Carnival of the Animals: Part II - The Cheetah

Mean mum that I am, I vetoed my son's suggestion of a fake fur animal onesie to wear to the theatre tonight. But, for opening night of the Carnival of the Animals he was allowed to choose any animal for his clothes. He chose the cheetah.

 The original plan was for a pair of cheetah jeans. I'd hoped they'd be subtle enough to double for everyday wear. Scouring the interwebs I found endless cheetah print fabrics that were silks or chiffons but nothing that would be hard wearing enough for boys pants.

At The Fabric Store I found a great light grey / dark grey denim and bought some, but he declared it was very obviously jaguar, not cheetah - and then gave me a lecture on the difference. OK, stash the jaguar print and get back to searching for proper cheetah fabric.

I found this cotton sateen at Spotlight and thought if he could wear bold cheetah print then why not cheetah print with a slight sheen!

The pants are the Art Museum Trousers by Oliver + S. I threw in black topstitching everywhere I could to try and make them look more like jeans and less like Hugh Hefner's pyjama pants.

I didn't think to focus on them for a photo, but you can just see on the edge of the picture above that I put little pyramid rivets at the base of the slant pockets.

The welt pockets were initially almost invisible and so I stitched around them to give them some definition. This takes a little bit of thought to prevent yourself accidentally stitching the pocket closed. The stitching needs to be done in two sections: the top horizontal line first with maybe one stitch taken into the vertical line. Tie those threads off, then start again with the pocket lifted upwards and out of the way. Now you can topstitch the sides and the bottom of the welt.

The pattern suggests just one belt loop at the back slightly offset from the centre. There is enough of the belt loop tube to create two, so I always do.

The only other modification was to line the trousers:

It would be possible to sew the lining to the waistband facing, but I didn't think of that. I basted the lining to the trousers before attaching the waistband, then finished the waistband facing with some left over bias binding that was just the right rust colour.

On a city street the pants look pretty loud and out there, but up a tree they almost do look camouflaged!

They're a straight size 7 and this is one pants pattern that definitely does not need length added, they are very generous in the leg length.

Don't ask me about the modelling. He was working it! :)

The top is the Parachute Polo again which I'd made here as part of my practice run for this outfit. Same size, same extra sleeve length.

I thought I'd done a great job turning the collar and rolling it so that the upper collar was slightly over the under collar, but then when I topstitched it it all seemed to want to curl back up. The perfect collar really does need two separate pattern pieces for the under and upper collars but I would hardly be bothered with that for a kid's polo.

Like I said, don't ask, I just don't know! :)

I really like this polo as the placket can be mostly hidden which is a nice point of difference to my own polo experiment. I'm happy to say that both the trousers and the shirt have been worn on their own and are really not that hard to bear when mixed with other everyday clothes.

His mask was from the local party shop and I used fabric glue to cover it. Nice and easy!

Ready for some cheetah action?

I'm a bit of a culture snob when it comes to attending the theatre. It's definitely a nice dress or shirt with a collar type of place. I think my little cheetah is sufficiently well dressed and plenty animal enough!

Of course the cheetah had to chase the zebra a bit, but luckily just for hugs, not to eat her...

And then it all got a bit confusing as the cheetah was still giving the camera Blue Steel while the zebra started roaring too

We're off to the theatre in a few hours and tomorrow I'll share what I wore.... See you then