I'll sew you

This week I'm enjoying my autumn break. A whole week to do some much needed sewing. The plan is to do some easy sewing. Nothing too complicated. Last friday I started on a cardigan for which I revisited the pattern I used  here  and   here . And my next make is already finished as well: a nightgown, made from a lovely cotton jersey which is a dream to work with! I already made one before with the same type of fabric (black with flowers) and it gets worn a lot. The fabric I used is bought with this nightgown in mind. I thought it would be fun to show you how I finished the neckline and armscyes. It's a very easy method and I prefer it over the method where you fold the band and sew it on, double layered. It's a thin line between stretching the band too much and causing puckers or not stretching it enough so it won't lay flat. For me it's hard to get that right. But with this foldover method it's actually easy-peasy.  Make sure when you cut your pattern you don...

Actually this blog should be about the #4 (and last) fruit of my sewcation back in spring, but that one is about pants-fitting and I still haven't taken the right pictures for it. I do however have pictures of other projects to show. This summerdress is one of them.  (Pardon the blue shoes I'm wearing. They are not matching very well with the dress, but at this point my head was almost exploding with a headache and the shoes were the last thing on my mind. I don't know why I chose one of the hottest days of summer to take pictures of 4 different outfits.........) Image from KnipMode August 2017 As you can see in the linedrawing, the original pattern  is a jumpsuit. The first time I saw it in KnipMode I was immediately drawn to the designlines. But a jumpsuit is just not for me. However, it was clear to me that I could easily hack this pattern and make a dress of it by turning the pants into a skirt. All I had to do was extend the vertical seamline of the pants at centerfron...

Last week I was enjoying a much needed vacation, which in fact has been a sewcation, just as planned. The muscles in my neck and back are sore from sitting in an unhealthy position. (Note to self: must do something about that position!) I managed to sew a cardigan, a skirt, a dress and I took some time on pants-fitting. Each item will get its own blogpost because I’ve decided that, apart from informing (inspiring?) you, I want this blog to be a documentation of what I have sewn. So let’s start with the cardigan in a fuchsiapink, very pretty lace jersey. ( Here you can read about the first time I made this cardigan. ) The colour is almost a neon pink, but surprisingly enough it is totally wearable and I like it on me. Here I'm wearing it with a lilac tanktop.  A colourful combination!  without the belt (I prefer it closed though...) I’m still on the fence about wether I like it as a garment  In other words: if I will wear it or not. The major pro...

                                                                                                          Normally this is a chronological blog, but with this cardigan I'm breaking that rule. This was already made in december. Animal print is a trend that has been here for a while and is probably not going anywhere soon. I still have to get used to wearing it and feel very selfconscious if I do. Especially when half of my body is covered in it. But it was not made to hang in the closet so today I was 'brave' and wore it to work. At least, it's perfect for casual friday. It is a simple pattern and a simple make. I took my time with the front- and necklineband. The only thing I changed was the armscye. T...

In my earlier years of sewing I didn't have a fabricstash. I bought 1, 2 or max 3 pieces and sewed them up, before I bought other fabric. Then the internet came and I started reading about other sewists who bought lots and lots of fabrics. Pictures of enormous fabricstashes....it made my mouth water....and yes I must admit, influenced me! Slowly but surely I started buying more and more. You could say that's where my addiction started. My plans couldn't catch up with the need  want of new fabric so I started buying without a plan. And that was a mistake. If I look at my stash now I see some pieces that have been there forever. And guess what? Exactly! Those were the ones I bought without any idea of what to do with them. I came to the realisation that that was just not the way to go for me. So nowadays I'm back to planning most of my fabricpurchases. Trying to be sensible about it. (I'll make an exception for pieces out of the remnant bin though....) It doesn'...

My first sewingproject of the year 2020 is finished and it’s a raglan sleeve sweater. The original pattern I’ve used is from KnipMode December 2013. Original, because I made quite some changes. In the picture below you can see the original linedrawing of this pattern. See those curved seams? The front and back bodypiece do have this curved seamline (second picture), but the sleeves do not. They're straight at that point. Anyone who has been sewing for a while knows that when you sew a curved and a straight seam together, you create depth. The fabric is no longer laying flat. And that’s exactly what happened when I made this sweater some years ago. Front and back, left and right. I remember I took some time trying to fix it but for some reason I never really succeeded, so that sweater ended up never being worn. Last year I wanted to give it another go and I smoothed out the line of the front and back bodypiece. That did the trick, as was to be expected. No stran...

