Heidi and Finn's urban unisex hoodie

Oh my, I'm going to make a lot more of these!
What a great pattern to make, I've had so much fun making this hoodie.

The Urban Unisex Hoodie.
Pattern can be bought in their Etsy shop, here.

First version I made, I used leftovers of some sort of thick cheap fleece. Very synthetic, probably very warm. But my 2 year old is fond of it and won't take it off anymore. I had great fun puzzling the pieces together and sewing the whole project. It can be done fairly quickly.

my camera-flash makes the color and fabric look very erhm... strange, but in reality it's just dark-blue fleece. (I wish I had this color fleece though ;) )
It is lined with red riding hood fabric and I used big red-and-white dots buttons. I think they look cute together.

Then I remembered having quite some knit jersey lying around and I decided to make another hoodie.

she picked the buttons herself!

I made a mistake in the lower left corner of the hoodie and also at the hood, will fix this later but for now I'm done with hoodies.

The girl absolutely loved it so I'm happy ;)

upcycling daddy's old jeans

My boyfriend quite frequently needs new jeans because he totally wears his jeans out. I always find it a shame to throw out these jeans because other than some holes here and there, the fabric is fine. I decided to see what I'd be able to make from one of his old pair of jeans.

Turns out, I can totally make a pair of skinny jeans for my 2,5 years old, and then I'm still left with enough fabric to make a dress for my 1 year old. Yay! Ofcourse they won't be there tiny selves forever so in the future I'll be able to get less from one pair, but so far, I'm quite pleased! No wasting of perfectly fine fabric, and, as a bonus, nice jeans for my girls ;)



Eventually I lef out the application, I'm still undecided as to whether or not I should add grey fabric on the bottom as well...




Men... I should really work on my photography skills... Lost my cardreader so most pictures are taken by phone... sorry ;)

Recykleren // Upcycling

Aaah yes... a few months ago I was planning on taking part in the upcycling project by Oon and others. I loved the idea and I certainly worked on it. But it turned out I was so crazy busy that it wasn't doable for me to really follow the project.

However I did upcycle some things, some are transformed into new items, some have been changed but remain basically the same. I hope to finish all the projects that I had in mind. Should be doable, so as long as I don't set myself a timelimit. ;)

This is what I started out with:


A pile of fabrics and stuff. Most of them were handed down but were not to our taste or they had minor things like tiny holes in them. I decided to use them for this project.

First of, the shoes. The print wasn't entirely my taste. So I grab some nail-polish remover and it came right off!

Before



After





After, I washed the inside fabric. The girl is thrilled with her pink shoes, I'm happy to have another pair of croc-ish shoes that are easy to clean when playing outside. No good shoes wasted because of a print! Yay!

Then there was a pair of long pants that was also not to my taste (I'm sorry, I'm very specific with what I like...)
I decided to turn these into board-shorts, giving them a biais and shortening them. They are now very cool for summer, I can see my girl wearing them when's she's tan and with a white t-shirt or whatever above. Surf-chique!


This is what I started out with...


And this is how it turned out. I'm quite pleased with the result and how the biais works nicely to establish that surfy look.





More coming up soon!

Japanese shirt

I love those Japanese pattern books. I got one as a present for Christmas in 2010, and finally, last month I found the courage to make a shirt from it ;) It was fine for me to work with but hey, I studied Chinese, though Japanese and Chinese are hugely different, It makes all the difference in the world if you can make up the characters for back/front left/right up/down etcetera. This made it easier for me to work with these patterns.

I really like the simplicity of those clothes in the books, though I often find that there cut is quite "Asian" or "Japanese". With that I mean, wide, or square, or however you want to describe it. Some of you will probably know what I mean.

Anyways, for Christmas I also received some fabric, buttons and ribbons so I decided to use them for this project. The colour of the fabric is not something I'd have picked myself, but it looks fine on my 2-years-old.




Initially I wanted to make the shirt using Elephant-buttons, since the eldest adores elephants.


But along the way I decided that these buttons look a lot better with the flowery ribbon. These are buttons that come of from a pair of H&M pants. My friend bought a pair of pants for her son and replaced the girly buttons, she handed them to me. Yay!


I decided to sew in a small ribbon in the neckline, I think it gives it a more polished look.


ofcourse it needed a robot... everyting needs a robot <3




tadaam... I'm not quite the neat seemstress that I'd like to be, but I'm learning ;) (neither am I a great photographer or good with photography software... should train myself in that a little more.)


And here you can probably see best what I mean with the square boxy look. Though the girl loves it and didn't want to take it off.

What I did do this week

My dearest babygirl turns two end of this month. Time has gone by so quickly... I've been doing some preps for her birthday-bash. Invites have gone out to the neighbours and I've made her a birthday-crown.
I have a whole list of other stuff to handle for her birthday comes around, but this I can tick of my list. Yay me!





the crown looked a lot better after I ironed it, but ofcourse I forgot to take pictures of it then and just stored it. Ah well, you'll have to wait for the birthday pictures then.






Just for a quick fit, and it looks fine!



Other than that I've made a shirt for my daughter out of a dress of mine. It looked a lot better on the fitting doll then it did on me, but the fabric was too nice to just throw it out. Throwing out good fabric is always a waste so I kept it. I did make it in a larger size, since we have a serious overkill in sizes 86 and 92, so I decided to make her a 98.
I used Dana's great tutorial for the 90 minute shirt to make this shirt.






bots for girls! <3

I love the red-and-white stripes and the black biais. Together with her curls it makes her look like a very cute pirate-girl.


And last but not least, something for myself. A keychain. I should try and get my hands on some of that band and some hooks and loops because I think these make great gifts!



The title implies that I should've done other stuff instead of sewing and making things. I can't say much about it, but believe you me, I'm a procrastinator pur sang. Whish I wasn't but it always makes for good sewing in the end.