Compagnie M hack

I do not need an excuse to perform a sewing hack, still the competition of Compagnie M got my creative juices flowing (even quicker). You will surely have heard about the big competition in which sewists can compete in three different leagues. I was planning a Mix and Match entry (not changing any pattern piece, just a different combination), but in the end my project did became a hack.

The base of the dress is the Ileana, I had a well fitting pattern due to the pattern test. Both the bodice and skirt did not get any alterations. Most of you will immediately recognise the Lotta flaps on this garment. I love those flaps  (I used them here) I used both the neck and the pocket flaps for the current dress. For the pockets I had to perform a small pattern hack. The circle skirt called for different shaped base pocket, I did keep the outside look of the Lotta pocket, only the "inside" was changed.

I love front closures (keeping in mind gym classes etc). After already hacking the button placket during testing, I went for a front visible zipper this time. I was inspired by the zipper Nina that I sewed (and wrote a tutorial for). I was planning to let the zipper end mid skirt, but when I realised the zipper was long enough to run over the entire dress, I changed my mind.

The second part of the hack are the sleeves. I started with the length of the Mara combined with the shape of the Louisa (so that wasn't a hack yet right, just mixing), but when I put the sleeves on my daughter's arm the sleeves were too wide of my liking. I made the sleeves narrower towards the wrist.

Both fabrics are from Soft Cactus and the flowers have a nice retro Compagnie M feel. The flower buttons are again the flower snaps, I still love them a lot.The zipper is a separating zipper that I bought in a multi colored set through Ali-express once. I finished the hem with some home made bias tape, just as Marte advises.

The circle skirt twirls perfectly, if you want a happy daughter, just make her a dress with a circle skirt.

This last picture is too white, there was too much sun because she ran from the shade. I had forgotten to turn my camera to Raw, so I couldn't make the picture better than this, I still love it though. She was running and twirling so happy, I had to share. For my daughter, and therefore for me this dress is already a winner.

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).

Itch to stitch Birthday Tour

Parties are fun, especially digitally ones where I do not have to arrange a babysitter for my kids. Today, I am part of Itch to Stitch's party, she celebrates her one year anniversary. Like for a non-digital party, I dressed up. To avoid showing up in exactly the same pattern as somebody else, I did put my own spin on the pattern.

The pattern I used is the Kathryn shirt/dress. I bought this pattern a few months ago when it released and the anniversary tour was the perfect occasion to sew it up. I bought the pattern because of the folding detail on the chest. I suspected that this would be a perfect pattern for my shape and I was right. Although the pattern doesn't explicitly support different cup sizes like many of Itch to stitch's pattern do (those come in 5 different cup sizes, it is very easy to make the shirt fit your front perfectly. For the fulled part of the shirt I choose the size that corresponds with my chest size and I graded down to the size that corresponds with my waist size. I assume that this pattern is flattering on any breast type. For the fuller breasted the pattern is perfect to create enough space, for the smaller breasted I assume it creates more volume.

Due to the fall weather conditions, I added sleeves to the pattern. I used a retail bought sweater as example. The Kathryn pattern has short (Dollman) sleeves, and I simply added (3/4) sleeves with a flat head. Due to the flat head, construction was super simple, no cruve sewing. This constitutes to a very easy sew, which would be perfect for beginners. I drew the sleeves based on that retail sweater's. The sleeves of the original sweater are relatively tight and I kept them that way, I really like the result. What about a sleeve extension Kennis Wong?

The fabric is called "Leaves" and is from Lillestoff, it is an oldy and probably not available anymore. I bought it last years and I still love the colors. I had one and a half meter of fabric and that should have enough for this dress, but I managed to cut the front bodice upside down. Due to the pleats, the bodice piece looks a bit weird and because I sewed this on a sewing date, I wasn't paying enough attention and the leaves ended up upside down. I considered claiming creative freedom for a moment and just using it, but decided against it. I managed to use that wrongly cut piece again, by cutting a sleeve from it, but this mistake made it impossible to cut a new front bodice plus the skirt pieces etc. It almost fitted, almost.. I solved this issue by just sewing a small extra piece to the bodice, did you spot the extra seam?

