Saturday, November 25, 2017

Christmas in Michael Miller



In April, I added a lovely new badge to the right side of my blog without talking about it. Since spring I am a Sewing Portfolio's Ambassador. Sewing Portfolio's is the initiative of Candice who became fed up with the hassle of applying for testing or other contact with pattern and fabric designers. People were telling and showing the same thing over and over again and she thought it should be easier. Sewing Portfolio's therefore is a place to store all your best work in one place and besides easily sharing this info through one link, pattern and fabric designers can also actually find you without you knowing they were on the look out for someone with your profile.




Being a Sewing Portfolio's member became even more attractive when Candice decided to share the fabric goodies she received to show the world, with selected ambassadors. She is regularly searching for new sewing ambassadors, so when you start out as a member and have your portfolio up to date, make sure you check her ambassador calls. In August, I received three yard of Michael Miller Christmas fabric. The fabric arrived too late for the Christmas in July party, so now, after Thanksgiving, I thought it was high time to show you what I made! I turned the Nutcracker fabric designed by Sarah Jane into four garments, one for each of the kids. I love Michael Miller fabrics, the fabrics remain beautiful after many washes and the prints are awesome. This dress from Michael Miller fabric is still one of my most favorite makes ever and it still looks awesome after many many wears and washes.




Although three yards is a significant amount of fabric, I still had to be innovative to make it into three dresses and a shirt. I used three dress patterns by Straight grain, the Tinny, the Laure and the Ishi. For my son I made a Theo from Zonen09. The Tinny dress was the only pattern that I had not used before. Due to fabric scarcity I ended up adding a color block to the bodice of the Tinny and I winged the skirt piece based on the amount of fabric that I had. I made the pocket on the Theo a bit bigger such that the little boy from the panel could fit on it.




I of course planned to have a shoot with four kids happily watching the camera like little angles and showing of their clothes. I should have known better, I always forget that having them all watch in my direction is already almost impossible, but somehow every time I think it will be better now that they are older. During the first shoot with these garments I had more garments to shoot and this resulted in rather tiered kids so the picture that I posted on Instagram was a good indication of the  quality level of the group pictures during that shot. This is another gem from that session.




A week later I tried again and decided that I needed two type of pictures, one from the garments and one for our yearly Christmas card. At the end of that shoot, I had both. So today, I am mostly showing you pictures of the kids individually, because that was the best way to show of the clothes. Maybe next year, I can do both objections with one set of pictures, you know, when they are older... and when I gifted myself a bigger background.


During the second shoot I let my kids come up with their own idea's for the shoot. The picture of, my our middle daughter angrily standing on the chair is a picture of a conflict in their artistic process. The picture of our eldest in front of a very crowded table was the end result of that shot and somewhere in the middle I got the perfect Christmas card picture. I am not showing you that one yet, but it does not show of any of the garments well, so you are not missing out on that front. I will post the final pictures over Christmas on Instagram.



These three green fabrics are part of the Michael Miller Nutcracker act 1 collection. Besides this green color scheme there is also a blue and red one and coordinating plaid fabrics. I always have a weak spot for gold metalic paints and in all three of mine fabrics there were golden details. You can check out the entire collection here. I did not have enough fabric to make a blind join over the zippers, but to show you that I have the skills, I am showing you the join that I made on the panel.

7 comments:

  1. Perfect pictures! Everybody is showing off their personalities :)

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  2. Ben helemaal geen fan van stof met kerstprint en toch slaag je er ik er iets tof mee te doen. Zeker de Laure en Ishi jurk zijn kei tof!

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    1. leuk is dat he, ik heb ook regelmatig dat ik dan een stofje uit de kast haal en erg eigenlijk niet zo verliefd meer op ben, maar als het dan verwerkt is, dan vind ik het toch opeens weer super leuk ;)

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  3. They are such a fun bunch!! Your makes are stunning as usual and wonderfully portrays the prints! Thank you so much!

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  4. Wat zijn ze toch zalig zo met 4 samen :-)
    Ik herken je frustratie, in mijn hoofd heb ik altijd de perfecte plaatjes van mijn 3-tal, de uitvoering er van is meestal toch net iets moeilijker te realiseren haha ;-)
    Leuke creaties!

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