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). 

Penny play dress part two

When I showed you the Theo I sewed at the beginning of this month, I mentioned that my sewing machine has some thread tension issues. Yesterday, I handed her over to my machine repair shop, so this week I can only use my serger or my old machine. It is always bad to be almost forced to have a (small) sewing stop like this, but this time it is not that bad. This week I will be preparing (cutting paper patterns and fabric) for next week, the kids clothes week.

For the previous two KCW's I was not prepared when the week started, didn't have a clear plan and nothing was cut. This time as a contributor I would like to do things differently. Are you participating in KCW? If your are not yet planning so, please look into it. It really is great. The goal is to work an hour each day on making children's clothes (deciding on the pattern, drawing and cutting fabric all count if you want them to), but if you turn out to only have found time in the weekend (or have no project finished) it really is no problem at all. It already is just great fun to see what everybody is creating, and nobody will complain if you do not show project. So if you are interested in seeing cute hand made kids clothes just go to the KCW community website and sign up. This way you will see all the eye candy and might even win some prices.

The dress I am showing you today was actually sewn and photographed more than a month ago but somehow didn't make it to the blog yet, although I already mentioned the shoot here. After I adjusted the Free Penny play suit pattern to a dress, I almost immediately started a  new one, I loved it so much. When my middle daughter pointed to some fabrics in my closet that I didn't really have a purpose for anymore, I quickly turned them into two garments, the first one I posted here.

The unicorn fabric is from Hamburger Liebe and I bought it to check out the quality of their jersey and because I assumed my eldest would love the pink overload. Against expectation my daughter didn't love it and it just went on the pile (although the fabric quality is great). Fortunately I have more girls to sew for and like I mentioned earlier my middle daughter did love it. I combined the very colorful unicorn fabric with a plain jersey from Lillestoff.

While sewing the dress, I tried something new, I saw in a tv show that you can also gather your fabric with a serger. Just serge the side and pull some of the strings. Probably I didn't pull the right strings, (although I tried them all), because It didn't really work. The fabric gathered a bit, with every pull but I had to make many, many pulls. Gathering with the sewing machine really fits my sewing style much better. I just went with it, but the gathering turned out far from even and now I have a double locked seam, which is a bit stiff. The main things is that I tried a new technique so on that note the gathering experiment was very successful.

The dress has pockets in the color of the bodice and I finished the bottom seam in my signature style two colored twin needle stitch.

When I was trying out the settings of the camera I dressed her in her father's hoodie, because the weather was a bit chilly. When I took the hoodie off, my model kept complaining about the cold, refusing to smile, so to top the look we combined the whole thing with pink tights.

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). 

Baby outfit in Finch fabrics

Like I wrote in my previous post, I bought multiple of Finch fabrics. I also bought 30 cm of the cactus print at Stoffenelf. Due to the fact that my youngest was passed over on the shirt I planned from the girl fabrics, I decided to use the cactus (which I had planned for my son) for her.

The leggings are made from the free Emma and Mona pattern and the shirt/tunic started out with the free Janneke  pattern. I forwent the pleated front for just a little flare (more the amount of fabric didn't allow). The sleeves are from a onesie pattern I used earlier as well. For this outfit I didn't cut any new paper pattern pieces.

The contrasting yellow is again from the shirt I confiscated from my husband. This time I also reused the ribbing. To avoid overlapping lock stitches at the centre back, I started sewing on the ribbing on the shoulder. This resulted in an off centre back seam of the ribbing, I still have enough to practice. I added small empty piping to both the front and back. I finished my seams with yellow double needle stitching.

I have two cactuses left, I considered making an application for the shirt, but I feared this would have been too much. I have just stored them for later use. All our kids have a favorite plush animal, my little one loves this bunny and only let go when I gave her the flowers. Multiple flowers, because one was not interesting enough, although throwing it down was a fun game.

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). 

