Sunday, June 2, 2019

Blending and hacking the ultimate easy teen summer dress



Although I can sew a lot and do not mind sewing easy pieces, I also sometimes enjoy buying pieces in a clothing store. Two weeks ago, I went with our eldest and noticed that width wise she fits in the smallest adult pieces (size 34 was even too small!!), but that due to her length the shoulder straps of the sleeveless dresses that we wanted to buy, were way too long. The sleeveless child dresses had an absurdly large armhole and very loose fit, several centimeters of her tank top were showing under her arm.



She has reached the phase in between child and adult which I had noticed with my sewing before. Last year, I made her a Solis and ended up having to add darts because the armhole were gaping.  She is too developed for a child patterns and too short for adult patterns.   Especially, when wearing sleeveless this issues shows, so I decided to try a child/adult blended dress.



Adult patterns are tighter than kids' patterns, so even though she did not fully reach the Sofilantjes' adult size table yet, I was curious to see how the smallest adult Sofilantjes would fit on her. I wanted to make her a Vallis and the chest width of the pattern piece of the size twelve was very similar to the smallest adult size, so I took the plugde and blended.



I took the adult piece as my base. I kept the shoulders and armcycle of the adult piece exactly the same because the height of the arm cycles seemed similar. I did have to redraw the waist bigger though. The size twelve kids is wider, as can be seen on the size table as well. I used the size twelve waist to determine the needed with of the adult pattern piece. I also used the length of the size twelve bodice to determine the length of the bodice. Because I did not change the arm cycles, I did not have to recalculate the arm bands. I did draw a high back neckline, just because it is slightly more versatile, so I did have to recalculate the neckband. I also raised the front neckline with an inch.



I started out with a test dress, because I had no clue how it would fit, the bodice of the child pattern is significantly different from the adult pattern. I used a scrap and some matching uni fabric. I used the half circle skirt from the Regina  It was a perfect fit, so I immediately sewed a second. One from my recently acquired inspirational fabric pile from Joyfits. So, if your daughter has started to develop and has a chest of 76 cm or more, and you own both the child and adult Vallis, I suggest you also blend. It was easy. Now she has a dress that fits perfectly and does not show her tank top.


Sunday, May 26, 2019

Capsule pieces



During our sewing weekend, I sewed most pieces for our eldest. She had requested a capsule wardrobe, something similar as our middle daughter got a year ago. Our eldest prefers to wear dresses though, so I had a surprisingly hard time envisioning a capsule wardrobe that would fit her personality. Tunics are not really her style and shirts with trousers neither are her first choice. I have to admit, in the end it became more quantity than quality, but in my defense, she almost had no summer clothes since she is growing extremely quickly, so a perfect balanced wardrobe will have to wait, maybe next winter.



The first piece that I sewed was a short blue crop top with long sleeves. Last winter, I sewed half a Nivalis, to let her wear her favorite summer pieces in colder weather. This crop top has a similar idea, one extra layer if the Dutch summer is not behaving like we would like it to. I used the Foliis pattern, omitted the hood and simply sewed down the neckline. The dress that she is wearing is a Solis that  sewed last year, one of the two summer dresses from last year that still fit her. The fabric is a light weight knit sweater fabric, it is super soft.




Like I wrote before, I went for quantity and I simply sewed her three tops with the same pattern, the Sylva. Two shirts with straight necklines and a tunic with the V neckline. I tried to use a lot of rather plain and uni colored fabrics in the capsule to make it easy to mix and match. To add a bit of extra fun I sewed on an application that I made years ago when I made this entire ensemble with monster fabric.  With hinesight, I feel I still used to many prints and  added to much color accents to for example the Sylva tunic. Creating a capsule wardrobe with prints is a skill that I have to develop more.




The light blue bottom are my first attempt at designing a skort. I prefer the designs with a skirt on the front and simple short view from the back. Far from perfect, but fine for a first try. The capri trousers, I blogged before when I showed my Advena's.




Next time I will show the rest.

Sunday, May 19, 2019

Advena summer dresses



Usually, our middle daughter does NOT asks for a dress. She prefers shirts and tunics combined with bottoms. But, now that the temperatures are rising, she has developed a renewed love for dresses, because a dress can be worn as a stand alone garment. No bottoms needed. In the winter you need leggings or tights, so then she does not see the value of dresses, but now, that her legs can be bare, she requested dresses.



The Advena dress that I sewed a few weeks ago is a huge hit at the moment, so I decided to sew two more. She prefers short dresses (she would easily wear a tunic as dress), which is not in line with my sewing style. I like to sew a rather long dress, easily under the knee, such that it will fit for two years. But because of her love for tunics, I know these dresses will simply be worn as tunics next year, which is why I agreed to sewing, in my book, rather short dresses.



On Friday a huge order from Joyfits arrived. She was having a kilo sale and I bought 10 kilo fabric. On my Instagram you can see how that looks. The arrival of the new fabric prompted me to rearrange my fabric stash a bit, including my fabric scraps. Rearranging the fabric and the inflow of new inspiration was apparently just what I needed because I sewed five dresses this weekend.



