As promised, I am going to talk about my "Mortimer the Monkey" sample garment that I used in a recent class. I used Bonnie Blue Designs' Riley pattern (size 3) with a few modifications that I will talk about in just a minute. But first - when I began working on this outfit, I tossed around several ideas on what to have Mortimer hanging from. I wanted to create something that I hadn’t designed before. That’s when I came up with the idea to have him hanging from the letter “O” and to embroider “Olivia” on top of the letter. I drew the "O" and then started looking through my stash of embroidery fonts and didn't find the exact one I was looking for - of course! So I set off to search on the web and found the "Love" font on this wonderful site, called Embroidery Font Shop.
Once I figured out this part of the outfit, I measured the total length of the letter with the monkey hanging from it. My top was not long enough to accommodate this, so I added three inches to the length of the top. The front pattern piece was a cinch, but the back pattern was a little more tricky since this top has a curved hem at the center back. To adjust the back length and still have the curve, I lined up the center back edge of the original pattern and shifted the pattern down on this line until the bottom edge matched up with my desired length. I then used the pattern's original curve to draw out my curved hem on my longer pattern piece.
The pattern has the option of having a single or double ruffle for the shoulder ruffles, but a single ruffle for the bottom edge of the top and pants. I thought that it would be a nice touch and add more color interest if I added a double ruffle to these edges also. The original ruffle is cut 4" wide and folded in half lengthwise to end up with a 2" ruffle. I cut my second ruffle 7" wide and when folded in half lengthwise, it gave me a 3.5" ruffle. I layered these two ruffles on top of each other and gathered them as one piece. For the pants legs, it took my 4 tries before I had the length of the ruffle short enough to gather down to fit the leg. Here's my formula for this: I reduced my length by half. For example, I made a size 3, which called for 76" of fabric for each leg. Instead, I used 38" on each leg. However, for the bottom edge of the top, I did not have to make any modifications to the length of the ruffle.
Finally, I really liked the look of the ruffles when they curved into the center back of the top. So I decided to have the ruffle edges meet at the center front edge of each of the pants legs; then I placed a 2" covered button at this point. To have the top ruffle and the pant leg ruffles curved as in the original pattern, I had to draft a new Ruffle Cutting Guide.