A salvaged dress

Finch fabrics just released their first fabric line. All the fabrics are a good quality border printed jersey. I was intrigued and ordered three different ones (at stoffenelf). I received the fabrics yesterday afternoon and immediately turned one into a dress. I bought this fabric with the intention of making our smallest girl a shirt, so I ordered one panel of 33 centimeter wide (160 centimeter long). When the fabric arrived plans changed, and I turned it into a dress for my middle daughter. The title of this post refers to the fact that when I finished the dress yesterday evening, the fit was off. I had put in pockets and because of the shape of the dress they gaped open and the dress was a bit too short. After a good night of sleep, I sat back behind my serger and now things are much better.

I only had a 33 centimeter wide panel so I had very few scraps. Only a few strips with a  2 centimeter (maximum) width. I cut the lining and pockets from a different uni colored jersey. I used the free Penny play suit pattern again. I love the shape of the bodice. I simply lengthened the pattern with an extremely small amount of flare (the maximum my 33 centimeter wide panel allowed) and put a ruffle at the bottom. The direction of the fabric in the ruffle is different from the bodice. I cut the flower part vertically in two to make two strips of 16 centimeter wide. The fact that the direction of the fabric is different doesn't matter, because stretch and recovery are great.

I somehow wanted the girls on my daughters chest and not at the bottom of the dress. Now, looking at the finished dress, I do not think it is much better than the way the fabrics was originally designed. I might even have liked it better with the girls at the bottom. The girls are printed in such a way that one of my sides had three whole girls and one had two whole girls and two half ones. The two half girls nicely disappeared in the seam so the back just has two girls.

Like I mentioned at the beginning, the first version of this dress had pockets. When my girl put the dress on it looked strange. Even if I pushed the pockets totally to the front they still created a thicker part around her hips and the pockets gaped open. The dress just looked too small. This morning, I used the seam ripper, took the pockets off and now the fit at her waist is perfect. Yesterday evening I feared the dress was becoming a bit too long so I put a relatively wide seam in the bottom. This morning I also removed my twin needle stitches and added a wavy rolled hem to salvage all length. The jersey easily overstretched on my sewing machine, so I thoroughly steamed the seam yesterday. The fabric will need a wash for the stitches and hem line to disappear totally.

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).

Finally, my first Theo (without buttonholes)

Two weeks ago, when I posted about my Cisse, I mentioned that I also own the Theo pattern from Zonen09. Every time I saw another Theo in blog land, I was excited but somehow never came around sewing one. Then, Jo Bee from Jurkjes and shirtjes challenged me and we made a deal to both sew a Theo. She has posted about her sewing process of the Theo yesterday. She wrote that without our deal, she might have given up on her project, but now she pushed trough (the shirt wasn't finished yet but she had good hopes to finish it on time, so check out her site a bit later). I had a similar experience. I had some other sewing project I wanted to do before I started the Theo and than somehow it was Sunday evening. I wanted to make pictures of a finished Theo on Wednesday to be able to post on Thursday morning. This left me just three sewing evenings so I really had to start! Without our deal I wouldn't have started for sure.

It took me one evening to cut the fabric and another (not too long) evening to make the contrasting corners and iron on all the stabilizer fabric. I washed the fabric a long time ago and put it in my closet without ironing. Taking out the wrinkles totally turned out to be impossible. On the pictures you can still see them a bit, this will be better after its next wash, but a good lesson for next time. If I wash my fabric I have to iron it well before I put it away. Then on Tuesday evening I started putting the shirt together. I sewed a small hour past my usual (23:00 h) bedtime  and managed to finish all steps except for the buttonholes. Those buttonholes were the thing that I dreaded most.The part that scares me is that you do it totally at the end of your project, the shirt is finished, and than you can easily ruin the whole thing by doing the holes wrong. What contributed to the closure problem was the fact that I didn't have nice matching buttons (I do not know what I was thinking, that they somehow magically would appear), and when I checked my snap collection for brown buttons I saw that their color didn't match the brown of the corners. I went to bed because I knew making a decision on the closing now would yield bad results.

