Schultüte - Sugarcone

For the daughter of my friend I made a traditional German treat for the first day at school next September, it's called Schultüte. All kids starting school get one filled with sweets, treats and small gifts. I used the same embroidery files as for my own daughter, but with the different colour scheme it really looks quite different.

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 :).

Wrap Conversion Halfbuckle - Hoppediz Panama

I have just noticed that I still haven't shown the halfbuckle wrap conversion, I made last year for my husband. I talked about it here.

I made it from a Hoppediz Panama wrap that I had bought on ebay.

The text on the headrest: shush, I'm sleeping!

Height and width of the panel can be adjusted.

Headrest is detachable (and I could make another, more suitable for myself, since this one says 'baby wearing dad')

The straps are upholstered on top (2cm foam) and can be spread further down.

Birthday dress and X-mas skirt for my big girl

Yeah, I know, my attempts to catch up are really slow... Still in December...

A quite spontaneous and quick skirt for Christmas (made from the top of a skirt of mine, the bottom was attached to my Christmas outfit)

The colour is a bit hard to catch, it's actually aubergine, not brown.

Just after Christmas for my daughter's 4th birthday a dress in fuchsia corduroy.

Since my daughter is sucking in stories, enacting and retelling them to herself (or whoever is listening) and she loves fairies, I decided to make it a 'Lesefee' (Reading Fairy) Dress. Actually I think she came up with this herself!

The script is made with the embroidery machine, the fairy I embroidered free-hand with the sewing machine.

Last of the summer...

Outside it's really autumn now, windy and rainy... So I'm now working on some autumn clothes for my two girls. But before, I would still like to show you some of my summer's work:

Cute pirate dress. I used the Hopscotch pattern from Ottobre 3/2012 adapted the sleeves a bit and added the skirt made of jersey scraps.

 Hopscotch without the ruffles.

A birthday shirt for our nephew. Robots from Ottobre 3/2012.

 Leggings for my youngest. Don't remember the pattern, I think I just copied some leggings that were lying around. My older daughter got similar leggings, same material...

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 :)

corduroy memories

I'm currently working on a skirt for my older daughter made from a beautiful colourful corduroy. Whenever I start working on it, it reminds me of the recycle trousers that I once made and enhanced with details from this material.

The red corduroy I took from some old, beloved trousers of my slimmer days, again nice memories are linked with this material. The colour is just stunning, a deep and nobel red, not the cheap, blatant red that you find so often.

The zipper I cut out completely from the original trousers, since I had never sewn trousers with a zipper before and I didn't want to start on this without any pattern. In the meanwhile I have come across this fantastic tutorial for zippers sewn into trousers, so I could now do it in a more elegant way, but actually it worked out very well the way I did it.

Instead of a button I used kam  snaps - they work well, even a year later now.

I added some embroideries, an owl, a freebie from ginihouse

The  house and the pigs are from emblibrary again

I made these trousers almost exactly one year ago and I'm happy that my daughter can still wear them before they will be passed on to our youngest!