A kind of reversible dress

The "Zo Geknipt 2" sew along has two very nice projects this month and I started with the asymmetrical baby dress called Ienieminimooiste. No sizing necessary, because my youngest scored all her measurements in one size (size 80). The original dress is partly lined and finished with bias. I thought this would be an ideal pattern to make reversible. The closure was going to be kam snaps anyway and the bias finish is perfect for reversible dresses, but I didn't think it through well enough.

The thing I didn't realize is that the front pieces overlap a lot. They overlap that much that if I put the dress inside out, the snaps are very far from the side of the fabric. I realized all this when I started the second row of snaps, so after I already put on the first row and the bias. I feared that the "reversed" side would be gaping a lot, but actually it doesn't. It stays nicely closed. I will probably put one extra snap on the bottom anyway, but I know it is better to evaluate the project for a while than performing a quick fix that might make things worse.

I somehow really am into reversible clothes (in the last few weeks I made this, and this, these and these), it might be due to the fact it allows me to use more fabric (stash busting here), and only puts one garment in the closet (increasing likelihood of actually being worn). If I will make this pattern again, I will have to make the "inside" pattern piece less wide, that way the snaps will be close to the side on both fronts.

Let's talk fabric. Baby dresses are great scrap busters, I managed to finish three fabrics (meaning that the fabric really left my fabric closet, all is used) with this dress. The brown/yellow side was made with the last pieces of this shirt (which also was used here and here and here) and a leftover of Birch with which I made this dress. The purple side is made with the Michael Miller leftovers from the dress earlier this week. I was so in love with the Soft cactus fabric combination , that I simply used the same combi.

Like I mentioned before, the dress closes with kam snaps. On the purple side I chose green flowers (more about the flowers here), the green perfectly matches the green from the fabric. On the brown side I used white round buttons. The buttons match so well that they are almost invisible. I eye balled the position of the snaps and ended up using more than the original dress. I really should pay more attention to details like that.

I made the bias from some brown Birch fabric. I do not have many uni-color cotton fabric (understatement) in my stash (this brown is actually the only one besides a lot of white from old sheets), so I was very happy to see that this brown matched with the fabrics from both side. I actually prefer the inside (brown and yellow) over the outside, but this might be due to the fact that my middle daughter has been wearing her dress almost non-stop this week, and I like the change.

The fit is really great and she can play and move well in it.

The last thing that remains is announcing the winner of the Brueram dress pattern, which I gave away earlier this week. There were 25 reactions so I used the random generator (taking the risk of selecting one of the other two pattern testers) and got the number 17. I counted and re-counted and I can congratulate Astrid Witters with winning the pattern! Please send me an email to claim your prize.

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). 

For apples and pears

The Zo Geknipt 2 Sew Along pattern of this month is a woman's shirt. The shirt is made without a pre-drawn pattern, you have to draw one on your own personal measurements and the shirt is supposed to fit all body types, therefore its named "for apples and pears".
 

Since the last time that I had to draw a pattern from scratch I bought  square grid pattern paper and now I drew the pattern up very quickly because I did not have to worry about my corners not having a 90 degree angle. The shirt is great for color blocking, the front is originally constructed from three diagonal pieces (this is a clear example of such color blocking). The book mentions that if you want to avoid putting focus on your width, you avoid such color blocking. I am wide enough already and therefore decided against that version of color blocking (although I expect that the combination with dark on the sides actually provides a less wide silhouette). 

The fabric I used is from Lillestoff , both the main fabric (on a Tuesday combi) and the dark brown. The book advices to use Punto di Roma, but I wanted to sew from my stash. I think Lillestoff has a good thick quality, but it is less heavy than Punto di Roma (I assume because I never have felt it). To make the contrasting waistband a part of the shirt and to make the whole thing less boring I added a contrasting horizontal bar at the front neckline. I simply cut four centimeter from the pattern piece and cut a piece of 10 centimeter high brown jersey, folded it and locked it to the middle front piece. This way I even did not have the hem that part. I was inspired by her mistake to do this. 

Due to the extra detail at the neck, I decided not to put buttons there. The decorating buttons on the waistband are simple, small buttons from my stash covered in my main fabric. I cut a small circle of jersey, sewed a basting stitch and the outside of the circle, put the button in the middle and pulled the outside of the fabric together. I did not want any print on them, so I actually used the back of the fabric. If you look from up close you can see that it is the back part, but besides my family, people usually don't come that close. 

I used a twin needle and brown colored thread to top stitch all the seams. I am very satisfied with my choice for Lillestoff jersey, I think the quality is heavy enough. The shirt fits well, although next time I will decrease the width of the neckline a bit. While I am typing this post my arms are in front of me and this creates a bit too much gaping for my likes. 
 

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). 

Double straight dress

 This post also has a Dutch version with more details about the things I did differently compared to the instructions.

