I'll sew you

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...

From KnipMode January 2018 This is the last one of my makes I sewed way back in the beginning of May. The fabric I used has been in my stash for quite some time. It was part of a fabric surprisebox and altough I liked the fabric from the beginning, I didn’t have plans for it for a long time. But when I started to think about spring- and summersewing earlier this year, this fabric popped up in my head more than once. So the search for a pattern started. I knew I wanted to make an easy dress  and I wanted to use the side of the fabric on which the pattern gets darker, as a feature. I found a pattern that seemed to check all the boxes and decided to place the darker pattern of the fabric at the bottom of the dress. For a few moments I thought of placing it at the waist but boy, am I glad I decided against that! I fiddled with the pattern a bit to get it to my liking (sleeves a bit wider, shorter and more bended, added a bust-dart, widened the waist, took out some fullness of the skirt...

(I'm way behind with blogging about my sewing-makes.This post was already written in June but I never got round to taking pictures because I háte doing that. So why I picked today to do that, in a scorching heat of  35 °C, I have absolutely no idea. But I'm glad I did because now I have the 'hard' work done for some new posts which I hope to bring to you soon.) This skirt from KnipMode May 2008, is really the fruit of me wanting to sew up something quickly, just for the fun of it.  Back in 2010 I sewed this skirt but it never got worn because it was too tight. I don’t remember if this was due to the fact that I gained weight in those days, or that I simply didn’t take measurements and made it too small. Believe it or not, that happened more than once back then.                                                  This time I took a size 46, which is clos...

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...

Anyone out there who likes to sew in blistering temperatures?? No, me neither… It's sooo hot and dry here in the Netherlands and there's no sign of it changing anytime soon.  I have a trip planned this thursday with two friends. Initially we were going to pay a visit to a few city's in the province of Zeeland, but I don't think that's a good idea when it's 35°C. Thursday and Friday are actually the hottest days according to the weather forecast. We will probably be driving on to the coast instead and spending our day at the beach. N ext tuesday I'll be going on a daytrip with a friend to Trier (Germany). It's  booked at a bus-company and I'm really looking forward to that but if the temperatures are still this high (and chances are they will be) than it's going to be somewhat of a challenge to be walking around in a heated city. I hope the bus has airco, that would be a big plus! Okay, I've moaned enough. There are still a lot of peo...

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...

Hi, Just a short post to show the second t-shirt I made with the same Ottobre pattern I used for the black-and-white shirt. I just couldn't let the stripe-trend go by without joining it. The fabric I used is maybe a bit too thick for a t-shirt (punta di roma) but all in all it is ok to wear. The stripes are darkblue and cream-coloured. The sleeve with a piece of elastic sewed on the inside. (My arm isn't as gigantic in real life as in this picture haha....) Making this shirt was not exactly a pleasant journey. About everything that could go wrong, went wrong. I even forgot to match the stripes at the sideseams when cutting the fabric. So I was very, very lucky that they did match after all. You want to be hasty and then you forget the most basic things... At first I finished the neckline the same way I did with the black-and-white shirt, but that resulted in a disaster. No matter how hard I pulled the binding, it was just too stiff to lay flat. I guess that's w...