Louisa dress

Today a friend sent me a message that Compagnie M is searching for testers! After reading the tester call I became even more excited. Marte is searching for people sewing for boys and coincidentally I have a cute small boy in need of pants.

Like I mentioned he has grown a lot and besides shirts he needs trousers. My son is does not a throw anything on type and he is especially very difficult when it comes to pants. He has a very sensitive skin and prefers to be in "home" pants all the time. I have sewn him a few jersey trousers and although some had pockets it just does not resemble a normal pair of trousers. Sewing him trousers has been om my to do list for more than a year but somehow I kept putting it of. Last week I actually bought him three cotton trousers, he liked the fabric a lot but the trousers were very wide. Besides his sensitive skin the second reason why I should sew him pants is that he is very skinny compared to his length (judging from store bought pant sizes). 

A few weeks ago I have sewn a Louise dress and I did not show that one yet. Hoping to convince to make me one of her testers I will dedicate the rest of this post to the jersey Louisa dress. My son is actually photo bombing here, making the composition of the picture a bit awkward.

About a year ago I bought this dog jersey fabric at Joyfits. I bought half a meter because I was planning to make it into a shirt for my son. Somehow the fabric did not make it into my sons wish list and the fabric remained on the pile. In the meantime my three year old daughter decided she only wants to wear dresses and skirts. She mostly owns hand me downs from her older sister and brother and that combined wardrobe did not contain much of any of those (Until four, my daughter wore pants because I thought they were more convenient, when she started school she got her own opinion about cloths and trousers were not worn again). I am still very much on a jersey loving cloud and therefor created jersey Louisa dress. It could have been even a bit smaller but my daughter loves it and that is enough.

Julia (n) sweater and more

Since last winter my sons limbs have grown in length but not to much in width. The means that especially the arms of some of his shirts are becoming too short. I gladly jumped on the "growing" issue and created three new shirts (to start with).

For a while I wanted to try the Julia sweater pattern of Compagnie M because I assumed that he would especially like the pouch in which his hands can touch. Although the pattern has a girly name I think it works great for boys as well. The pouch it not very visible lying flat like this but it is a great feature. I felt that this robot fabric which contains both boy and girl robots would work for boys and girls. We are trying to raise our kids relatively gender neutral and my son does not object to having some girls on his shirt, but I can not totally convince myself yet somehow. Why is it that having a 50% girl robot population and one flower among male robots makes a fabric kind a girly somehow? It seems that I also need some gender natural re-raising.


Using more Lillestoff I created a firemen and a policemen shirt. For both I used the same Ottobre raglan pattern but the police shirt is spiced up by asymmetrically cutting the front panel and adding a pocket. I also added a small matching application by cutting it from the police fabric.

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 ;)

Doll crocheting

If you have a certain experience with any crafting skill you might not actually need more crafting books, from the pictures you can make an estimated guess on how to make it. But we all know the difference between needing a new toothbrush and needing chocolate.  In the strictest sense the toothbrush is probably more useful and responsible to buy but who wouldn't go for the chocolate if they had to choose...


I need crafting books the way I need chocolate (and crafting supplies for that matter). A few months ago I came across this book online and bought it as a gift (because I already own a lot of cute crochet pattern books that are still waiting for their first use). The person I bought it for had not announced her birthday party yet but I assumed it would come. The friend in question decided not to celebrate her birthday that year and the book staid on in my shelves. It had been screaming out to me since I received it and after a few months I caved in and used the book myself.

I had created two Arne and Carlos dolls in the past which took me a bit under a week to make. This doll is super quick compared to those. The day I started I went to an indoor playground with my kids and when we went home a few hours later I had created the head, legs, body and an arm! At first I was a bit sceptical, especially the body seemed very weird, but after I joint all limps he/she became very cute.


When I was finalizing the first doll the son of a friend saw the book and loved the "superman" picture. He asked his mother if she could crochet but she couldn't neither did his 7 year old sister he found out. My kids have too much already so I decided he could have the doll. When he doll was ready to fly from our house my kids were actually sad that he would go which is why I created two others that would stay.

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!).

Mozaik and the fun of the creating process

I have always felt the need to be creative. When I was a small kid I naturally could not buy the materials I desired, and had to be creative in the true sense of the word. One of my all time high creative adventures is probably when I was around 11 years old and saw in a book a picture of a glass painting. I remember that it was a flower, but no other details. I lacked several of the needed tools, for one glass and the other glass paint. I did however owned a stash of puffy textile paint (which I never dared to use because of my lack of drawing skills) and like most families we owned clingy plastic and cardboard boxes. I simply made a cardboard frame with a cut out window, glued/stick the clingy wrap to it. I put the whole thing on glass picture example and copied the lines with textile puffy paint. It turned out great and my mother put it on the mantle piece. That evening a guest came by and was curiously toughed the paint (which had not dried yet) and smudged the whole thing. My mother was afraid that I would be upset and almost did not dare to tell me. I was not upset, I liked the journey of creating it, not so much the finished object. Although I liked the "painting" I did not redo it.

I usually have a urge to try something new and the finished project sometimes even becomes a burden. A few weeks ago my sister and I went to a mosaic workshop (the workshop part was massively overstated). I did not have a clear project in mind about what I was going to make but I did decide beforehand a fruit bowl. I very much liked the process and was not dissatisfied with the result (the picture was made directly after filling the whole with cement and therefore the whole thing is still a bit white) but the bowl did end up in the trash yesterday. The whole thing was simply not that practical and did take up a lot of space on our dining table. I could have stored it somewhere, but I knew from experience that it would had to go somewhere in the future. Somehow throwing away a finished project is much easier than throwing out a failed partly finished project. When throwing away a failed not yet finished project I am reminded of the failure and feel like failure, throwing away a finished project just provides space to try something new. Is that just me?

New coat

When I was browsing through Ottobres for the first time I saw some coat patterns. I loved several of them but I could not imagine being able to sew those. Now I have come at that stage that I feel comfortable to try any type of pattern and was feeling up for a coat.

I was triggered to think about  a coat because when I asked my daughter what to sew for her she requested a coat-dress. I did not get more information out of her besides this fancy name. I understood it to be a coat that looks like a dress, so a coat that can twirl.

The winter is kind a leaving us which made me decide to make a lined rain coat. I bought some laminated fabric and let my daughter choose a lining from our stash. The pink polka dots combined with the yellow fabric did make think twice about my decision to let my daughter choose but in the end I love the combination. I used a coat pattern from Ottobe 1 2010 (adding a hood myself). I made the picture inside with flash which is why the coat looks very shiny, usually it does not shine.

I decided to close the coat with three snaps only. My daughter ruined her winter coats zipper because she is always squatting on the playground. This way of closing the coat makes squatting possible.