Christmas dress in border print

Small dresses is what made me want to sew. One of the first things I sewed totally on my own was a dress (which is unblogged) for my eldest. In the subsequent years I have sewed a lot of different types of items but small dresses still have a special place in my heart. In this post I show you the two latest additions to my girls wardrobes.

In blogland I had seen several dresses made of cotton with a border print. I wanted my girls to have such dresses and ordered a few different fabrics with border prints. The main dress I am showing you today is made from Michael Miller Origami Oasis (which I bought at Fabric.com). I bought one and a half yard to make a dress for my middle daughter. It is my first dress in woven cotton combined with long sleeves. I somehow always assumed that those long sleeves without stretch would not be comfortable, and chose to focus on knit dresses for long sleeves. In blogland I saw several long sleeved dresses in woven cotton and I decided to try it myself. The bodice part is the upper part of a Louisa dress (of which I used the same size earlier for a dress in knit). The sleeves fit perfectly and she can easily move her arms. If you were also doubting if you should make your playful girl a long sleeved dress, I can assure you, just do it.

 

The skirt part, I made by cutting the border from the fabric over the entire length and ruffled it to fit the bodice. I did not make side seams and simply put the seam at the back.  I added handmade pipping that was left from an earlier project. I did not line the dress (I have an earlier bad experience with lining, and did not want re-try it in my first long sleeves woven cotton dress) and finished the neckline with a piece of handmade bias of which I had made the pipping.

The dress quickly got a twirl test.


After cutting the fabric for the dress I saw that I still had a relatively large piece of bird fabric left. I therefore re-used the (free) Janneke pattern and managed to cut a Janneke for my youngest out of the "scraps". The dress I made my youngest earlier still fits perfectly.

I also managed to make a few pictures of them together. As you can see from the behind picture, I managed to find two spots in the fabric where I could easily put my invisible zipper without decapitating birds.

The dresses will probably be worn over Christmas. Therefore, besides linking up to sew and show from StraightGrain I also link up this post to the Project Run and Play Christmas link up.

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 day3: Pillow case dress

I am a member of a Dutch sewing Facebook group. In the last week a lot of people are sewing cloths from (cheap) animal printed pillow cases. I was not convinced from the start by after seeing some wonderful creations I jumped on the bandwagon. I just knew my kids would love them, and that is what matters most. I know there are much better and prettier fabrics out there, but I have an enormous stash of all kinds of fabrics that I have to sew up before buying new, but 1 euro pillow cases which include a zipper I could not pass on.

 On day 3 of KCW I had friends over, and during their visit I cut the fabric for this dress. Cutting is not sewing but I was planning on bending this rule a bit. But after they left, I decided to just "quickly" sew up the dress. Quickly and sewing is usually not a great combination especially due to that fact that the day was nearing its the end. This resulted in having to take out the blind zipper two times and having to unpick a seam but I just finished before midnight.

As expected my middle daughter loves the dress. The dress is a bit shorter than I planned, so it might have move to my youngest in the near future. After seeing the dress, my five year old son tried to convince me that a short dress like this could also work for a boy. We are very liberal when it comes to clothes but wearing a dress outside is over the line, even for me. Fortunately, I had already cut him a sweater as an alternative, which I will sew up tonight.

Janneke dress

Two weeks ago I won a piece of great fabric in a wonder full give away. The give away was connected to the one year anniversary of Mieke's blog and for this joyous occasion she also created a free baby girl dress pattern! The fabric came of the webshop LieselLove.

For next project I really have to measure twice and cut once. Although my cutting did not result in the same massacre as last week I did manage to wrongfully cut the back piece of the dress by cutting it on the fold. This resulted in no sewing allowance for the zipper. By making the back pleats slightly smaller and using an extreme small sewing allowance for the zipper I managed to work around it. The back piece is therefore still one piece below the zipper.

The one piece back of course created some troubles with the construction of the dress because now turning through the shoulder was not possible anymore. I tried two different ways of turning whilst having sewn shoulder, armholes and neck but I did not manage to find the solution (Although I feel there is one and probably will realize it after reading my Fawn Lilly instruction again). The end of the evening was nearing and I decided to just open up a shoulder and turn there. Afterwards I sewed up the shoulder by hand using invisible stitches. It worked out fine.

I love how the dress turned out. Thank you again Mieke! Based on the measurement table I chose the second size and lengthened it and the fit is perfect. On other blogs I usually love picture overloads, I hope you do too.