I flared out the skirt part of the dress, the little girl inside of me demanded a bigger skirt. The fit was immediately perfect.  I finished the hem with my "signature  style" double colored twin needle seam. It had been a while since I last used a twin needle. Now a days I usually use a zigzag to finish my seams, but the colors of this fabrics just begged for double colored seams.

Of course I am not the only guest to this party, make sure you mingle and check out the creations of the other bloggers through out the coming days. Like all good parties there is also a goodiebag with sale codes (20off, 30off and 40off) you will get 20% off one pattern, 30% off two patterns, or 40% off three or more patterns. Participate in the rafflecopter to see if your goodiebag has the golden ticket.

Scruffy Badger Time | Call Ajaire | Wally and Grace | Sew Wrong | Bella Sunshine Designs Seaside Notions | Made by Jaime | Sweet Little Chickadee | Inspinration | Friends Stitched Together Stoney Sews | Just Keep Sewing | My Little Sewing Dreams | Allie J. | Creative Counselor Love, Lucie | Girls in the Garden |  FABulous Home Sewn | Goddess of Sewing | Rebel & Malice The Telltale Tasha | House of Estrela | Made by Sara | Sew Shelly Sew | Red Knits

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The featured designer of the day will give away 2 patterns to a lucky winner:

 Baste + Gather

Straight Stitch Designs

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Hey June Handmade

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Minimi Project, Dungarees skirt pattern test

I love buying fabric, sometimes I think I sew to be able to buy new fabric. When I see fabric I see possibilities, endless possibilities and need those possibilities in my stash. Due to that desire I have an extensive stash, but besides my big new fabric stash I also have a big pile of clothes to be upcycled. I regularly upcycle clothes, like here, here and here. Upcycling fabric gives an extra type of satisfaction, if you haven't done it yet, try it!

When you are upcycling clothes you often have to be extra creative (yeah!) in how to cut your pattern pieces from the existing garment. I feel that the most satisfying upcyled project not just uses the fabric from the original garment, but some elements of the garment are still recognisable in the new one. This dungarees skirt is a perfect example of that.

A few weeks ago, one of the designers behind the Minimi project placed a testers call on Facebook. The Minimi project already realised a book, and now they are also going into pdf patterns. I did my usual digital wave dance and got the opportunity to test. The pattern is designers for upcylcing a man's shirt into a dungarees dress, but the instructions can also be used to make the dungarees from scratch.

The idea of these dungarees is that you mis-button the shirt and than cut the pattern pieces, this way you create a front pleat. I really love the idea, it is so cleaver! I first planned to use a shirt with stripes, but due to the fact that you cut the pattern vertically I opted for a uni colored version.

When we had to pick a size, there was no size table available and I picked a 86 for my two and a half year old. She usually needs a smaller chest size, but because I couldn't check it, I wanted to be sure that she would fit it for a while. The dungarees are indeed a bit big, I kept the length a bit long as well, this way she can grow in it. Although the chest area is a bit wide, I think it is fine for these dungarees, this way she can really wear a sweater under them in the winter. When the weather will become nicer in spring, she will be able to wear it with a thing shirt under it.

The original shirt had been in a bag for a while and although I ironed the hell out if it, I didn't manage to make it wrinkle free (I know I should have washed it before cutting etc, but I do not have that type of patience). A bit wrinkled is how it will look on her anyway, because she will be allowed to play in it. A wash will do wonders for the wrinkles, but I usually do not dare to wash before I make pictures, Murphy's law and all. Surely there will a new colored garment in that wash, messing up everything, that really almost never happens, but when I am planning to make blog photos, I just do not dare to take the risk.

My sewing machine has all kinds of fun stitches that I never use. I thought this plain fabric would be ideal to decorate with one of those. So besides some brown top stitching, I also stitched little flowers on the the bottom hem.

The pattern is not available yet, but you can put yourself on the list to get informed when they will be. If you can not wait, you could always buy the book to get yourself some upcyling action.

