First day of school

Time flies... I can't believe that my daughter is already in the 'big school' now!

For her first day of school I made her a special dress. She picked the fabric herself and I used Ottobre 3/2012 'trumpet flower' as pattern. I'm quite happy with the result (and so is my daughter ;) )

Unicorns are very big with her at the moment, so no big surprise there's a unicorn on her school bag. To create a more uniform look I used an embroidery design from nähwahna (lovely unicorn) and some scraps from the dress material for her "Schultüte".

Her little sister also got her small "Schultüte" refilled - she got it last January, when she started playschool.

Traditionally German kids get a cone like that on their first day of school. It's filled with some goodies, toys, school supplies, sweets etc. and kids take it along to school (first day of school is a much more festive occassion than here in Belgium...). After school the kids can open their "Schultüte" and check out the content. My daughters loved what they got :).

Some summer dresses for me and my girls

I have sewn way more in the meantime, but still lagging behind taking pictures and blogging - the usual ;)

But some of my most recent projects were these Seesaw dresses for my daughters from Ottobre 3/2013

I did topstitch the collar of the smaller dress later on, so the white of the reverse material is not so visible any more.

For myself I made a dress that has been on my list for more than a year now. It's from Burda 2/2013 dress 110 (Batikkleid). Since my previous attempts to sew something from Burda for myself were not super successful, I decided to go cheap on this attempt: The material was only 2,- per meter! I don't expect this dress to last forever, but at least I can wear it this summer.

So this is what it looked like at first: The clevage was quite a mess, as you can see.

So I moved the right shoulder seam about 4 cm inwards (shortening the backpart and the front part 4 cm each), then it looked much better.

The pattern of my cheap material is not exactly flattering for my bust, I think, but I won't whine too much about a dress for 5,-...

RUMS 12/14 Monday Basic again

I got some great knits for shirts for myself. One of the more daring knits I used for this Monday Basic. Combined with a uni knit I quite like it.

Pattern is Monday Basic from Ottobre 5/2013. I still used size 46 but made it a bit tighter and I rounded the seamline a bit. I guess the next one I will keep a bit longer, what do you think?

And now I'll check for the early birdies on RUMS

RUMS #43 - or Monday Basic meets Martha

Since I found this pattern for a basic raglan shirt that fits me in the current Ottobre, I want to use and vary it a bit more.

This time I wanted to make my own version of the Martha pattern (by milchmonster) that I have seen so often in blogs or forums. I cut the original pattern in a wavy line under my breast and added a part for the pockets. I also wanted to give it a try with those lovely maxi collars, but the pieces that I had cut for it were way too short, so I only got a small collar. I wasn't so sure how to attach it either, so my solution is not really very professional. To make the neckline a bit more sophisticated I made a short verticular cut in the middle and only folded and topstitched the seam, adding a loop in the middle. Could be preciser and straighter, but hey, for myself I'm never so critical...

So off we go to RUMS!

My first RUMS

The German sewing bloggers have their own version of the MeMadeMonday - takes place on Thursdays and it's called RUMS.

Today, for the first time, I managed to take part:

A Basic Monday Shirt from Ottobre 5/2013.

baby set for a cute cuban boy

A friend of ours recently gave birth to a cute little boy. Since she is Cuban, there had to be some Spanish text on it, so we chose some lines from 'la bamba'.

The placing of the text is a bit chaotic - all intentional of course ;)

Detail of the front

the back of the shirt

The jersey is called 'Take a ride' - the colours are quite strong, but I like it combined like this.

The patterns are from Ottobre, the shirt Nr 7 from 4/2006, the pants are Anis 1/2010 - love this pattern!

Polkadots

...on sweet daughter's coat. The corduroy material is actually a dark aubergine with pink polkadots. The pattern is Ottobre 4/2010 St Germain.

This project was a bit of a challenge for my nerves, not that it was per se difficult, but sometimes everything goes wrong that can go wrong... It started with the pattern that was not where the instructions claimed (that would have become a jumper). Then I cut out the facing for the collar without seam allowance - no idea, why, I guess I confused it with the fusable interfacing... Next in the line of desasters the embroidery. After the first colour was done, the whole thing was sucked into the machine and I really feared I would have to cut a hole into the piece... In the end I managed to disentangle it but then I had to make the machine restart at exactly the same position...

Since it worked out well and the embroidery unit was up anyway, I decided I could also put our name and 'minikin pin' in the lining. Great idea, if only I had taken measures against some of the material doubling during embroidering. So I had to unstitch several letters, which was no fun at all!

Great ideas usually come too late, like the idea of embellishing the slit pockets. Better before you sew it together, let me tell you!

The last desaster is actually the one that shows most: The buttonholes. Even though I took a piece of the material to make several test button holes, in the end they did not work out so well on the original...
All the rest looks quite nice and my daughter loves it :)

don't THINK of pink elephants...

...just wear them ;)

The idea was published in an Ottobre magazine a while ago, but maybe existed before. I just used an Ottobre raglan pattern and designed my own elephant in pink - of course I first cut out the elephant to fit to a right arm whereas the pink left arm was already cut...

The elephant's eye is a flower button, the tail and the ear are 3D.