In bed I thought about my transparent snaps. I planned to cut small brown circles from my contrasting fabric and just fake the right color brown snaps. So the next day, in the afternoon I cut small circles (I wanted no fabric peeking out from under the side of the button) and tried to put them on the shirt. The transparent buttons I have are size T3, those are the smaller type of snaps. I already experienced that they can not be put on a few layers of jersey, but I was surprised to find out that they also can not bear three layers of thin cotton and two layers of thin interfacing. I know it sounds like a lot now, but it really isn't that thick. After ruining five transparent snaps I let my perfect idea go. I took another look at my snap collection and decided to go for bronze stars. The fabric also has small stars, so that kind of matches. The bronze is far from the same color at the brown, but it just has to do. The T5 snaps easily went trough the layers and would have easily gone through a double amount, but I think they are stable enough.

The Theo has great instructions and, if followed the shirt has a very high quality finish. Many seams are hidden. I was intrigued and decided to actually follow instructions for a change. I even drew an exact 1 cm seam allowance everywhere! I surprised myself. I used a seam allowance measurement tool and relatively easily drew seam allowances next to the pattern lines. I always use the color markers from my kids to draw both on pattern paper and on fabric (they wash out easily). I held a marker next to the measurement tool and moved the tool around the pattern piece while keeping an exact 1 cm distance (I used both hands for this). In about one minute I drew around a whole pattern piece like this. I have seen tricks with two pencils glued together, but in that case you might not have one cm exact and I fear that the markers might move from each other a bit. If the angle you are holding them in is of, you also get less than 1 cm. What are your favorite ways to draw seam allowances, usually I just eye ball it?

I bought the main fabric at modes4u more than a year ago. It is from an old collection of Birch and I bought one meter (1.12 m wide) with the goal to make my son a shirt. When I ordered one meter I didn't have any idea about how much fabric such a project requires and just guested it would be enough. Now, I feared that the one meter rockets wouldn't have been enough for long sleeves.  So, when Jo proposed to make short sleeves I jumped on that. With hindsight it probably would have been possible fabric wise, but time wise it wouldn't have fit for sure (long sleeves require a different more time consuming finish). The contrasting brown is also from Birch and although I bought them at the same time I wasn't planing on using them together, but I think they look great together.

To spice up the shirt I did all visible stitching in a matching brown thread. I really like the result. These stitches finally made me accept that my machine has a problem with thread tension. I was in denial for a few months, pretending that it is normal if your bobbin thread shows on the right side (using matching bobbin thread makes denial easy). But well it isn't. Now I can clearly see that the inside of the shirt,(which I did with white thread to match the fabric back) has a nice clean finish, the front shows white bobbin. For this particular project it isn't a big deal, it kind of matches nicely with the white from the print, but I do have to look into it. I fear it isn't just the manual tension, because I tried playing with those already. I really have to get my machine checked out professionally. The repair shop is 20 minutes from my home (in a direction I usually never go) and I can not park close to it. The machine will be in at least a few days... Really bad prospects.

My son loved the shirt and immediately ordered a few more. My fears that he wouldn't want to wear it were ungrounded. Next time he wants a hood on it though. So, I have some challenges ahead. I am planning to combine the Theo with the Merry go Rounds shirt, I know the shirt itself has some sizing issues lets see if I can tackle those.

It is clearly a boy pattern, I bought it last year and I sewed it with an april deadline, so I will also link it up to sew your pattern stash.

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).

Reversible Easter dresses to wear the whole year round

After making our newest doll two reversible knit dresses, I wanted to try the same technique on a bigger dress. I took two fabrics from my stash, one with bunnies and flowers (which I bought at Suz designers stoffen) and one very special digital print jersey (bought at Joyfits). It is a panel and it shows a picture of a forest with animals drawn on it. I bought the fabric at the same time as this one. Deciding what to make from it, and how to cut it, was even harder because the fabric is actually just one big picture and I kind a wanted to use every part of it.

