KCW #2: Upcycled embroidered table cloth to summer dress

A few months ago while inspired by a embroidered designer dress I bought a vintage hand embroidered table cloth. Due to KCW's theme upcycle my plans for the table cloth resurfaced and the last three days I spend on turning the table cloth into a summer dress.

The table cloth was covered in beautifully embroidered flowers and I wanted to put as much of them in the dress. Due to the non-circular embroidery pattern (the corners were true corners) I could not cut a circle skirt. The not so obvious optimal cutting schedule was the reason the table cloth was not turned into a dress immediately. After much thought I opted for a skirt in six pieces and a horizontally split front bodice. The bodice part and sleeves are again from the book Doe Het Zelvers 2.

After I cut all the pieces I spend a few hours on removing the embroidery thread of flowers that were cut in half. I wanted to only have whole flowers to create the illusion that the embroidery pattern was designed to fit the dress. Although taking out the extra flowers and leaves took quite some time it was nothing compared to how much time must have gone into embroidering the table cloth in the first place.

I made button closure in the back, this way my daughter can dress herself. While cutting the dress I first had planned a blind zipper. Due to my blind zipper plans I chose two separate flower patterns for the back.

My daughter loved the dress (every time I make her a new dress she claims that it is the prettiest dress ever) and immediately wore it to the restaurant we went this evening. She got several complements which made her radiate even more.

I love to hear what you think of my creations. 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).

KCW # 1: from sweater to shirt and leggings

Yeah, KCW has started again! The excuse to sew every day for a whole week. This seasons theme is upcycle. I have upcycled several pieces already, so for a moment I feared I would not have enough inspirational "upcyclable" pieces to work with. My fear was misguided, I looked around the house and when I combined my search bounty from three different locations, I had enough inspiration to last me at least a month.

In the aftermath of the previous KCW I wrote, I was planning to have all the garment pieces cut and very well planned out for this season. Well I really wanted to do that, but nothing is pre-cut, I only glued the knight hoodie pattern I want to use this week. I am planning a special knight hoodie this week, but when push came to shove yesterday evening I decided to start the week of with a quick, one evening sewing project.

I took one of my too short sweaters and a pregnancy belly band and turned them into toddler leggings and a baby shirt. This is the third heavy knit sweater that I upcycle, and I still love to do it. It is so nice to work with this type of cotton fabric (a lock is a necessity in this case), I still haven't found such fabric in the store, the heavy knit that I did found had a high percentage of polyester in them.

I totally winged the pattern pieces. The sweater knit is extremely stretchy and although it recovers with wash it will always be a  bit sacky when worn, therefore the fit did not have to be perfect. The leggings were cut from the sleeves of the sweater without opening the sleeves, following a similar procedure as this tutorial. I used an already cut free leggings pattern (for the waist part)and earlier used onesie pattern pieces to draft the pieces. I used the belly band for cuffs of the sweater and the waist band of the leggings. I did not use elastic in the waist band of the leggings, the jersey is strong enough. The fit turned out fine, although the head opening on the shirt is a bit tight, I might have to address that next week.

My models were asleep yesterday when I finished, so this morning I took some quick pictures. My models were not totally in the mood, one of my pictures (only rejected due to terrible lighting of course) had them both plain crying! Fortunately after a few minutes they showed me their professional side and gave me something to work with. But still, my middle daughter was refusing to show of her butt so I have no picture of the perfectly lined up stripes.

I love to hear what you think of my creations. 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).

Handmade gifts part 2

Lets make this a series, here you can find the first one. In these posts I will discuss a collection of gifts (made over a undefined period) which didn't justify (I have a personal fuzzy standard) a post but I still want to show them.

I made a friend a weighted pillow to be part of the sensomotoric therapy for her son. She asked a simple pillow/blanket but due to the age of the boy (five) I wanted to make a fun one. I enlarged a pattern from La Maison Victors' plush animal book. The arms measure 42 cm across, so it really is a big animal and it is filled with four kilo rice. The wolf is a washable cover for a simple bag filled with rice.

My niece requested baby groot. I had no clue what she meant, but when I googled it I found a free tutorial. It turns out to be a character from a movie (that I had to watch of course and liked a lot).  I love how he turned out.

One of my friends are going to have a second child and they asked around if somebody knew somebody who could crochet them a monkey. I kind a jump up and started waving my arms (over facebook), me me me, I can do that. I slightly adapted an existing pattern.

Lounge wear

I recently found out that Sew it up (Belgian initiative) also has a monthly sew along. As you know I love sew alongs and I also put theirs on my (mental) to do list. Their January theme is lounge wear. I presume that many of you would be delighted by such a theme, an excuse to sew comfy clothes that you can wear a lot. I have a huge pile of (ugly) comfy clothes. I do not like throwing clothes away, many pregnancy trousers and shirts have become my comfy clothes and I have a ton of them. Sewing does not always have to be practical, but somehow it did not feel right to sew new comfy clothes from my precious fabric that I would only be wearing at home while I have a huge pile of clothes suited for that purpose.

