Charles Dungarees

My son started asking for dungarees a few months ago, about the same time Compagnie M released the Charles dungarees. I bought the pattern, but then got distracted by other sewing projects. Last week my son asked for dungarees and this time I immediately acted on it.

At first he only wanted to pose in the shirt he was already wearing, the three little pig ones, but during the shoot I convinced him to switch to a bit less crowded shirt which combines better with the dungarees. The best combination would be a uni color shirt, but  none of those were clean unfortunately.

The fabric I used is the same type as my own trousers, the Kaufman Shetland flannel which I bought at fabric.com, just a different color. My son is very skinny so I made him a size two width and size five length. The size two turned out perfect, the size five a bit to long. The extra length is not a big issue the breast piece has a perfect height, only the legs and shoulder straps were a bit long, but that was easily overcome.

Due to my son's a-normal proportions the side fake pockets stayed open too much, which you can see on the next two pictures. The pockets are a bit too high, for the next dungarees I will have to adjust this, now his underwear is showing. I first thought about putting another button but I decided to sew the lower part closed. I was afraid the extra kam snap would create friction and my son can easily go in and out of the trousers even with the button of the pocket closed. 

When my son first saw the dungarees he was on one hand exited but on the other hand a bit disappointed because the breast piece did not have a small pocket. That was easily fixed. I changed the details of pattern a bit to make it less girly by replacing the rounded pieces with corners. This turned out great at upper part of the breast flap, the pockets still seem a bit round though.

Before I closed the lower part of the fake pocket my son loved to put his hand there, he loves pockets. After I closed the holes he quickly found another way to still put his hands in.

The contrasting fabric with the whales is from Lillestoff. I bought it to make this dress. I still had a small part left and the colors matched very well with the flannel. The fabric has a bit yellow in it and I decided to take the same color of kam snaps. I love how the back turned out with that contrasting band of jersey. All jersey pieces were lined with flannel.

In my quest to limit scraps I made another baby onesie from the piece that was left. My model was already sleeping when I made the pictures.

I love to hear what you think of them. Feel free to leave a comment in the language you prefer (although Google translate might have to assist me if you choose something different than English, German, Dutch or Hungarian).

Foldable bag

This post also has a dutch version which you can read here.

After seeing several beautiful projects based on the patterns from the book Zo Geknipt 2, I could not resist and bought the book (I am weak like that). I get very motivated to sew by sew alongs and the Zo geknipt 2 Sewalong is the most special sew along I have seen yet. It is not a link up or facebook page, it is a blog a true blog. Every month two projects are tackled and sewing along means that you make your own blog post on the blog about the projects you sewed.

January is the month of a foldable shopping bag and reflectors to put on a child's bag, to make them visible in the dark. I am trying to reduce my fabric stash so a foldable bag it is. I do not own any reflective fabric. A few foldable bag were already sewn and one of the first sewist's advised to make the triangle (that keeps the bag folded) a bit bigger. Keeping this problem in mind, I choose a different solution to avoid the bag  from falling apart. I added a kam snap to keep everything in place. Another thing in which I did not follow the guidelines was the fabric prescription. I used a cotton sateen from Michael Miller, where the pattern suggested two thin layers of cotton. The sateen is much stronger and heavier than simple cotton, it feels like canvas. I therefore forwent a full lining of the bag and as well as the iron on stabilizer. To give the bag a neat finish I did line the handles, but this lining stops a few centimeters below the handles.

For the triangle piece I chose a scrap piece of Birch fabric from my stash. This fabric was the trigger for re-starting my blog and is therefor special to me. Now I can often enjoy the fabric.

The neat finish of the bag requires to tightly roll the fabric, after sewing the handles, and stitch closely next to the rolled fabric. I thought I totally understood the instructions, rolled my fabric and started sewing. It turned out I was being a fool and folded both front and back of the bag together, but this is not necessary. The front and back are not yet connected and you can sew them separately. For me this meant that even though I rolled very neatly it was very hard to sew (no wonder because I had a double amount of fabric on my roll. It simply was impossible to sew on both the outside and the handle, one of the fabrics was always slipping away. It was the first time I actually screamed at my sewing machine, fortunately I was the only one home. After I finally succeeded to have both sides connected (it looked horrible), it was really hard to unroll the bag. I already decided that next time I would have to adjust the distance to the handle when the two piece separated and I saw the light.