This month's project for the Zo Geknipt 2 sewalong is a shirt or dress which you draw yourself so there is no pattern tracing involved. If you make the shirt version you only cut rectangles, for the dress you need some triangular pieces as well.

 I am such a person that prefers to read a small piece of text five times over reading a long text once. The book is written for people that prefer to read a long piece of text. The book describes the construction of this dress in 38 steps, I would have preferred a maximum of one third of those steps. Is there are too many steps I get bored along the way, I somehow can not focus long enough to read all the steps. I am strange like that.

Putting the whole thing together was surprisingly puzzling to me. The fact that I was trying to do this on a sewing date where I was talking too much, was not helping. The next day, after a night of sleep, the dress sewed up quickly. After I constructed the dress I of course understood the explanational steps much better. I realized that I did a few things differently, but this should not surprise you anymore. If you are really interested in all the things I did different from the instructions you should read the Dutch version of this post (due to the fact the pattern is only available in Dutch I think that some details would not be interesting for people that do not own the pattern).

The size of the dress is a 116 allover, which is a first for me. I could have cut the width in a 110 but I felt that the slightly wider bodice would not looks strange, and I was right. I made the waist with a little trick that I read at Lieveke en Zus. She also made a version of this dress by the way. I put in wide elastic in the tunnel at the waist, and made two buttonholes on the side to put in a FAKE pull string. The pull string I made from a gold colored thread which I turned onto a bigger twine. We have had this thread since I can remember, when I was a child I was already amazed by the pretty shine, but we never used it for anything. Due to my mother's latest move the thread came my way and I love that I now finally used it for something. My daughter loved the color as much as me.

Instead of buttons I used snaps. These bronze/gold colored snaps are really in my top 3 of favorite snap colors. I used a shiny yellow embroidery thread to top stitch, it almost looks like gold.

The fabric I used is Michael Miller's metalic flight which I bought at fabric.com. I only had one yard, so I had to cut some of the triangle pieces of the dress upside down. At the sewing date we spend some time looking at the fabric and decided that there was no clear up or down. After I cut the fabric I of course saw that there is, but I do not think anybody will notice on the dress.

This afternoon the sun was shining and I took the opportunity to shoot two dresses at once (the other dress is for later this week). I gave my middle daughter a small basket as a accessory and then of course my eldest wanted the same basket (although she did change the content).

I did own the book last year, so this post also qualifies for "sew your pattern stash" sewalong!

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). 

Tipsy toiletbag

This post also has a Dutch version you can read here.

Like last month, I participated in the "Zo geknipt 2" monthly sew along. This month everybody makes either a toilet bag or a makeup bag with a diagonal zipper. The advantage of the diagonal zipper, beside giving an interesting look, is to create an easier access to the content of the bag.

This project is ideal for scraps. The amount of fabric you need per pattern piece is small and especially if you hack the assembly process like I did. In the advised method you first put together rectangle pieces and after sewing the zipper and the side pieces you cut the top part as a whole. I read here that this leaves quite some waste. I prefer to throw away as few fabric as possible so I decided to just cut the actual necessary pieces with a seam allowance.

My woven scrap pile is meager and I did not want to cut from uncut pieces, it might turn out I just needed that amount in the end (I buy and cut lean). My knit scrap pile is taking up one sixth of my entire fabric stash so using some of those seemed ideal. I ironed on a very heavy (but cheap) stabilizer to remove the stretchiness and make the fabric sturdy. This was extra important because I decided not to line the bag.

To mix it up a bit more I used an invisible zipper. The zipper can be part of the special details of the bag, I have seen several beautiful examples of pipping matching the zipper color, but well I just wanted something different. I feared that the very sturdy stabilizer would create problems with the invisible zipper. Therefore at first I used a slightly less sturdy stabilizer for the top triangles. But the less stable one actually left the triangle still a bit stretchy. One of the two triangles had to be re-cut (I had not mirrored the part piece correctly leaving me with a piece I had to throw away, I do feel the irony about me wanting to cut lean to avoid scraps, believe me). The re-cut triangle I did stabilize with the sturdy stabilizer. In the end the sturdier stabilzer (the darker purple) sewed up better.

For the pipping I used strips of knit fabric that I used for the muscle tee. I put a small cord in it of which I bought 100 meter at a local do-it-yourself store. The strips of fabric that I could cut from the shirt were not long enough so I had to create some overlap. The big advantage of having knit pipping is that it will not fray. I find the best way to connect loose parts is by simply putting the next piece over the old, without making a seam. A seam creates a bulky whole.

I sewed the pipping on the bottom piece with my serger with pipping foot, this went very well. The serger cut the excess fabric beautifully. I put the final two parts together I on my sewing machine with my blind zipper foot. The pipping is as thick as a zipper and I succeeded in sewing very closely to the side of the pipping. When the bag was finished I saw that I did not anticipate correctly how the side pieces would end up, creating a side up bunny family. For a next bag I now know better. This bag was confiscated by my eldest and she definitely does not mind the imperfections.