My 9.5 year old has reached this awkward age when it comes to buying clothes.
I can no longer buy her stuff from the kids range. My favourite place to buy kids clothes is from Cotton On kids, I love how fun and crazy their designs are.
Unfortunately their teen section “free” is the opposite of fun and crazy. It is depressingly boring and overpriced. I feel like the transition is too steep. She is not yet a teenager, she wants to wear fun stuff too… her mother wants her to wear fun stuff too!
The T-shirst are mostly white with prints.
The stuff with colours are more somber and sparse.
Everything is more expensive while the fabric looks cheaper.
And I’ve been looking at many different stores. We just came back from Aussie and the situation is similar.
Anyway, long winded way for me to say that I thought I’d sew her something for CNY. (her sister has a lovely maroon coloured dress, bought in Aussie, it’s not fair!)
And here is the result:
Only after I was done with it did I realise that it looks like a nightgown. Sigh. I’m working on another one. Same design, bolder colour.
On another note, I got the pattern from a Japanese dress making book. I love getting these from the library. They include the pattern and give very good instructions (I like them much better than the American dress making books). The clothes in the Japanese books are usually very simple, I usually add embellishments, like piping, or ric rac to fancy it up a bit.
Here is my second attempt.
Dearest Sultana 
Very cute! And such a good idea to get pattern books from the library. I might start doing that!