As I type this, I only have 1,5 days of vacation left. Oh my…where did those 5 weeks go??  Because of the 2 heat waves we’ve experienced here in the Netherlands, the first 3 weeks went by in a bit of a blur. I really could not do much more than hang on the couch and move as little as possible. It's just not my kind of weather and I’m ever so glad that the heat is gone, altough it’s still above 20°C.  In spite of all that heat I managed to get some sewing done. I bought the fabric for this skirt (KnipMode January 2018 – skirt ‘Yara’) at a fabric fair and it is a wonderful jersey with elastane. The colours are so vibrant, And it has a bit of weight to it so it hangs beautifully. It was a super quick make. I took size 46 and made it slightly bigger at the hip. Jersey can be so clingy to your body and I really want to avoid that if possible.  As you can tell from the picture below, the design calls for an elastic band as a waistband, but I opted for a casing of t...

Thát was a quick make! The major part of the work went into adjusting this pattern for my size. This one goes up to a size 46 but for me it needs to be a bit bigger/longer at some places. The fact that the frontpiece has pleats makes it more of a struggle to get it right. But I think I succeeded in doing so. The fit is great. Because of the pattern placement I was limited in the amount of length I could add at the bottom. Otherwise I would have added about an inch. I love patterns that are fairly simple to put together but are special at the same time because of some detail. This is a good example. So yeah, pretty happy with that. I already wore it to a party friday night and today at work. Now the temperature has dropped it’s significantly cooler so it’s perfect to wear this long-sleeved top. The colours of the fabric are hard to capture on my camera. And that's a real shame because they're beautiful. I love the different blue-toned colours combined with t...

First of all a big thank you to those who left a comment on my previous post. It's great to hear from you! In the meantime the tee is finished. Nothing complicated, just a simple project. But isn't it true that those pieces are the ones that get to be worn the most? I thought it would be fun to play a bit with the stripes and added a band at the bottom of the sleeves with the stripes going in the opposite direction. For that I folded a rectangular in half and sewed it double at the bottom of the sleeves. The stripes of the necklinebinding are also placed at a right angle. I'll try to sneak in a little post about how I make a necklinebinding. If you are struggling with the usual method (folding a strip of fabric and sewing it double to the neckline), this method may be the one you were looking for. It works for me every time and I find its much easier.  Back to the tee. I'm happy with the fit. Basically I measured my hips, waist, bustline and uppe...

This fabric was bought with the idea of making a T-shirt. But I felt that just a plain T-shirt was not enough to do it justice. So I chose a pattern from an Ottobre magazine I've used before 2 times. A few years back I tried this pattern and was pleasantly surprised by the great instant fit. No pattern-alterations were needed at the time. What I particularly like about it is the detail on the sleeve. It's actually very simple: there's a little dart at the top of the sleeve. When you sew this together, at the same time you sew over a stretched piece of elastic. Et voilá! Simple, yet effective. I've taken a picture of the sleeve but it's close to impossible to get a clear picture. The linedrawing however is pretty clear. I don't remember if I altered the neckline when I used this pattern for the first time but mine is not as wide as it appears in the drawing. I've already worn this shirt multiple times so that makes it a winner in my book....

While I was away, I have been sewing. Not blogging, but yeah..sewing. Because my dear readers, the sewing mojo seems to be back in my life. How great is that! The only problem is, and will be for who knows when: finding time to sew. With a heavy workschedule, and having to deal with householdstuff, garden etc. by myself, I find it hard to find time to sit behind the sewing-machine. But I managed to squeeze in moments to do some summer-sewing. My fabricstash is not very big and I love to go to fabricmarkets to add new beauties to the pile. Recently I spend a few hours on a big fabricmarket that was held near my town. And I was very pleased with the fabrics on offer. So many great fabrics I could see myself working with. But I managed to narrow it down to these 5 pieces. The two black-and-whites in the middle already are turned into T-shirts. With the lycra zebra-print (don't you just love it!!) I made a skirt. The light fabric in the bottom on the left, will be a nic...