After sewing the bag I first attached the snap on the small triangle (I had ironed on some stabilizer). Then I folded the bag. The last thing that I did differently from the books guideline was the folding. The book advices to fold the bag vertically four times, I chose to fold only three times because this gave the folded bag better dimension than if I would have folded it four times. I determined the place of the second snap, unfolded the bag, ironed on some stabilizer, and placed the second snap. I folded and unfolded the bag a few times and it is not hard to fold the bag in such a way that the snaps meet.

Woman's trousers

I did not make a clear list of new year's resolutions of my own, but I simply joined some lists of others. One of the lists I joined is an initiative of Sew Not Perfect. She has created a facebook page where we can all sew along on patterns from our stash. The goal is to sew something every month from a pattern that you owned in the year 2014. Every month has a different theme and January's theme is woman.

I own a lot of pattern, most of them child patterns but I also have a huge pile of woman patterns which are mostly bundled in sewing magazines (I own all Ottobre Woman for example). For this months theme I decided to sew something totally new to me. I decided to sew a pair of woman's trousers. I had sewn a few child trousers and was ready for the next challenge.

I have very good experience with the fit of Ottobre patterns and decided that my first trousers should be from that source. I picked a trousers pattern from Ottobre 5/2007. The fabric I used is Shetland flannel from Robert Kaufman. I read that this fabric makes great child trousers and bought a few versions from it at Fabric.com. I liked the fabric so much that, although I planned to use them for my son, I confiscated one and now turned it into a pair of trousers for me. I bought one and a half yard, and it was a bit of a puzzle but I managed to cut all the pieces from it, I only had to make the back pockets slightly smaller.

These trousers contain my first trouser zipper, the previous trousers all had a half (fake) zipper fly. I did not feel ready to make a button whole yet, but that is on the list of things I want to tackle soon. In these trousers I simply opted for a red kam snap. The waist is rather high and nobody (besides my husband) will see the button anyway.

I think the fit is perfect, I very much like how the trousers turned out. I was not planning to put on belt loops, but I am happy that I did, it was not as much as work as I expected. 

In case you are wondering about that strange right corner in some of the pictures, that is because the angle of the pictures was off. I turned the pictures to having to avoid you having to tilt your head, but my feet would have totally fallen of the picture if I would have cropped the pictures such that the bottom would have been straight. I preferred to have at least partial feet on the picture, so this was the result.

Feel free to leave a comment in the language you prefer (although Google translate might have to assist me if you choose something different than English, German, Dutch or Hungarian).

A Julia sweater variation

Like I mentioned before when I posted about my first Julia, my breast and waist usually do not fall in the same size category (44 versus 40). For my first Julia I did something resembling a full breast adjustment, this time for my second Julia I did something different. I added a horizontal line by splitting the front piece just below my breasts to accentuate both my breasts and waist.

The Lillestoff jersey I used had been in my stash for over a year. It was one of the first jersey's I bought for some selfish sewing. I bought one meter without a specific project in mind. Shortly after I bought this jersey, I found several nice women fabrics and this fabric kind a moved to the bottom of my stash.

Last time (also my first time) I sewed a Julia, I first added fabric to the middle of the sweater to accommodate my bigger breast size in a size 40 sweater, to later see that I had to remove the approximately the same amount of fabric under my arms. Lillestoff is very stretchy and I decided to just risk it and to make a size 40 allover. When I started to draw my pattern pieces on the fabric I realized I again had been too optimistic about how much fabric a women's sweater (and especially a Julia) needs. There was no way I was cutting the two basic Julia pattern pieces in one piece from this fabric. Those are the moments that my creativity thrives and I decided to add the horizontal bar just below my breasts. Those horizontal stripes are also often found in store bought cloths, but they are never on the place I would like them to be. The stripe usually ends up somewhere around my nipples.