In case you are wondering what that box with number in her hand is... We store left over Lego pieces from Creator sets (never mind if you do not know this Lego line) together in a box with the number of the set on it. My little model was not really in the mood for smiling (or not crying for that matter) and I had to distract her. Not many things work better in at such a moment than things that make a lot of noise when shaken.

Project Run and Play: Signature style

I made it! I sewed along for  Project run and play all four weeks! It was very fun to do and I recommend everybody (who is not doing it yet) to do it next time. Looking at what others came up with is even more fun if you have tried yourself as well.

Well week four, signature style. I do not feel I have a sewing style, I also do not have a clothing style in general. I therefore decided on sewing my son a coat. That way all my kids would have received an outfit over the course of these four weeks. The coat would have come from Ottobre (which is my go to sewing magazine) and the coat would have been lined jersey (my go to fabric).


But then I saw this pin. I saw that it was a sleeve (of course) but I immediately thought neckline. I am a huge fan of children cloths that my kids can put on and close themselves. Besides saving time in the morning before school my kids prefer to be able to put on their cloths alone after gym as well. This is also why I loved the front of the dress from Big dill that inspired last weeks dress. I bought (and sewed) the Lilly Fawn dress because I was intrigued by the promise (and delivery) of a zipper/button free woven dress. Back to the pin of a sleeve that screamed neckline to me. I realized that a reversed tulip sleeve kind of neckline on a woven fabric dress should make it possible (for my eldest who has a totally square torso) to put on the dress without extra opening.

I started to draw something myself but quickly returned to my computer to restart pattern search. I searched on shawl collar and enter the Bimaa sweater. Many versions had passed me by and I already gotten the impression that this pattern should be something special but until that moment I hadn't seen it. For those few people that like me until a week ago have not given the Bimaa a close look, the Bimaa is a jersey pattern supporting three different collars. One of those collars is a shawl collar that perfectly fitted my plan.

I used the six year old collar version and made it slightly higher (a fix part of "my style" would have to be adjusting the pattern at least slightly). I took a general bodice I had lying around and paired it with a Lotta skirt. The Lotta pattern had been on my do to pile too long already, I love the pockets! I opted for a sleeveless version to make the likelihood higher that my daughter can put in on herself (in the past I had learned that small zipper and sleeveless dress pair well, small zipper and sleeves do not). Trying something new is something I love (can that me part of a style as well?) and I decided to go for pipping.

After last weeks success with making my own bias I assumed that making own pipping would be just as easy. Unfortunately, I had not realized that the seams in home made pipping (which did not bother me with bias sewing) complicate the sewing process of pipping significantly. I used my blind zipper feet which went okay in general (I made my own pipping thread by turning some thin yarn into a heavier thread, and I should have put more effort to make it a clear edged thread) but the blind zipper feet lost its way a bit when he met some seams. I probably should have also read up more on pipping before I started sewing this week (and not just relying on my memory of what I had read in the past). Long story short, the pipping is not as it should be, but lets label it "my style", I am not great in the small details.

The brown fabric is from Birch and both the facing and the fabric I used for the pipping are from Robert Kaufman. I bought a fat quarter pack a while ago and had not used it yet. The fat quarter contains all kind of gold fabrics that my daughter loves.

This long story has a happy ending, the dress fitted fine and (although she might have to practise a bit) it is possible to put the whole thing on by an almost 7 year old alone. To sum up my style: last minute change of plans, pattern mash up, not perfect finished, to me a new technique, un-ironed, zipper/buttonless, twirling dress with pockets.

Project Run and Play: Candy Candy

This blog post contains a very familiar story (at least I have read it in multiple blogs already). I stumbled upon Project Run and Play a while ago and read through the entire archive. I was very inspired by the designs and tutorials and dreamed about sewing along. I somehow never saw a theme announcement and was amazed how people knew what to sew that quickly.

Shortly after making my resolve to more actively blog about my sewing I did come across the Run and Play announcement themes! The first theme, 80's cartoon, which apparently excited a lot of people, actually scared me of a bit. Cartoon inspired cloths but no costumes, seriously no costumes.... I understood simply copying the cloths to also be in the costume department. I went through several option in my head but nothing really inspired me. I thought of rainbows, flutter sleeves and jumpsuits (looking at what people created I see many had these associations) but the project did not get a real shape in my head.

I had kinda already given up until I saw the first sew along projects coming in and read on Peaches and Bees  that she was also struggling with the theme at first but then just thought about what she watched in the 80's. I watched Candy Candy, according to wikipedia the original Japan show was in the 70's but in the Netherlands it was on television in the 80's. I have to admit that my most clear memories of the show is the bed spread I got (and still own) and a girl crying on a boat, but looking through the pictures of the show this week I found my inspiration. I loved the idea of a red apron dress and I immediately knew how to do it.