After I finished my Project run and play sew along last week I actively started brainstorming, I even asked my husband if he had any ideas. I asked him which lounge clothes he prefers on me and based on his answer I realized I should make some summer lounge wear! In the last weeks I have seen multiple beautiful summer dresses so I am jumping on the summer bandwagon.

I took my pile of woman Ottobres and flipped through all of them and settled on a set of shorts and a sleeveless shirt from 5/2011. For the top I did (as usual) not fully follow the pattern directions. I decided to line the cups with flannel (upcycling from a flannel baby towel) to create more support, left out the button placket and I put in breast darts instead of putting elastic at the top seam as well. The breast darts were a first. I thought home wear would be perfect to practice with and I was right, I need practice. I used a meter of Eline Pellinkhof fabric that I bought myself last year just because it was so pretty (I bought the whole blue line). A meter was just enough (or just not, I had to make an extra seam in the back to ensure enough fabric).

I totally owned the pattern last year and it is clearly for me so I will also link this post up to sew your pattern stash. Besides sew alongs I love being efficient.

I love to hear what you think of my creations. 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).

Quadruple striped shirt

As Miekatoentje I was inspired by the new Ottobre and the interesting things they do with striped fabrics. I needed to try this stripe blocking for myself. I started with the triangle Ottobre pattern pattern and transformed it into a square.

I was not totally happy with the result of the stripes alone, it was not interesting enough, the square in the middle somehow looked to boxy and boring. Trying to spin the whole thing I ironed a fitting text and graphic on it. I think it looks better now, but the shirt needs jeans to avoid the pyjama vibe as much as possible. The shirt is for my son, but my most willing model helped me out again.

I like the boxy shoulders in this pattern (also very easy to sew), although it doesn't really show while worn.

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).

Upcycled bubble dress

When I (again) started to actively blog last fall, I sewed along with Project Run and Play. I loved to see all the different interpretations of one theme. This year Project Run and Play will have a different set up. Now, every month there will be a sew along and you will have three weeks to make your creation. As I understand it, every month there will be a tutorial and you can link up anything that you made inspired by the tutorial. I think it is a great concept, because it will probably mean that I will be challenged to use new techniques, or known techniques in different ways.

This months tutorial was a bubble dress tutorial. I had never made anything bubbly, so I was game to try it. Alida provided a nice Pinterest inspiration board as well. But before I was going to try making a bubble dress, I first wanted to try the technique, so I made a skirt. I took half a meter Michael Miller fairies from my stash and turned it into a very bubbly skirt for my middle daughter. The model showing the skirt here is actually my eldest (the photo was taken with my phone so I am sorry for the lesser quality). I wanted a full skirt for my twirly middle girl and took the whole 110 cm wide fabric, Normally this would lead to a nice full gathered skirt, but the bubble effect made it a bit too much for my middle daughter's height, but she will grow into it. I chose a very thin (polyester) lining and this gave a very nice gathering effect at the bottom. One of the nice thing about the bubble technique is that you do not have to hem, yeh!

Then I had to choose the fabric for the "real" dress. I now knew that the bubble technique gives a full skirt effect and I decided to take a maxi skirt that I had on my upcycle pile (this time I did make a "before" picture).

 The skirt is silvery/gray and has many embroidered details on it. I started by taking the waistband off and I used the upper part of the original skirt for the skirt part of the dress. The bottom width was about three times the waist. The lower part of the original skirt had different triangles with embroidered details and I used the flower triangles for the sleeves and placed one of the bigger details on the middle of the front. For the back I opted for embroidered details on the sides. The pattern of the bodice and sleeves are the same as for this dress and originate from Stof Voor Doe het Zelvers 2.

I lined the bodice with interlock. The fabric of the original skirt is wrinkled thin cotton which makes the dress stretchy, but due to the fabric's light weightiness I was afraid that the dress would become to baggy if there was nothing to hold the wrinkles together. The dark blue lining shows at the neckline which I think is a neat detail. Due to the interlock lining I also did not have to use a zipper (double yeh!). I again opted for the thin polyester lining as I did with the trail skirt. It is a very nice purple and my colorful daughter loved the fact that the colors of the two linings were not the same. I did not line the sleeves

After some serious pictures she of course also had to twirl, jump and bow like a princess.

 

Although Kid's Clothes Week has not started yet (almost though), I decided to also put it among my projects for this season due to the "upcycle" theme. I had planned on using the original skirt in that week, but I still have a nice pile to be upcyled (and I might even make something from the skirts's leftovers.

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).

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).