Among the fabrics that I bought, I also bought a panel with four different (baby) prints on it. The panels are the perfect size for the Advena middle body piece. She picked this astronaut tiger and then pulled the planet fabric from the fabrics that I recently bought for our son. Planets and astronauts go very well together according to her. I picked the striped magic fabric myself because they reminded me of tiger stripes. Inside they are only tiger stripes, but outsides the colored splashes combine very well with the plant spots. I finished the dress with a golden lycra nekband which matches perfectly with the golden elements in the planet fabric.



The other Advena was sewn from fabric remnants only. Her sister recently got a dress with the flower fabric and she told me she also waned something with that fabric. I had a hard time coming up with another interesting matching print besides the stripes. Finally, I went with uni pink but sewed three butterflies from the flower fabric on it. I had first sewed some flowers on it as well, but she told me I embellished too much, so those I removed again. She was right of course, this is better. She has a good designer eye.




Saturday, May 11, 2019

Regina times two



Let's continue the dress cuteness that I started last time with the two Solisses that I sewed for our youngest. Today, I will show you the two Regina's that she gained during our sewing weekend. One, regular Regina bodice combined with the circle skirt from the Solis ( I love the mix and match options) and one Regina with a color blocked bodice.


A few months ago, I ordered a few of those magical applications. Our youngest expressed her love for them on a regular basis, but seeing as I do not buy much retail, she did not have any of those in her wardrobe. The striped Regina is the first project with one of those applications. The Regina patterns is perfect for fabrics with not so much recovery because the fit is more relaxed than the Solis. I therefore could use the magical sun coloring fabric again. Double magic in one dress.




The second Regina is  a hacked tunic. I had to add a color block in the bodice due to fabric constraints. The Regina has the same bodice front and back, and because I put the neckline ribbing seam at the shoulder, she can decide how she wants to wear the tunic, either with the color block at the front or at the back. She regularly changes her mind about which option she likes more.




Friday, April 26, 2019

Sweet Solises



The Solis is always a winner, the speed of construction, the minimum amount of fabric that you need for the bodice and the twirl factor always stirs a lot of joy in me and in our littlest family member. So, on the Sunday morning of our sewing weeked, I turned two leftover fabrics into Solisses.



For the ones that saw my post on boy shirts, those will also have seen the two bear shirts (that our son decided to boycott) that I cut from a cute panel. After cutting those two shirts, I was left with a big amount of boring forest. The leftover are a reason why I do not often buy panel fabrics. The fabric did not really speak to me at that moment, but I felt I had nothing to loose by turning it it a Solis. The trees were that thick that it was not that clear what was up and what was down. That dark bar on a the front is actually a tree sideways and now it looks a bit like waistband. I really love the result, and also our girl is very happy with her tree dress.



Last week, I showed the shirts that I sewed for our middle daughter and after sewing that awesome color blocked rainbow shirt, I still had enough fabric left to turn it into a Solis bodice. From the fabric that I had taken with me, the red / pink stripes was the best match. If I would have my entire stash (which is not that big anymore by the way), I might have chosen a different skirt, but I am still very satisfied with the result. Stripes turn into arches when you make a circle skirt with them, so now she has a two color rainbow skirt.



So you see, whatever stretchy fabric  that you have, if you turn it into a Solis it will always be awesome. A quick way to use some of that fabric that you fell out of love wit, and a good likelihood It will become your daughters favorite summer piece this year.



Saturday, April 20, 2019

Girl summer shirts



When I asked our middle daughter what she wanted me to sew for her on our sewing weekend she replied "shirts", so I made her four Regem shirts. A few years ago, I still very much disliked using the same pattern multiple times in a row, now I really love it, as you probably judged from me using the same patterns over and over again in the recent years. But, this time I did not do four times copy paste, like in this post. This time I made four different shirts.



Let's start with the most plain Regem, the one with the mermaid/cat print. I would either call them mercat or catfish but in English both are taken by a different animal already. I love the boldness of the print and it did not need anything else than a contrasting neckband in my opinion, one that contrasted while still matching with the print because the tiny starfish have a similar color.



The second shirt, sewn in magical color changing fabric, is another rather plain shirt, but this time I finished the neck line differently. I did not want to distract from the print itself, so I simply folded over the neckline and sewed it in place. Even quicker than working with a neck band. Not all fabrics are suitable for this, especially if you fabric is very stretchy, you easily get a wavy line. This rather thin fabric had just the right amount of stretch for a fold over neckline.



The third shirt, has another sea print and I used the front color block option of the Regem. I wanted the back to be mostly sea animals, but I also wanted the sleeves to match with something on the back as well. I therefore went for a straight color block line on the back. My plain light blue fabric was almost totally gone already, so I had to make an extra seam. By putting it exactly in the middle I feel it gives a extra depth to the shirt.



For the last shirt I color blocked my heart out. The rainbows in the fabric were inspiring, and I color blocked a rainbow on the front. I did not have any yellow in my scrap collection, but she did. I probably could have found some plain yellow as well seomwhere in the room with 22 addicted sewists, but I love the crazy mix with the yellow/orange print.