I am all for breaking the rules and especially my own apparently. Last week I stated that every dress should have pockets to immediately ignore this rule the next week. Due to the reversibility, putting in pockets would mean putting a double thick pocket (both sides would need its own set). I feared this would create strange bumps so I left the pockets out. I will explore reversible pocket possibilities another time, because I know I should be able to use one set of pockets, but I wanted a quick project this time.

I love making this type of the dress, all seams can be done with a serger (with the exception of 10 cm side seam which you have to close by hand). No regular sewing machine needed, no binding, no hemming, lovely!

After finishing the dress for my middle daughter, I saw I still had a nice piece of both fabrics left. I therefore decided to give my eldest the same type of dress. I didn't have enough digital forest to cut both a back and front, so I opted for a plain back back. I couldn't cut both the back and front in one piece from the bunnies either, but there I made a seam at the back between the skirt and bodice.

I love the fact that although the dresses are made from the same panel, the forest part of the dresses are different. I did succeed in putting a bunny on both fronts though. My girls both liked the green bunnies better than the forest, I prefer the forest. I think these are perfect all-year-round dresses. In winter and fall the forest print looks lovely combined with dark colored tights and shirt. In the pictures my eldest is wearing black and my middle daughter is wearing dark blue. The light green outside is perfect for warmer weather. The dresses can than be worn without clothes underneath. The pictures were made on a nearby street. I did not wanted to really undress my daughters in public and the weather also didn't allow sleeveless either, so I used same shirt and tights for the spring/summer side as well.

I drew both from regularly used dress pieces. For my eldest daughter I used the Louisa base like here (this time I added some flare at the bottom), and the dress for my middle daughter has the Princess castle dress from Ottobre as its base.

From the digital jersey a small piece with a lovely squirrel remains. I wasn't in the mood now, but I will use him in one of my coming project. He might make it into one of my Kids Clothes Week projects. He fits the wild thing theme perfectly. Today I posted my second post as  KCW contributor, check it out here.

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). 

A doll and a wardrobe

Sewmamasew is organizing the six weeks of love for softies. At the start of the six weeks they featured a Bamoletta doll. I checked up on it and loved it. The faces are extremely inviting. I was intrigued by the nose, where did that shape come from. I found out the doll is a Waldorf type of doll and the head is first shaped and later covered with jersey. Bambolettadolls has uploaded a few YouTube movies showing how such dolls are made and the internet has many other resources as well, so I wanted to give making one myself a try.

I tried to make it work with materials I had at home, I own a lot of everything. I dyed some  jersey from a plain white shirt with tea to make the jersey skin colored. I used the book My own rag doll to create the body. Earlier, I made a doll from the book and the result was not that great. I didn't do a satisfactory job om embroidering the face and I didn't understand how to to the hair. Sewing the filled limps on the body is a challenge. When I did that step for this doll, I had learned that the best result is reached if you leave the back almost totally open (the bottom should be sewed for two centimeter, the rest up to the neck has to be open).

For the head you should use wool, but I  just used pillow filling. I took a stocking and filled it with a round ball of filling and created a size which I thought that would work. The next step is tying some thread to create the eye line and nose. I sewed a head shaped jersey sack and pushed the head in there. Following the Bomboletta instructions I embroidered eyes and mouth. The hair instructions from Bamboletta are also great. I used plain yarn for the hair and I tied the hair in two ponytails.

Due to the fact that wool has more body and recovery, my doll is missing a chin. But even without chin, I am still satisfied, especially because my kids love her. If I make another, and my eldest would love me to do that, I will also tie some thread at the bottom of the face to shape a chin.

An important part of playing with a doll are the clothes. A good doll has a great wardrobe. I looked through my never ending pile of  jersey scraps and at random choose a few. To make my life easier I decided to go for reversible dresses. In reversible clothes it unnecessary to separately bind the neckline, arms and bottom hem, which can be a pain for these small clothes! I made two dresses but these count as four dresses. The drew the pattern for these dresses based on the dolls body template.

Ivy and Kim you were both interested in the kam snaps, please send me an email (inspinration (at) gmail.com) and we will discuss how to make you both happy.

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).