Selfish sewing

Earlier this week I read about the Match With Me, mother-son sewing series from Boy, oh By, oh Boy crafts. I immediately wanted to sew along. I assumed that my son would love some matching cloths and would enjoy a small joint photo shoot.

I looked through my stash and found two green-white matching jerseys from Birch. The fabric is super soft and I knew my son would love the feel on its skin. I quickly considered sewing a skirt for me and trousers for my son to have complete matching outfits but I settled for two hoodies. My son loves hoodies and I need some new shirts. In case you are tempted to quickly scroll forward to see our matching shirts, I have to disappoint you, because those pictures are not coming.

A few months ago I bought several Birch fabric jersey's on sale at Fabricworm. At that time I was in my right mind, and realized Birch jersey is not as wide as Lillestoff and bought 1 yard of deer and half a yard of a matching skinny chevron  to make my son something (the project was to be determined). From a total of one and a half yard I was never going to make two hoodies of which one adult sized. I realized this after cutting my paper pattern pieces and simply settled on a hoodie for myself. I thought it was time for some selfish sewing after weeks of kids cloths sewing. But as it turned out, making an adult hoodie was already a challenge with these fabric pieces.

It was at the end of the evening, when I started cutting the sleeves, The pattern I followed (Ottobre 5/2010) had sleeves in two pieces, which was new to me because kids raglan sleeves are in one piece. I found out that  my half a yard was not going to give me complete sleeves. I was only able to cut the lower piece of sleeves. I had cut the pieces on the fold (including seam allowance next to the fold) when I decided to stop for the night. I usually get good ideas in bed and I clearly needed inspiration to solve this sleeve problem. Just before I went upstairs, I quickly cut the sleeves in two. This, of course I should not have done. The sleeves were drawn in two separate pieces because of the sleeve head split. In my case the sleeve head would become a separate part anyway and I could have left the lower part one piece. But now I had two lower sleeve parts that were not going to have matching side prints. This shows that when you are in doubt about how to cut or sew your project further, please stop immediately. IMMEDIATELY.

Before I actually fell asleep I decided to give the whole thing an intended look by retrying the elastic piping method that I had been trying for a Louisa dress. The next day at first it again did not seem to work but indeed with some more practise it worked out fine. The idea is simple, I sewed the sleeve pieces together on my serger using my pipping foot, while sandwiching some pipping. After I finished the seam I pulled out the piping cord leaving only an empty tube which has the same flexibility as the rest of the garment. After I decided to just add a band of deer fabric on the sleeve to create enough length for long sleeves, the whole thing came together quickly.

So I decided to give this post a spin (because it should have been a mother son post) and make it all about me and me alone. I will show you all the dresses I have made myself. The dresses are all from knit fabric, one I actually knitted, because I have not dared to make a woven one yet. I planned a small photo shoot inside because of the rain but then of course my kids wanted to be in the pictures as well. This is how the first picture of this post was created. My son simply photo bombed my "Me-Myself and I" photo shoot. The pictures were taken on Sunday morning and my son prefers to dress in as few cloths as we allow (which comes down to him being in his underwear for a big part of the weekend, do more kids have his?). So I cannot even claim we match because I made both our shirts (this was my plan C). I have more, many more pictures with photo bombing kids, and even some with wet spots on my dress from tears of my middle daughter after a comfort session after her falling from a chair. But the picture with my son was the only one that made the cut. The post should have been about the both of us, and like this it still is a little bit.

This is the first dress I made from scratch. I had one meter of fabric, which was just not enough for sleeves (you see that underestimating the amount of needed fabric remains a problem). The pattern was made from an existing dress.

The second dress I made, was the Martini dress from La Maison Victor, the fabric is Lillestoff.

The third dress I made, an adapted Martini dress. I simply skipped the asymmetrical front and opted for a symmetrical one, the fabric is Lillestoff.

The fourth dress I made is from Ottobre 2/2013, the fabric is again Lillestoff.

The last dress, is actually the first dress I started. I had seen this great picture on Pinterest, and I just had to knit it. My body is a very different shape than the girl showing the original dress, but I simply longed for the challenge. It took me a few months to finish the dress (in which I actually sewed up some of the earlier discussed dresses). I did not buy the pattern and just winged the pattern based on the pictures.