I'm not really a seamstress

In my head, I mainly sew clothes. Almost all my thinking and planning about sewing is about which garment, with which pattern and what adjustments, in which fabric, and do I have shoes to match? What needs adding to my wardrobe next? What techniques am I confident in and how do I want to experiment? And, not unimportantly, will I find time to carry all this off before the season changes (again! Doesn't time fly.)

Well, the answer to that last question is usually - no. A resounding No, in fact. Because while my head is plotting lists of beautiful homemade garments, my hands have other plans and are just busily getting on with them.

You see, my hands like things like this. Little, cute, fun, projects, easy to both plan and execute successfully (not quite at that stage with my own clothing yet...).

Small lovely things such as, to take one example, snugglers for freshly born babies.

I may have mentioned that my friends are having their very own 2011 baby boom. And frankly, when faced with the choice between pattern tracing, adjusting, cutting, sewing, trying, unpicking, sewing again, all the while sweating and swearing, or choosing some lovely polka dots and fluffy light soft fleece and then whipping up a swaddling blanket. Well!

When it comes down to it, my head agrees with my hands.

While they were at it, they decided it would be a good idea to whip up a pacifier clip too. Because, let's face it, altogether this makes rather a nice little bundle, doesn't it?

Yes, friends, feel free to have as many babies as you like. I love making this stuff.

Plenty of time left to make next summer's wardrobe, after all. (Yeah, like that's actually going to happen).

A crown, a frock and a cake

On her third birthday, L came home from the creche with a paper birthday crown. It was nice and hung around being dressed up in for a bit, and then, as these things do, went in the recycling bin - unnoticed by our busy big three year old girl.

What I didn't realise then though was that some people have a whole tradition of birthday crowns. Soulemama is one of them; polkadotjes is another. Turns out that when G was a kid he got a crown on his birthdays too. And I cottoned on to the whole idea just in time to make this:

The night before the big day I hung it in her room with her matching mummy-made birthday dress, leaving this lot stacked up in the kitchen while the cake cooled overnight:

Up at the crack of dawn the next day, and overdoing the sugar as much as possible...

Those few moments of true peace and quiet before the others wake up are one of my favourite times of day - and  I honestly can't think of many things I'd rather do with them than decorate chocolate cake for my big little L.

And then she got up and screamed with pleasure at her dress and her crown and wore them both, of course, all day:

This is the stillest she would stand with them both on simultaneously. So we did some posing this morning, a couple of weeks later, as well:

As you can see, it's just perfect for twirling!

And I think I've started a birthday tradition of our own. Crowns and party clothes, homemade with lots of love, by me.

Ik recykleer!

I've recently been discovering that there's a whole world of sewing bloggers right on my doorstep. The crafts blogosphere sometimes seems overwhelmingly American - frustratingly so when you discover that their beautiful fabrics are hardly available in Europe, let along affordable. So imagine my joy on finding - through a throwaway comment by Dana from MADE - first of all polkadotjes and then a whole little gang of Flemish craftsters, plenty of them with blogs of their own.

They make beautiful things - but then I am always easily distracted by beautiful handmade stuff. What really caught my attention was this little button cropping up over and over:

For those who don't speak Dutch, allow me to explain this genius little pun:

recycleren [v]: recycle, reprocess, reuse

kleren [n]: clothing, clothes, apparel

Thus:

recykleren [v]: to recycle clothes

The symbol speaks for itself but I love the play on words (possibly disporportionately so as it's not my mother tongue, but you know, so what? I'm a langauge geek too).  And it  gets even better. Because the creative lady who dreamt this little sign up - she goes by the name of Boomie - is holding a recykleren fortnight in September, with round-ups, tutorials, guest posts, the whole shebang  - all about the things one can do with recycled clothes. I am very excited about this!

I have been stashing away old clothing for well over a year now. Those barely-worn "what was I thinking" purchases are now eagerly purged from my wardrobe, and I almost encourage G to tear or stain his shirts just so I can have them. But so far the pile of old clothing far exceeds what I've actually done with it. And with the children growing out of their clothes every few months or so - before my very eyes! - I constantly need new ideas.  I'm bookmarking Boomie's blog right this very instant. Have a look at her Pinterest page to see what she's collected so far.

OK, here are a couple of photos. Firstly, L wearing a skirt I made for her out of an H&M tunic that wasn't getting much wear any more:
 

And this... well it's a taster photo, because my pictures of the thing this t-shirt became are on my other computer. Have a guess! I'll update the post later.

Apart from that, this, this and this are my recycling efforts so far. There WILL be more soon!

Dress success

This post is a while overdue, because I finished this project several weeks ago. And for once, I've been happily wearing it ever since! That never happens! Here I am posing in my father in law's luscious garden:

I'm particularly pleased because - third time lucky - I finally adapted this pattern in a way that works. It's a variation on the Anda dress, which I stumbled on over a year ago while looking for free/very cheap patterns to download off the interweb. It's extremely easy and only has two pattern pieces, but the concept is deceptively straightforward - although it's loose fitting, the fit still matters. And on my first two versions of this, it really really hung wrong.

This picture was an attempt to show the back view, for the sole reason that I adjusted not only for a full bust but also for a small back (like that would actually have been visible in a photo...). Tada! It works! Commercial dress/top patterns suddenly get a lot less daunting! It seems have finally figured out my fit problems with all clothes ever!

Here is a blurred photo of it hanging up - you can still see the overall structure of the thing:

I added the pockets for some visual interest in all that grey, because I didn't want to include the drawstring from the pattern or have to wear a belt with it. The shape of them comes from the pattern for L's ikea dress - I just sized them up on a photocopier.

I find it interesting how the positioning of the pockets just sort of evens out my top-heavy figure. It's an optical illusion but it works: I got them in the wrong place the first time round and it didn't 'balance' at all (fortunately, I love a good opportunity to spend some quality time with my seam ripper).

All said and done, I really LOVE this dress. It's comfy (and particularly forgving around the post-childbearing waist and hips), it's versatile, and oh my aren't big pockets useful! I doubt I'll be making tons of them, as there's too many other things eagerly awaiting my attention. But I'm very glad I've got the adapted pattern just waiting there for next time and some slightly more interesting fabric than the cheap, plain grey cotton.

Finally, dress success! I really can't wear this one enough.

P.S. Nice post-holiday tan, no?