Poppy & Jazz: Dandelion Dungarees

Sew Over It have a fab range of baby clothes called Poppy & Jazz. I’d say the Dandelion Dungarees are the most impressive looking of the range. They’re reversible, using two knit fabrics, and fasten with snaps. There are lots of adorable looking sets on Instagram & I really wanted to make some.

Sewing for your baby, while still pregnant, is really fun although feels a little scary as you have no idea what your baby will be like. You wonder what colours will suit them? What style will you like them to wear? What will be most practical for you? As I didn’t know whether I was having a boy or girl, I also had to make sure I’d be happy for them to wear the clothes whatever their gender.

Thankfully, I absolutely love these on my gorgeous girl, and am very happy with them. As you can see, she’s pretty impressed with them too. They’re made up in the 3-6 months size – she’s quite tall and these fit her well.

The two fabrics I used are quite different – the yellow stripes is an organic cotton from Fabworks, and is pretty stable with not too much stretch. The bunny print is a more stretchy terry like fabric that was gifted to me by Minerva in return for a blog post on their site. In all honesty, I prefer the yellow stripes in this pattern, and think the stable knit works better than the terry (the terry was much better for the Tangerine trousers I made from Poppy and Jazz).

I enjoyed making these, although it took longer than I expected. I really struggled with ‘bagging out’ the leg, and ended up using a tutorial from Tilly to understand exactly what I needed to do. I also took forever to get around to hand stitching the crotch area, but it’s necessary to do it by hand to keep that invisible feel with the two fabrics.

I used plastic snaps from the prym ‘Love’ range on the dungarees. They were super easy to insert using the Prym pliers. The snaps are however a little difficult to undo as they’re so strong, and so I think I’ll use metal snaps made specifically for jersey knits next time. I think it’d be better if the dungarees used poppers along the crotch too – as many of these types of clothes do. I understand though that it’d probably be pretty complex to sew up because of the double layer of fabric, and that’s why they don’t. It’s not too difficult to pull them on and off when changing, just a bit of extra faff.

I made these exclusively on the sewing machine. I’ve still not fully mastered sewing with knits, so there are some minor issues like stretched out topstitching, but nothing too severe. They took very little fabric to make – I managed three patterns from the Poppy and Jazz range with one metre of fabric. As they’re reversible, I’d suggest one side in a fun print and the other side more muted, but that’s just me!

There will be a next time for these dungarees. I’ll use metal snaps, stable knit fabrics and choose my fabrics based on her style. For now though, we’ll enjoy wearing and playing in these for the few more weeks of wear she has left in them.