Tim is wearing another jumper I knitted, and I can’t recall now if it was from a pattern or if I took the embroidered teddy bear design from a cross stitch and just transposed it to a knitwear graph… yup, memory not what it used to be! Again using scraps for the teddies. Cassie is wearing a little dress I made for her using a TopKids pattern. It was in two different white and navy blue prints, one a polka dot and the other a floral. The fabric was slightly fluffy, brushed cotton, and I sewed in white piping around the collar, sleeve cuffs, the single curved breast pocket and around the dropped waistline where the buttoned-up blouse joined the skirt part of the dress. It was quite cute, no? and a nice and warm little number for winter!

And the quote? From that great 90’s cinema classic, Caddyshack.

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: ancient history, Cassie, childrens, dress, jumper, knitting, own design, Tim, Topkids

Featuring small versions of Tim and Cassie…

23/07/2011 4:40 am \ 10 Comments \ Carolyn

Whizzing back a few years now…
and here are some more of the little outfits I made for my children when they were small. These were “good” outfits, but of course I used to dress my children in good outfits on a day-to-day basis anyway, reasoning that they wouldn’t fit into them for very long! So these clothes were worn to parties, to playgroup, to picnics, as well as for playing in the sandpit at home and to the beach; anywhere. We’re not the sort of family to ever be precious about our clothes. Oh, OK then… with the exception of that Chanel style coat, I admit it.
These designs were all from TopKids magazines. I still have all nine of the magazines I bought, although none of the patterns I traced out! They were such wonderful magazines.. ooer, I’ve probably said that a few, or a dozen, times before, haven’t I? I’ve got this tendency to rave about them, sorry. Such a pity they were discontinued. I’ve never seen such great, trendy, funky, interesting little children’s patterns anywhere else since.

The dress Cassie is wearing has a few rows of smocking on the bodice and a little white Peter Pan collar, on which I hand embroidered a few flowers, stems and leaves mimicking the design in the floral. Another cute little dress that has gone, goodness knows where…
Tim’s outfit was a little short overall, of a light denim fabric and with patches of a thickish checked cotton. I was pretty proud of this, and he wore it tonnes of times, until it got holes in the bottom… That red button sewn on the front is an aeroplane.

The button-up boxy little jacket is of the same light denim fabric, and has contrasting fabric for the pocket flaps and the hoodie part of it. The contrasting fabric is printed with cheerful hippos setting sail in sailing boats.

The pictures of Cassie alone and of the two of them, were taken on her first birthday.

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: ancient history, Cassie, childrens, handcrafts, Tim, Topkids

A few more memories

11/07/2011 5:15 am \ 7 Comments \ Carolyn

Here are two more of the little outfits that I made for my children when they were little, along with some other cute outfits made by loving grandmothers…

The shorts and shirt set Tim is wearing here I made from two different blue print cottons; one striped and one spotted and with red contrasting cotton sections as well. The little dress and matching bloomers that Cassie is wearing was made by my mother, and I made my own shirt and shorts I am wearing here (first seen here)

In this second picture, Cassie is wearing a little dress I made for her, of two different floral fabrics. The skirt had sections of both floral fabrics, and the bodice was of one, and the sleeves, collar and button band were of the second fabric. The shorts, and the screen-printed and appliqued Christmas snowman Tshirt that Tim is wearing here were made by Craig’s mother. (yes, dressmaking for oneself and one’s family runs very deep in both our families!)
There is a kind of funny story behind the second picture…. Craig had brought home from work a couple of big bags of shredded paper, for me to play paper mache with the children one day. Before that day could come, they discovered it in the wardrobe and I walked in to this exact scene, shredded paper all over my children, all over the carpet, and in fact all over every available surface in the room! Of course, I couldn’t be cross because they were having so much fun, and were so happy and giggly I had to laugh too, and raced to get the camera. Hilarious! After they had extracted maximum fun from the shredded paper in that state, it took me about forty solid minutes to tidy up and vacuum the room afterward, all those tiny crinkly little miniature shreds stuck in the carpet!, but it was worth it as so much fun had been had. Not the paper mache fun that I had originally planned, but a different but equally good kind of fun!

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: ancient history, childrens, random life stuff, Topkids

A navy corduroy jacket, and a Babar jumper

25/05/2011 11:18 am \ 6 Comments \ Carolyn

Today I bring two flashbacks; two, because I don’t have very good photos of either one to warrant an individual post, and because I am trying to whizz through these old projects a little faster than I have been up until now… These items are both things I made for Tim when he was about two.
The first is a little navy blue corduroy biker-styled jacket that zipped up the front (biker-styled… for a two year old, lol!), which I toddler-ised by using contrasting red for the collar and trimmings, the pattern from a Topkids magazine. Even though Tim wore it a lot, this is the best photo I have of it…

And the second is a little jumper that I knitted using a pattern from a Women’s Weekly magazine. Babar is embroidered on the front over the knitting stitches. He wore this a lot… and I have heaps of photos of him wearing this, but these are the only ones even vaguely showing off that embroidery! The lower picture, taken at Lake Mountain in Victoria, is the first time these sandgropers had ever ever seen snow in our lives! We made a little snowman!
(translation: sandgropers = Western Australians)