Aug 10

The Forest Dress

by Astrid

Told you I was making a dress for Frida. Well, it’s finished, and this is it.

The pattern is from Alt om håndarbejdes SYmagasin, May 2011 – a Danish sewing pattern magazine, containing patterns for children as well as adults. You may be getting tired of seeing this particular linen on my blog – I have used it before for this tunic, this messenger bag, these pants and several other things. I love the colour! I’m running out of it, however, so fear not – I will need to find new colours. The other fabric is from the designer Joel Dewberry – it’s called Majestic Oak, and is from the collection named Modern Meadow.

There isn’t much to say about this one – Frida loves dresses, and I made her a dress. Also, she is at an age where she still loves everything I sew for her, which is true for this dress as well.

Here she is wearing it – I absolutely couldn’t get her to look up.

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Apr 23

Tropical Blend Dress

by Astrid

10 comments

We have weather for summer dresses here in late April. I can hardly believe it – 20 degrees (Celsius) during Easter holidays, isn’t it amazing?

It definitely makes me want to sew summer clothing, so yesterday I made another dress from the latest Ottobre – this time for Frida. I picked out 5 or 6 fabrics that I would be happy to sew it up in, and Frida made the final decision, which is a beautiful design from Heather Bailey’s Nicey Jane collection.

The dress is #18 (design B) from Ottobre 3/2011, and in spite of the simplicity of the design, it has the piping at the neckline and the bias tape at the hem to add a few nice details. I traced a 98 length and a 92 width, and it’s a perfect fit. The bias tape I used for the hem is Michael Miller gingham, and I used it for the piping as well, cut in halves. I even managed to find som matching daisy buttons for the dress – it could not be any more summery, and Frida loves it.

I haven’t made piping before, and it’s not perfect, but it’s not bad either – I found it a little hard to work around the strap roundings, I probably should have stretched it a little more through the curve. Anyway, this is the perfect summer dress!

Meanwhile, it’s always hard to predict what will happen to the stuff you sew, isn’t it. Take the tulip dress – I almost had to bribe Ronja into modeling the tulip dress… Why? Apparently, it’s scratchy. If any of you guys have a quick fix for scratchy linen, let me know, because I’m afraid otherwise there is no rescue for the dress. But here she is wearing it – at least she looks content.

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Apr 19

Tulip Dress

by Astrid

11 comments

Just before the weekend I received the latest Ottobre, and some of the designs in there show a simplicity almost like the one that you usually see in Japanese patterns – I love it. Sunday I went ahead and traced one of the patterns (#28 from 3/2011) – I originally wanted to make it for Frida, but it didn’t come as small as that, so I went with one for Ronja instead.

Ronja hasn’t been measured for a while, so I did just before I started tracing, and it turns out she’s a size 116 according to her height, but only a 98 width – phew! I decided to add room for growth, and traced a 116 height and 104 width for her – still I had to concentrate while tracing to make everything match up. I always highly recommend measuring before you sew up Ottobre garments, because they tend to be quite wide in the sizes, but they fit perfectly if you go by measurement.

I used linen for the dress and spiced it up a little with Amy Butler’s “Daisy Bouquet” for the sleeves. I added two appliqued tulips in order to create a link from the sleeves to the main fabric, and I think it works fine, even if the edge stitching of the tulips isn’t the best I’ve ever made – for some reason the fabric didn’t quite move properly while I was sewing. Other than that everything came together just fine, and it’s a perfect fit for Ronja.

I haven’t made this kind of pleats before, but I find them such a neat alternative to gathering – a beautiful design detail (yet slightly more time consuming). This is a wonderful summer dress – and it’s original name “Sunshine Sailor Dress” goes so well with the fact that we will be spending this year’s summer vacation on our boat!

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Apr 4

My Schoolhouse Tunic

by Astrid

7 comments

I did some sewing this weekend. It was weird really, because Saturday morning I stooped to lift up Frida, and as soon as Frida was off the ground, there was a crack in my back, and it hurt like … you don’t wanna know. It went on all Saturday through the night and Sunday as well, but when I started my sewing project it slowly went away. That must be some sort of sign, right? Seeew mooooooore….

