megan nielsen design diary

My goodness this child is growing up so quickly, and every time I look at a photo of her I’m suddenly struck by it all over again.

These photos were taken earlier in the year when we went on a wonderful family holiday down south to Margaret River, and spent a lovely week at a beautiful holiday house in the bushland that was basically a kids dream spot with a natural bush yard full of swings, treehouses, a trampoline and so much to explore. I can’t count how much time Bunny spent on this tire swing.

Briar dresses + Virginia leggings are such a winter wardrobe staple for Bunny and the last set I made her last year is still going strong (though if you ask me the leggings are looking a little more cropped now hehe). This year all she wanted was another set and how I could I possibly say no to such a sweetie?

This dress is made using the Mini Briar sewing pattern with a gathered skirt added to it. If you’d like to try this super easy hack yourself, you can use this tutorial we wrote recently. I used the most beautiful organic cotton jersey from Nosh Organics which I bought back when they were still shipping fabric to Australia. I’m so sad they aren’t anymore, though I do understand. I think they might be focusing more on ready to wear now? Regardless I’m so happy I hoarded this fabric back then because there was just enough to make Bunny this dress! I left the sleeve hem and skirt hem raw as I often do, just to allow me to add on a cuff or band when she gets taller and thereby get some more use out of this dress.

The leggings are made using the Mini Virginia pattern and as you can see they are the perfect length right now, so i’m not sure how long they will last. The fabric is a cotton jersey I purchased from Morrison clothings famous warehouse sale, and it’s been well used in our family and even in some of my pattern samples. That has unfortunately justified my fabric stashing and led me to believe it’s a super great idea when i buy 5m of pink jersey with no plan haha.

I just love how this whole outfit turned out, but mostly I love how much my girl loves wearing it.

Meet Birdie’s favourite dress! Sometimes I will make my kids something and magically by complete accident I have created their dream garment. This is that dress for Birdie. She has worn this so much in the last year, we even had to layer it over long tees and leggings during winter because she just wouldn’t stop wearing it. Apparently when you wear this dress it’s very important that you only do up the very top button of your cardigan so that everyone can still see the Birds ;)

I originally made this dress for her at the very end of last year when we were working on the the Mini Eucalypt pattern and I was having a bit of fun hacking the pattern in different ways.

This is probably my favourite Mini Eucalypt (or Eucalypt) hack because it’s so ridiculously fast and easy to add a simple gathered skirt. If you’d like to create something similar you can try our tutorial here.

For this dress i used Ellie Whittaker’s gorgeous Seabirds cotton sateen. I love this print so much that I ended up making Bunny a matching dress (is there anything cuter than sisters in matching clothing?!) and Buddy a pair of pajama shorts.

I can see that I’m going to have to make a lot more of these Mini Eucalypt hacked dresses in different prints because they twirl incredibly well, and when you are five the ONLY thing that matters is twirlability ;)