Last December I bought the Amaryllis dress pattern, because I simply had to have it. I had had several ideas on which fabric to use for it but the dress had not been made (or printed for that matter). I thought that if I would flip the back and the front of the dress, use two colors of fabric (one for each side) and  add a faux apron front I would have a pretty good apron style dress. I used two pieces of left over fabric, a sheet and a piece of red canvas like fabric that I once bought for making  pipping (this was at the start of my sewing adventure and had no idea how much I would need and just bought way to much. The red fabric was used totally, I even had to cut the circle skirt in three piece to make it fit. The front strings of the apron turned out a bit tight to turn, those two strings took more than an hour to turn!! I did not wanted to line the dress and that combined with my own adjustments did lead to a view construction confusions, but I am done with even some time to spare! Al in all I am satisfied with the result, I added some flutter sleeves because that seemed fitting with the whole theme.

No racoons here in the Netherlands (Candy Candy's pet) so my daughters favorite plush animals had to substitute.

 The red heart button came from my stash as well, the red and white match perfectly.

I assumed correctly that this dress would have a high spin factor, while spinning the fake underskirt shows, yeah! 

A sign to start again!

On Pinterest I saw this picture popping up a few times.The picture always makes me smile because I am often waiting for such "signs" and not only when buying stuff, "signs" also frequenlty it points in the direction of chocolate. But sometimes I miss a sign although I was clearly searching for one. I repeatedly stashed my digital shopping cart full with fort firefly fabrics, but somehow missed the sign to actually buy it, and than it was sold out....

Somewhere around the beginning of the year, while I was browsing the Birch website I stumbled upon the acorn trail. This new line is the follow up of the fort firefly line and it seems just as wonderfull. Although I had to wait a few months, I knew that I had to have that fabric with or without sign.

I live in the Netherland and had never bought fabric directly from the US but when I saw a great promotion on organic fabrics at Fabricworm.com, I could not resist. I ordered some beautiful fabrics at a discount, but because more people enjoyed this shopping sign, one of the fabrics I paid for ran out. The kind ladies at fabricworm.com asked me which fabric I wanted as a replacement and I admitted that I was waiting for the acorn trail. The acorn trail would not arrive for another two months but neither of us minded the wait.

Than something miraculous happened, the people at Birch actually provided me with a pre-sale piece of fabric to finalize my order! Two weeks ago I received some Laundry day fabric ( I know, I would be jealous too). This weekend I sew a lovely new dress for my eldest.

When I heard that I would receive the laundry day fabric before it would officially hid the stores I saw it as a sign. A sign to start blogging (again). I tried it in the past while still crocheting but somehow did not manage to post a lot. When I started sewing I did not think my projects were interesting enough for others, but this one I think others will appreciate. The pattern is hand drafted from an existing store bought dress, the body is actually one piece but looks like a bolero.

The acorn trail line will hit the stores around the end of september, and besides cotton and voile the fabric line will also have knits!! Oh my, I love knits. I am afraid this laundry day piece is only the beginning of my collection :)

p.s. Yeah I know I should have ironed the dress before pictures, but baby steps. She had already worn the dress to school because there was no time to make pictures in the morning. I was already proud that I made pictures outside ;)

Fawn Lily plus bonus jersey dress

The fawn lily dress was calling to me for a few months but I still had many other projects that I was planning to make (and already owned the pattern of). Then somehow the idea was born that I would sew two dresses for the twin daughter of a colleague.

Her twins are just a bit bigger than my eldest and I regularly receive great cloths and shoes (my daughter actually asked me the other day why daddies colleagues do not give her dresses). As a thank you I decided to make each of the twins a jersey dress and they were allowed to pick the fabric. One of the twins somehow managed to pick the one quilting cotton fabric that Lillestoff has (out of over 100 jersey fabrics) which is why I had to come up with a cotton pattern.

The Fawn Lily intrigued me because the dress does not have zipper. My daughter complained about the cotton dresses I made her in the past that they are hard to change out or into at school when they have gym. I showed some pictures to my colleague and she liked the dress. I happily bought the pattern and made two dresses. The pink one is actually for my eldest daughter but she was not home to model and my two year old was happy to fill in.

 The second twin received a planned jersey dress. adjusted an Ottobre pattern to resemble the design from a dress my colleague had seen in the store. I like the idea of the strings that have to be tight at the back (especially because my kids are skinny). This dress pattern goes on my to do pile, lets hope not another great new pattern surfaces (I am just kidding, I am always hoping for new patterns!).