As I was saying, I did some sewing. I bought the pattern for the Schoolhouse Tunic from Sew Liberated a few months ago, and I just love the design in its simplicity and elegance. I really don’t find much sewing time recently, so it’s been waiting for a spare afternoon, but now I have made my first version of this.

I used linen and a striped linen-cotton blend for the tunic, and I think the combo works well. The reason for using two different fabrics was actually that I thought I wouldn’t have enough linen, but I would have had afterall – I used nowhere near the amount that the pattern calls for. I made a size 10/12 (I’m usually a Scandinavian size 38-40), and I was worried it would be too small, but it could have been just slightly smaller. However, I didn’t prewash the fabric (never quite get around to doing that), so maybe it’ll shrink to a perfect fit – fingers crossed – when I wash it.

I can recommend the pattern – it includes easy-to-follow line drawings, and the tunic came together quickly. It is simple yet with details that give it a wonderfully finished look, so if you have sewn before and are wondering whether or not to give this a go, I would say jump right in – you can do it!

This is me wearing the tunic with jeans, but it is worth noting that the tunic/dress is quite versatile and can be worn with jeans, leggings, bare legs – and you can add a belt if you wish.

Now that I have you, I can also show you the dress I made for Frida a month ago. To Frida, the only scale that counts at the moment is the twirlyness-scale. I have made her a number of dresses, that she liked initially, but just don’t want to wear right now due to a low score on the twirlyness-scale – therefore my object with this dress was to get my creations well up there on her scale again. This is the result:

I used different designs baby corduroy for the outer dress, and quilting cotton for the inside of the bodice. I made up the pattern for the skirt myself, but I was quite inspired by this dress purchased for Ronja from H&M 4 years ago – and loved to pieces by Frida! For the bodice I used an Ottobre-pattern from 3/2008 #15 – the tie-back tunic – I took out a little more than a centimeter from the middle, because it is very wide, and I added an invisible zipper instead of the ties. So back to the scale – does it twirl?

OH yes!

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Oct 24

Lovely Slow Day

by Astrid

8 comments

Mads and Ronja took off around noon today to go sailing, so Frida and I got out the sewing machine to make something for her. I have hardly been sewing at all for several months, but I can really tell how our autumn vacation has brought the pace down, and made me want to get out the sewing machine more.

We made this dress. Or actually, I made it while she was toddling about, “helping” me out, singing, messing around with my needles, running to and from. A total dream-afternoon – I had no idea that sewing with her around could be so easy.

The dress is made from a Stof & Stil pattern, which I believe isn’t sold anymore – #700492. The flowery fabric is from Stof & Stil as well, the bottom fabric is from a pillow case from IKEA, and the red gingham is Michael Miller. The two main fabrics are a rather sturdy quality, as this is not a summer dress – Frida will be wearing it with a t-shirt under during winter months. It’ll look like this:

At first I wasn’t sure, but now I am – I like it. It is a generous fit, but that’s ok – she’ll be able to have it for a long time.

I made a few other things during the vacation. Our boat needs a bit of fixing up on the inside as well as on the outside. My tasks are centered around the softer things – like bringing the inside expression of the boat closer to the way we are, without losing the fact that it is a boat, and boats do tend to have a different kind of aesthetics than the rest of the world, for some reason.

I wanted to make some pillows for the boat, and during this week, I got around to making four of these. I used this tutorial over on Prudent Baby (if this one doesn’t work for you, she has a ton of others to choose from) – it was quick and easy to follow, and I like the result a lot – very summer-cottage-ish!

I only photographed the first one, after that I had to make the other three in a real hurry before we were going sailing. I wanted to take pictures on the boat, but that’ll be another time – it was dark when we got back from our sail.

And finally, I got around to making a pouch for Frida’s Nintendo DSi, which she got for her birthday in September.

Remember the one I made for Ronja’s Nintendo DS? It has been doing the job, so for this one I used the same tutorial from Mad Quilter.

All in all the most productive few days I have had for a while.