From a 1928 Singer sewing guide published in Great Britain.

DO NOT OVERTRIM
The keynote of children’s dress should be simplicity, and as a guide for trimming a girl’s frock, if the bodice is embroidered or trimmed with lace, let the skirt be plain, beyond perhaps a few tucks above the hem.  A pleated skirt should have a plain little bodice, with only neck and edge of sleeve bindings for trimmings.  Flower designs and printed fabrics need very little trimming and if a bias binding be used it should be of a plain coloured material to match the ground or one prominent colour in the design.

Some ideas never change. (Thanks to April for sharing this.)

I’ve been dreading this blog post because it means we’ve come to the end of my Principles of Fabric Selection series. But I know many of you have been waiting to hear what I have to say on this topic, so here we go.

Juvenile prints are a subset of the larger print category known as conversational prints, or prints with pictures in them. They are intended to appeal to a young person and often feature animals or toys. Juvenile prints are cute and appealing and seem to be frequently used by home seamstresses, maybe because they are so different from prints typically found in ready-made clothing.

I like juvenile prints. I just don’t like them to be very juvenile. I like little robots and flowers and animals and things as long as there’s some degree of sophistication to them. (There’s that word–sophisticated–again.)

The Japanese fabric companies seem to handle this well. They print on unbleached linen or on a solid background. The prints are small and spare with lots of empty space around the images. And in general the prints aren’t powder pink, baby blue, or filled with loads of vibrant primary colors that compete with each other for your attention.

I also like Heather Ross’s designs (disclosure: Heather is a friend in addition to being a talented illustrator and designer) because although they’re filled with brilliant colors, the palettes are sophisticated (i.e., not just primary colors) and the images are a little quirky rather than being saccharine sweet. Just like Heather. (Just kidding, Heather. Or maybe you would take that as a compliment….)

So let’s say you fall in love with a particular juvenile print and really want to use it. What’s the best way to sew clothing that doesn’t overpower the child or overwhelm the viewer? Well, all those other principles of fabric selection we’ve already discussed can help. You might pick a solid or neutral color to pair with the print to help tone it down a bit, or find a small supporting print from another fabric collection that enhances it. Here are a few examples from the Oliver + S Flickr group that I thought handled juvenile prints especially well.

This owl print is used in just a small quantity and, paired with the gray solid, provides a nice touch of whimsy that doesn’t overpower.

Heather’s matryoshka dolls are cute on a brown ground, and I love the black and white gingham ribbon at the hem of this Lazy Days skirt. Very sophisticated.

While this Japanese print might otherwise overwhelm, I think this dress is successful because there is plenty of white space around around the characters, and the white bib with elegant brown buttons helps to frame her darling little face. (Note that this print definitely works best on younger children like this little sweetie!)

Here is another Japanese print that’s been paired with a red and white gingham for great effect. Cute, right?

This is a subtle juvenile print on an unbleached linen/cotton ground. (Oh, those fabulous Japanese fabric companies!) I love how this one is paired with a subtle neutral-patterned print on top, and the red piping and buttons give this Tea Party Playsuit its pop of color while tying the prints together. It’s very successful.

Plenty of white space between these Heather Ross bicycles, and I love the way the piping continues the small-scale pattern from the dress yoke. This is really a wonderful dress.

Using this Heather Ross print for the entire dress would not have occurred to me, and I think it’s especially successful because of the solid piping. I really love this one.

This preppy whale print verges on overwhelming, but the small size of the skirt combined with the ric-rac trimmed gingham pockets somehow rescues it, and I love it for that. This is such a fun summer skirt that could be worn with a simple white top and red sandals.

I really like how the dark red yoke of this Tea Party Sundress picks up the tiny bits of red in the print.

The playful elephant print looks great because it’s limited to two colors. I like the combination of a fun print with the more grown-up Sunday Brunch jacket.

And by the way, this principle does not apply to PJs. When it comes to sleepwear, anything goes!

Next time I do a series of principles like this, remind me to list fewer principles! I feel like we’ve already addressed this principle in the course of covering some of the others, so I’ll make this a quick post.

As I’ve mentioned before, I really like the refreshing look of tonal and two-color prints right now. They’re easy on the eye, especially with the amount of color that has been prevalent in the market in recent years. In the Flickr group, I was able to find several great examples of how you have used tonal and two color prints in your Oliver + S outfits, and I’ll highlight some of my favorites here. I hope you enjoy seeing them as much as I did.

