It's a plus.

Okay, first of all something fun: I sewed two great tops for myself. The first one was a test version made from some inexpensive brown cotton jersey I got from the bargain bin at Karstadt a while ago. I added a small piece of lime green cotton jersey to add a little pop - just in case it should turn out wearable. What shall I say? It's not only wearable, it became my favorite shirt right away. So I felt pretty comfortable cutting into some more expensive turquoise and white chevron cotton jersey. I found it a little harder to pick a fabric for the waistband, but finally settled on some red and pink striped jersey I had in my stash. Add in an hour of pressing and cutting, and a few hours of switching between the walking foot and the overlock foot on my sewing machine, and tadaa:

I love, love, LOOOVE this shirt! The fabric

Dinosaurs!

I stenciled some plain white shirts with "Blopens", a crossover between felt tip pens and airbrush. Quick and easy, and the boys love them. When they're a little older, I'll let them make their own shirts, but for now, I get to have all the fun ;-) Will probably make some more, I'm thinking of guitars. But I'll have to make my own stencils first (the dinosaurs were included with the set of pens). Will have to try out if freezer paper stenciling works with these pens...

Kid's Clothes Week in July

Hey, I just signed up for Kid's Clothes Week in July. That means I've committed to sewing clothes for my boys 1 hour a day each day for 7 days, from 21 July to 27 July. Read more about the challenge on the KCW blog.

I've got a few projects in mind, but so far haven't got any ideas for the theme "Kid Art". Projects don't have to conform to the theme, but I think it's really cute and has great potential.

Anyone wanna join in?

UFOs everywhere

As promised in my last post, I've started putting together a list of all my UFOs - unfinished objects - or at least those ones that I'm still keeping and trying to finish...

And now for something completely different - hand embroidery

I've been doing quite a bit of applique and embroidery on my sewing machine over the past months and have improved quite a bit. But when I wanted to quickly embroider a loop scarf last week, the tiny curves just didn't turn out as I had envisioned them, and I couldn't find a stitch that worked out. So I thought it was time to try out something new: hand embroidery.

I got some very nice light violet cotton and linen blend from a sale and it was just perfect for making two loop scarves. Unlike the other ones I've made so far, I decided to do these single layer, with a french seam and rolled hems (with my sewing machine's rolled hem foot - easy peasy :-)). Tutorials for these techniques can be found at Oliver + S (french seams) and Craftsy (free mini class on sewing machine feet with Steffani Lincecum). The scarves came together in a breeze.

I then looked for a cute embroidery design, and fell in love with this one I found on Pinterest (well, where else? ;-)) As I wrote above, I first tried embroidering it using my sewing machine as usual, but neither the satin stitch nor any of the other decorative stitches I tried turned out well. Luckily, I had bought a couple of skeins of embroidery floss a while ago, had a suitable needle and some fusible embroidery paper at hand, so I was all set to go. I signed up for the Craftsy class "Design it, stitch it" with Jessica Marquez (I was really lucky to get it while it was on sale! :-)), watched the introduction and the part on backstitching, and started stitching. It didn't even take me as long as I'd expected, maybe 2 hours all in all. I guess with a little practice I can even pick up some more speed.

So I'm planning to embroider the second loop scarf for myself (I gave the one above to my mother-in-law). Maybe with "Twice the fun" in a nice font and a twin motif? What do you think? Oh, and maybe my next post will be about all my unfinished projects? Would be nice for myself to see a full list of everything I've already started, not to mention everything that's on my "really wanna make" list...

Work in progress... erm, regress

Anyone wanna see what I'm currently working on?

I hate, hate, hate picking out stitches. And today, I'm extra "lucky" as the flatlock stitch I used here not only turned out terribly uneven, but is next to impossible to rip. Do you see all those little "x"s? It seems like I have to use my seam ripper on every single tiny stitch here, that is FOUR times per "x"!!! Wish me luck that I get this done before midnight. Or at least before sunrise. I really want to finish this pair of sweatpants (from Ottobre design 1/ 2014, size 98). And as soon as I've completed the second one, I promise I'll never ever use this stitch again.

Happy mother's day

Just so that this week doesn't pass without a single post, here's a quick snapshot of the fingerprint painting I made with the boys to give to our beloved grandmas on mother's day today.