Citrus Segment- PR&P Week 3

I’m so happy to have made it to week three! Thank you so much to everyone who voted. This week my collection is called Citrus Segment. When I found out the theme for this week was pairing food and fashion, I immediately thought of citrus fruits. Citrus actually grows well here in the desert and I wanted to stay true to my home.

Although I love fruit print fabrics, I wanted to think outside the box and incorporate the theme in other ways. Inspired by fashion and popular colors from the 60’s and 70’s- I created two looks, one for my eldest daughter and another for my youngest son.

My oldest daughter is 9 years old and she’s now really forming her own opinions on fashion and what she wears. I wanted to create something more mature and subtle, but that still features all of the citrus fruit details and inspiration. Those citrus details shine through a timeless dress she loves and will actually wear. 

I drafted an A line dress and used one of my most favorite fabrics, linen. It’s made from a floral print linen from Califabrics and a solid linen from my stash. (And yes, linen wrinkles but that’s the real beauty of it. It’s a gorgeous natural fiber fabric that gets better with every wash. The texture and hand is just so nice.)

This dress is based off of a vintage pattern from 1971, but I adjusted the size, construction, drafted a collar, and created a full button up back. I also color blocked the front. The idea for this solid blocked piece front is to draw from the shape of the segments when you cut into citrus.

It has a collar I drafted to resemble a slice of citrus. 

I hand embroidered the citrus segment design onto the collar. 

I love how the collar looks from all different angles.

I think it really incorporates the citrus theme into the dress in a classy way.

As seen in my other collections of week 1 and 2, I love mixing and matching vintage buttons from my stash. I used a matching orange button at the top with cute yellow buttons sewn on with the orange thread. 

A total of 10 little buttons to create this button up back. I’ve sewn several vintage children’s patterns over the years and I’ve come to love learning vintage techniques. One of the things very common with vintage children’s patterns are the deep hems on dresses. I wanted to stay true to that by including an extra deep hem.

For my son I started with a vintage woven button up collar shirt pattern. I completely re-worked it into this knit half zip collared tee. 

I used organic cotton spandex French terry in shades of pastel lime and olive green. 

The vintage pattern I used for inspiration was drafted for woven. Part of my complete overhaul of it was to adapt it for knit fabric.

It has a contrast yoke back that is topstitched at the seam.

The collar and zipper really pull in that vintage fashion vibe. (Oh and my poor boy fell while running on the blacktop earlier this day and has quite the knee wounds in these pics. He had taken his band-aids off by this time. I didn’t feel like photoshopping his scrapes, because this is real life.)

This citrus inspired tee features a pocket I stitched with the citrus segment design. My son mentioned that he loves how big this fun citrus pocket is.

His shorts are self drafted and have a relaxed fit with a gusset. I find having a gusset in my son’s shorts really help them fit better. They are made from an all cotton French terry that matches the color of the linen of big sister’s dress. 

The shorts feature a fun kangaroo pocket. I’ve used the opposite large loop side of the fabric on the kangaroo pocket to show texture and mimic citrus peel. 

This photo just completely captures my son and his funny personality. Sewing for my children is so fun and thankfully they are usually really good sports about doing our quick photo shoots. I hope you love my designs and that seeing them added some zest into your day! 😉 You can vote over at the Project Run & Play blog here. Thanks for reading and happy sewing!