Black and white in a subtle combination (if there’s ever been such a thing as subtle black and white!) make a really elegant but age-appropriate Sunday Brunch Jacket and Skirt.

This Tea Party Dress has more than two colors, but the color palette is tight: brown, gold and shades of blue. This qualifies as tonal in my book. I think this dress is fantastically successful and understated while remaining playful and interesting:

Here is a 2 + 2 Blouse in a really wonderful red and white print from Valori Wells‘s Del Hi collection. I love how simple and clean this print looks.

Here is another two-color print with red and white. This Tea Party Sundress looks great with the addition of a third color, since it’s still clean and not overwhelming.

Yellow and white looks fresh and exuberant, especially for spring and summer. This trendy jacquard-inspired print (another traditional print that’s been updated for today) on a Puppet Show Tunic looks clean and youthful while remaining subtle and not overwhelming.

I like the neutral, muted tones of the print on this Bubble Dress. These colors are great for winter or summer, I think.

And since the next (and last!) principle of fabric selection discusses juvenile prints, I thought it would be nice to include this tonal School Days Raincoat as a teaser. See the little pigs on the print? I love how subtle and whimsical they are.

When you read the words “traditional print,” do you think boring, dark, and dull?

Actually, a lot of contemporary prints are based on traditional prints, and they aren’t necessarily boring or dull at all. In fact many designers start their creative process by taking a traditional print and altering it in some subtle way. These updated versions of classic prints make great fabrics for garment sewing because they tend to be sophisticated and understated. As a result, they allow you to see the child before the outfit.

I thought it would be fun to show you a few traditional prints, updated to look current and new for today, that work especially well for children’s clothing. As with the other posts in this series, all photos come from the Oliver + S Flickr group. Click on the hyperlinked text in the description of the garment to see the original Flickr photo and to leave feedback for the talented seamstresses who created them.

Polka dots have been around forever, right? Personally, I never get tired of them. Today polka dots are printed in a variety of scales and colors that look fresh, young, and contemporary. I like the small dot in this 2+2 blouse, combined with the printed plaid. (Note that the plaid is also a traditional pattern, and this one is printed to look like it’s cut on bias, which is especially fun!) Polka dots are easy to mix with other prints as you can see from this photo:

Polka dots can also look good on their own, as you can see from this classic Lazy Days Skirt:

Polka dots can be re-designed, too, like this dot with an outline. Nice for a summery-feeling Birthday Party Dress, yes? And notice that printed plaid tab that complements the dot.

This star print used for this Birthday Party Dress maintains the feel of a well-spaced polka dot but switches things around a bit. The print has a traditional style, reminding me of the Betsy Ross craze that happened in 1976 when the U.S. celebrated our bicentennial. But it looks completely current in large part because of all the white space between the stars. Such a fun summer dress!

Also traditional are simple, classic floral prints that are not overly bold, bright, and busy. I like the clear colors and simple designs of these two printed floral Birthday Party dresses (first and second).

Geometric patterns have been around forever, but with a little updating they can always look new and refreshing, like this Jump Rope Dress in a foulard print:

And I’ve been admiring this Lazy Days Skirt for quite a while now. The print reminds me of traditional blue and white Scandinavian (Royal Copenhagen) or Dutch Delft pottery, but the print itself is new and clean.

Classic prints, updated for today’s sensibilities, make a great choice for children’s clothing. Have examples of your own work with prints of this type? By all means, upload them to the Flickr group for all to see.

Regarding our last post about the principles of fabric selection, one commenter asked an excellent question:

“In all of the examples you’ve chosen, the solid is at the top and the print is on the bottom. Do you think it’s necessary to separate the print from the face with a solid, or can it work with the print on the bodice and a solid skirt?”

I think the placement of the print and solid can absolutely be reversed. Here are two examples of samples we’ve made in which the pattern is on top and the solid is on the bottom.

I think it’s really a matter of balance. A very busy print might not feel right up close to the face, especially in a large area. But a tonal or softer print would certainly be fine.

Proportion of a garment or outfit can also play heavily into your choice of where to use a print, too. For example, the Puppet Show Tunic and the Tea Party Sundress both have yokes with an empire waist (fashion trivia: yes, it really is pronounced om-peer), where the smaller area at the yoke might work nicely with a busy or oversized print and the rest of the garment either solid or a softer tonal print.

I’ll have an example of this for you shortly; I’m taking a project along on our Vermont sewing workshop this weekend and will show it to you shortly after I return. See you next week!