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).  

Lili pattern release

Like her, I was over the moon when I received an email with the question if I would be willing to test a pattern. Although I have done several tests, this usually involves me (digitally) ridiculously waving with both hands, hoping to be picked. Designers do not (digitally) tap me on the shoulder asking me to test. I am not assuming I was at the top of their list, but I surely was having a small party behind my screen.

This joyful moment was in the spring of this year, and around May I sewed two dresses. It are summer dresses and have been in heavy rotation the last months. In case you are tempted to skip the rest of the post due to fall/winter season approaching, stop! The designers decided to add long sleeves as a free extension to the pattern, and oh my..,  that red dress look great! This dress, called "Lili" is the first dress of the pattern line "De Schatkaart".

The collar is clearly the thing that immediately grabs your attention. At first, I couldn't make up my mind about my feeling for that collar. I thought it definitely was an intriguing detail, but I feared that I wouldn't love the look on my kids. For the first dress I made, I made the collar as described and I was very pleased with the result. I especially love how the collar behaves like little sleeves and covers the shoulders. You can of course easily make the dress without the collar, that is totally up to you, or do it like her, she did removable collars.

Although I really like the first version, I decided against a second with the same collar, it is a very distinctive piece and having two in my daughters wardrobe seemed a bit much (and my hacker brain wanted to play). I had planned to make the second dress without collar, but because I liked the "sleeve effect" so much I drafted an alternative collar. One without the pleats. I used my last Finch Fabric (bought at Stoffenelf) on the bodice and didn't wanted to cover the animals ears, so I cut out a piece on the front. I sometimes go for drastic measures like that. After construction I realised that the pleats actually make the collar lie nicely on the shoulder. With my circular collar the effect is a bit different  but I still like it. My daughter picks this dress from her closet every time it is clean, so I think she does to (although that might be because of the skirt and fabric and not because of the collar).

The skirt has a few big pleats, I hadn't made pleats in a jersey skirt and was positively surprised about the nice result. For the first skirt I followed the instruction and pleated all pleats in one direction. I prefer my pleats to be symmetrical when measuring from the middle, so the second skirt has box pleats. The instructions suggested using woven fabric as an alternative, which I did with the second dress. The Soft Cactus matches the Finch Fabric wonderfully.

The pattern advised to make a little split at the back. Jersey dresses and shirts always easily fit my kids heads, so I asked permission to skip the split. The Snow white fabric is from Lillestoff by the way. Of course I added pockets.

The pictures were made in May, when my daughter's skin was in very bad condition, she looks much, much better now, but due to the colder weather I wasn't in the mood to re-shoot the pictures. The dresses still look great after many washes, so it really was a combination of bad weather and laziness.

You can buy the Dutch paper pattern at the shops on this list. As far as I know, you can not buy the pattern digitally (yet), but by spamming the designers with emails you might be able to persuade them. 

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 Billie hoodie

One of my Dutch Facebook groups baptised September as the hoodie month, meaning that we were challenged to sew a hoodie, any hoodie (woman's, kid's, dog's etc). I saw it as a sign to finally sew the Knight hoodie, but I managed to run out of time again. It is a perfect pattern for the coming Kids Clothes Week though, so maybe next month.

Due to my procrastinating, I needed a quick hoodie pattern. Last week, I came across somebody who made a Billie hoodie. Seeing that I am using the Billie pattern a lot lately and now know exactly how to make the perfect fit with it it on my kids, I used it to make my hoodie.

To increase the fun, I decided to make a reversible hoodie. I cut a centimeter extra seam allowance to accompany the double layer of fabric. A la Charlie I made a cut at the neckline. I sewed everything, except for the turning hole, with my serger. Also the neckline cut was done with the serger and I didn't stabilize the fabric.

The hood I based on the hood from this one. I made the hood slightly bigger because the older hoodie's neckline is being pulled up a bit when the hood is on. Ideally, I would have made the hood even higher, but I ran out of fabric. Both fabrics are from Lillestoff. I love the bright yellow and orange, I think they are great for fall.

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).