KCWC Day 1

Kids' Clothes Week Challenge is here! This being the first time I've signed up for any kind of sewing event, I find myself rather excited.

Yesterday was Day One, and I made this:



A pair of trousers, as yet without a waistband. Guess what's on tonight's To Do list??

I had done my prep:

And decided to do some refashioning/upcycling/recykleren on this:

 

Which is more shocking, that I own Boden clothing or that I'm about to chop it up? It's an excellent quality piece of corduroy and was sitting there unworn, as the waistband is inexplicably small compared to the rest of it. 

So - waste not, want not - here goes!  Lay out pattern pieces, just about avoiding the seams:

Trace pattern onto skirt using chalk (the "Halloween" method. Look, ghost trousers!):

Cut! Fun! 

What can I destroy next?? Did someone mention more unworn corduroy? 

 

Nothing better for livening up black cords for a boy toddler than knee pads.

Unfortunately, I didn't think through the implications of cord-on-cord appliqué. It frays and it stretches = not that easy to neatly zig zag round the edge of a circle. Or at all, neatly or not. The eagle-eyed will have noticed that the final knee pads in the picture above are grey. In the end I made them out of an old jersey vest, after A LOT of seam ripping. I got too fed up to bother photodocumenting at that point (I bet you're disappointed).

But hey, I love seam ripping. It's an excercise in zen. Almost as good as the sewing itself*. And thankfully the brown cords have plenty of scope left for other stuff.

~

* not really. But hey, you have to embrace it or this would be the Most.Frustrating.Hobby.Ever.

Sunday night sew-a-thon

So the weekend went a bit like this...

Friday afternoon: L finishes her first week at kindergarten. The nieuwsbrief informs us that for Monday she will need a gym bag and a book bag.

Friday afternoon, a bit later: we head down to the countryside for the weekend. Shopping possibilities: limited. Shopping attractiveness compared to other more countryside-related activities: very limited.

Sunday night: last-minute panic and bag sew-a-thon.

And for once my random stashing of cheap fabric stuff pays off! This is a set of four napkins I bought in the cave of horrors that is Kruidvat, for the knock-down and irresistible bargain price of One Whole Euro:

Now they are this, filled with gym clothes:

And this, for L's trips to the library:

The bags had to be named. So, they are. In the least subtle way possible:

She likes. She went to school this morning enthusiastically loaded up with all of these (it looked like she was sherpa-ing us to the metro):

The other bag is her backpack for snacks and other sundries such as her school diary. It was a present from Grandma and Grandpa. So far there were no books in the book bag, just a giant cuddly snake (bring-and-share letter of the week: S).

Such fun!

Now of course T wants one too. Watch this space...

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?

Improvisation

So I've worked out recently that I'm a make-it-up-as-you-go-along kind of sewer (that's sew-er as in seamstress, not, er, municipal drainage). What with unburdening myself of lists, I'm hitting a groove of inspiration, enthusiasm and productivity in perfect synchronicity.

[Note to the ether: by the way, there will be no more lists ever. I thought blogging one would motivate me to get the stuff on it done, but my list of want-to-do changes too fast to bother and I was getting depressed about list-ticking-off failure. OK?]

Anyway, my two favourite projects at the moment are these:

The first will be a dress. The idea was to follow Martha's instructions for an easy, funky tube dress, but I was fiddling about with the concept before I even got to cutting the fabric. Since then I have just done what I like with it at each step of it's construction, and it's looking an awful lot better than if I'd just got on with it. Yippee!

Not yippee - I can't wear it yet though because I ran out of thread for the hem. So much for organisational skills.

The idea and execution of the second thing just came out of my head. Can you guess what it is yet? G thought I was making little toilet mats for potty training toddlers. Is he right???

All will be revealed once I've finished.