I measured the distance from the waist up to just below my breasts on my first Julia. to determine the optimal position of the bar. I cut a five centimeter wide strip from rib knit with a width of a few centimetres shorter than the main pattern pieces. I am very satisfied with how the sweater turned out. The fabric is not to tight around my breast and nicely curves around them.

I do not like throwing fabric away, but I also do not like all those small fabric scraps that I will probably never use but are taking up quite some space in my fabric closet. I usually cut and sew all the projects I want to make from a fabric at once, to avoid having to add to my very wobbly scraps pile. From the scraps for this sweater I managed to cut a baby onesie, but I had to be extra creative with the front pattern piece.

Our kids are very skinny and store bought onesies just keep on slipping from their shoulders. A year ago I  sewed three great baby onesies (which are unblogged). In the summer I tried to sew four more in a bigger size, but this lead a very frustrating sewing experience. I opted for a fast binding method and used a zigzag to quickly get that over a meter of binding done.

This left me with only a few scraps which deed not exceed my imaginary 15 times 15 centimeter or longer than 25 centimeter strips criteria, which I therefore just thew away (it feels like swearing when I am speaking about throwing away scraps). I already have enough small strips which might once be used to fill two pillows, so please please do not give me new ideas how to use those small scraps!

Feel free to leave a comment in the language you prefer (although Google translate might have to assist me if you choose something different than English, German, Dutch or Hungarian).  

Too much of a good thing...

In a previous post I wrote that a nice piece of my Michael Miller wee wonder fabric remained. I had been planning a true Louisa dress for our middle daughter for long, and I thought this border print would be perfect for such a dress. I was wrong, or at least I am far from satisfied with the creation I made, I added too much details.

I had not thought my plans through when I started to cut (big mistake). I cut the pocket piece and the front and thought that I would cut a back from a contrasting uni fabric (because I did not have enough to make a back from the same fabric. When I put the pocket on the front part I realized that print on print was not the way to go (of course it wasn't, what was I thinking...). It was already late in the evening and decided to sleep on it and hope I would come up with something the next day.

The next day I decided that the front piece would become the back piece. There were two problems with this "solution". The back piece should have a higher neckline and should have a seam allowance in the middle. I decided to "fix" this by sewing a piece of fabric on the neckline and cover this with a collar. The zipper would become an exposed zipper on the front. To give the whole thing an intended look I would put the zipper on an zipper placket. The collar and front placket pattern pieces are again from the earlier mentioned Stof voor doe het zelvers 2 book.The short sleeves and extra shoulder detail were inspired by the same book.

The contrasting uni color fabric I used is from a bed cover we once bought at Ikea. The color matches the grass from the wee wonder remarkably well.The pipping details were made from the last home made pipping I had laying around.

The dress would have been better without the collar and front placket, the dress has too much detail now. Even with the collar, it would have been better if I would have adapted the pattern of the collar to really cover the whole upper back, so without the mistake-showing-whole that remains now.

My daughter likes the dress and the fact she can open the zipper herself, so it will probably get some wear in day care. Lets hope our youngest will have longer hair when she will fit in the dress, so it covers the mistake at the back. It is not a great way to end my sewing year, but the silver lining is that it will be an easy project to beat. At least I managed to use almost all the fabric, this was what remained from the two yard.

Feel free to leave a comment in the language you prefer (although Google translate might have to assist me if you choose something different than English, German, Dutch or Hungarian).  

Our 10 of 2014

In the Dutch speaking blog community we are throwing things at each other, we are throwing invitations to show our most loved moments of 2014 captured by a photograph. TamTam threw me one of those invitations and I happily caught it. I loved looking through our picture archive, I have not been doing it enough this year. In the previous years I kept our photo albums up to date, but the time I spent on that activity (and on many other activities) has now turned into sewing time.

As many others before me, I  had a hard time selecting only 10 pictures. I therefore cheated slightly and decided that the goal of this post is to show 10 happy memories, and some of these memories need more than one picture.

The first happy memory is from the first warm day of this year, somewhere in March. We packed up the kids and some food and held a picnic at a nearby play yard (together with many more families).

