I love to make things multi-purpose. For example, my family uses the dining room table as a place to collect all the crap in the house and my daughter uses my laundry drier to store all her clean clothes. What I love more than my family’s knack for never putting anything away is things that serve a multi-purpose that is useful.

That is why I created the pattern hack for my Rachel Tank and the Little Rachel Tank. I love dresses and live in them when I’m not living in my sweats. I also love it when my daughter wants to make things that match things I make.

Welcome to my little video for making the tank into a dress. I also did a short spot near the end of the video on how to alter the tank for fit before adding your elastics.

I have some of the purple fabric available if you want to make one for yourself. In my video, I offer to send a strip of the contrast fabrics I used free of charge with the purchase of the fabric, but you need to make a note at checkout that you want the contrast fabric. No note = no contrast fabric.

About a month ago, I made the Rachels and Little Rachels available in printed format. I have a large format printer that is 24″ wide, but the printer is only black ink. You can now select to have the printed pattern with the download. I will eventually be making this feature available for all patterns, but at this point, it is just the Rachels.

My daughter is such a spunky little girl. She wants to be just like her mama. She comes home from school and has to “do orders.” This involves putting random stuff into bags with my order buckets.

Then she has to do work of cutting out “patterns” with her fabric scraps. This involves taking pattern pieces from the recycling bin, cutting on the edges of whichever pattern she gets her hands on and cuts the shape out of scraps. Occasionally she will sew the pieces together randomly.

I admire her drive. Although right now, she won’t let me write. I keep telling her I need 15 minutes to write so we can go swimming. She has interrupted me about 16 times in the last minute. We will see if I actually get this done to go swimming.

Because she wants to be like me, she wants to make things for herself that look like the things I make for myself. This is the first official pattern release of the girl’s sized version of something I made for adults. The Little Rachel Tank Top. I made it available in only 3 sizes – small, medium and large. I figure over the large, girls can wear the adult sized Rachel Tank Top.

We bonded over cutting the pattern out and I walked her through sewing the seams of the tank top. She was partially involved in the rest of the construction, but the videos show proof of her work.

I am trying something new. I will be releasing each pattern part a day apart from each other. I will update this post with each of the videos when they go live.

We decided to experiment with making a swimsuit out of the Little Rachel Set. I am so tired of those kid’s bathing suits just not fitting. The tops ride up on her in her size, but if we go up a size for the set, the bottoms fall off of her and the top still rides up. This tank was designed to be wider at the butt and belly, because frankly, not all kids are tube shaped, like the industry dictates.

This bathing suit is now officially her favorite item of clothing. I have actually released both the top and bottom on my website, but the videos for the bottom will not be released for a few weeks. I need to space them out a bit. I will make another announcement when the bottom is officially released.

In addition to completing these videos, I am changing how I am providing my pattern for download. This pattern and the brief contains four files each: the instructions, letter size, A4 and A1 for large format. I have also redesigned the patterns to be edge to edge with a 3/4″ overlap so those who hate trimming, don’t have to anymore.

I am also adding the option to have a paper copy of the patterns mailed. I will be working on updating the Christina Sports Bra and the Adult Rachel Tank and Brief to be provided in a similar manner. The Christina will be last as there are 143 sizes to update and that isn’t on my priority list right now.

Enjoy and subscribe to my channel or this blog to be notified of new videos.

I didn’t anticipate releasing these videos and kits for the Rachel Lace-Up Tank today. I was planning to release the $50 gift certificate contest. I changed my mind. I will be shooting a video in the next few days and the gift certificate contest will be made live shortly after.

The Rachel Tank is available in 30 sizes total, from XS to a 3X. Each size has 5 different bust size patterns. I wanted to do something sweet and sexy in the way of a tank. But I also wanted the tank to be versatile to be used as an athletic top. I made a very small set of kits for this design.

If there is interest, I have a few other fabrics I could make additional kits with. This includes everything you need to make one tank. Here are the links below. Stay tuned for the matching brief to be released in a few weeks.

I have been working hard on patterns to fit a variety of body shapes & sizes and this pattern is no exception. I created a basic range of XS to 3X, but I added five bust size variations for each size. That means there is a total of 30 sizes all together.

This tank can be made as an active wear garment or lingerie garment. I completed my first set of videos for the athletic active wear top. The sample was made with an accent print made by my friend Erin Mason. Her amazing prints are available on Spoonflower.

I did not have a lot of fabric to make kits, but I was able to make two small kits and one medium kit from the fabric I have. I hope you enjoy the pattern and the videos.

Stay tuned for a variation of this tank’s construction with a lace up style. The videos and kits will be available in about two weeks. Make sure to subscribe to my blog of YouTube channel to find out when new patterns are released.