In this second picture I am baking cookies with the kids. Our youngest was in a phase that she wanted to be held all day, so I carried her a lot at that time.She really has grown this year!

The third picture shows our three eldest playing house in a cardboard box. Our kids love cardboard boxes (as most kids I presume) and whenever we have a big box, the kids play with it until it is torn to pieces.

The fourth event is one of our trips to the local zoo. For three years we had a a subscription to the zoo. This particular zoo is like a beautiful park and it is the perfect outing on a sunny weekend day. The small picture shows our two eldest walking hand in hand, I love seeing that they are such good friends.

The fifth picture is made at a nearby lake. This spring we had extremely nice weather and being near the water was a lot of fun. This time I went alone with the three eldest kids (because the youngest was still sleeping a lot) and the kids build sand castles for hours.

I made the sixth picture when I was trying to create this years fathers day present. Inspired by Pinterest I wanted to capture the shadows of kids. Making a nice shadow picture was harder than I anticipated and in the end we created a different present, but this picture is one of the few pictures that has all our kids on it. After trying to make the gift picture, the kids just played outside and I shot some more pictures. I love the smaller picture because it really portrays our eldest in her pure form. Dreamy, not really aware of what she is doing, hanging on something while her underwear is showing.

The seventh picture is again made at the small lake. It was the first time we went there as a whole family. Our youngest loved to play in the sand. She looks like a catalog baby in this picture (usually she looks like a little troll, adorable in her own way, but far from resembling a catalog baby).

On the eighth picture we are celebrating the birthday of our sons teddy bear. We were driving home from a day at a amusement park when my son announced in the car that it was his bears birthday! We all played along with it and when we arrived home I turned some leftovers into a cake, took some small balloons and gift wrapped a bottle of honey while the kids dressed up for the party.

I love to send picture Christmas cards and I prefer to have something different every year. This year we opted for a "falling leaves" picture. On one of the last nice days of a very warm fall we went to the forest and shot some great pictures, not the "perfect"one I was looking for but for everyone's sake (making the "perfect"picture can create some tensions) I made it work.

The last picture is an even rarer picture than all our kids together (my son is usually boycotting those). It is a picture of just me and my husband. Over Christmas we received a tripod. While I was setting up the tripod to make a picture of a part of our extended family my husband proposed to make a picture of us, to test the settings. The quality is not great, we switched off the lamp later, and used the flash, but I still love the picture.

I think that everyone who wanted to catch the invitation, has already caught it, so I will just end with wishing everybody a happy next year!

The Julia sweater for women

With the blog tour still going on, you have probably all seen that Compagnie M has launched a new pattern, the Julia sweater for women. I have made two child Julias already and when I heard Marte was preparing the women's version, I knew I would buy it immediately.

I have loved the collar version from the time I saw the child pattern but I somehow did not make that one. I thought it was too girly for a boy and on my foxy sweater it would have been too much distraction. I therefore decided I was going to make the collar version for my own sweater.

I used two fabrics from my stash. The floral I bought very cheaply at fabric.com. It is a tissue knit, a bit see-through and not very stretchy. The solid greenish fabric is a women fabric from Lillestof. Both fabrics only have horizontal stretch. Following Marte's advice I turned the fabric for the sleeves to optimize stretchiness.

My body did not fit the measurement table, My bust prescribed a size 44 the rest of my body a 40. I chose to adapt the pattern a bit. For the back I cut a size 40 for both the sleeves and the middle piece. For the front middle bust part I drew a size 44 but switched (with a smooth line) to 40 below the breast part. Because of the adaption to the middle part, I also had to adapt the front sleeves.

After the first fit I decided to take away some fabric under the arms, due to the flimsy fabric I looked a bit too much like a bat. The flimsy fabric also left the collar (on which I should have ironed on stabilizer of course, but didn't) far from perfect. After I fixated the collar with transparent thread I was very satisfied with the sweater.

Next time (yes I will definitely make another one) I will sew the sweater from good fabric, but until then I love my flimsy version.

Feel free to leave a comment in the language you prefer (although Google translate might have to assist me if you choose something different than English, German, Dutch or Hungarian).