Scrappy dappy dachshound

I made a scrap bambi for my daughter for Christmas and here's a scrap dachshound for my son. I found the pattern in one of my sewing magazines. The eyes were supposed to be embroidered circles but I made "bambi"-eyes instead because they're much prettier. :)

It was a pretty easy make and I'm happy with the result. I also hope my son will like his new cuddly dog.

Later,

Johanna

Scrap Bambi

This year I feel inspired to make some of the Christmas presents I'm giving away. My first project is a plush toy for my daughter. She saw this bambi in one of my sewing magazines and asked if she could have one. This was months ago but I remembered and thought Christmas was a good moment to make one for her.

She loves pink so I dug in my pile of scraps to find pink ones to use. Pretty successful outcome I must say!

The pattern really called for quilting cotton, but I used stretchy velour and jersey scraps and they were very easy to work with due to the stretch.

You were also supposed to embroider around the edges of the eyes and make eyelashes, but since I'm a lazy bastard :) I just used my sewing machine and straight stitch! I did close the stuffing hole on the belly by hand! *Proud of myself*

Now I just hope that my girl will like her new little friend!

Bye for now,

Johanna

(Happy birthday to my dad! He was going to be 65 years old today.)

Cropped trousers for spring

I've been wanting to make these trousers ever since I got the sewing magazine (Swedish sewing magazine Sömnadsmagasin). In the magazine they were made in hot pink cotton stretch sateen, which looked fan-tastic! I've been looking for some similar fabric, but decided to use to denim stretch fabric from my stash instead (that's what you do when you're short on cash! :( ). Well, at least they will be my entry in the Stashbusting sewalong! Yay!

They were quite fun to put together and it actually took me two days to finish them (instead of my usual one-day garments). The only majot problem I had was putting in the invisible zipper. I've never had any trouble with those before, so I'm not sure what happened this time.

I cut a size EU46, but I probably could have gone with 44 because I took them in about 3 cm on each side seam from the hip down. In retrospect I could have taken them in at the waist too, because they have stretched out a bit after wearing them for a day.

I also got my first try at welt pockets, although they're fake. Looks kind of neat though! :)

I used some quilting cotton for the pockets and the inside of the waistband. I also only had a green invisible zipper, but I like colour so I'm happy with that.

I put a hook and eye above the zipper. The waistband isn't exactly even at the zipper, but I'm OK with that, not a perfectionist... :)


I hope I will make some similar trousers in a happy colour, like green or pink, soon. That would be very spring-y!

Unselfish sewing part 3 - Simplicity 1699 for my grandma

Recently I've been feeling that it is really OK to sew for others, something I wouldn't have done six months ago, I guess that's progress for you... :)

My grandma (on my mother's side), who is 86 years old, asked me a few months ago if I could make her a dress. She knows I sew a lot. She wanted it to be blue because that's her favourite colour.

I said I would do it, but not rush it. And now I finally felt like it was the right time for me to do this project. I found some cotton fabric, that I was going to use for curtains like 15 years ago, but never did. It's dark blue with big red and yellow flowers and green leaves on it. I thought that it would be good since I didn't know how much my gran would wear the dress anyway. So two birds with one stone: unselfish sewing AND stashbusting! Great!

I decided to use view A from Simplicity 1699 which I recently ordered from sewingpatterns.com.

Source: sewingpatterns.com viaJohanna on Pinterest

The construction was pretty simple, but I changed the order of some things to make the dress more adjustable-friendly. The pattern called for putting together the bodice and then the skirt and then joining them. But I sewing up all the front pieces and then all the back pieces and then sewed them together at the sides. I don't know any of my gran's measurements so the dress needs to be easy to adjust. My gran doesn't live near my, but in the same town as my mum so she will be the one to make the adjustments if needed. And I wanted to make it easy for her.

Anyway, here's how it turned out...

The zipper wasn't long enough, so I put it in a bit lower and added a hook and eye at the top.

I overlocked all the pieces before sewing them together. The inside looks very neat!

I cut a size EU44 because it was the smallest size on the pattern. I can put on the dress and zip it up, but I can barely move in it. I thought I would make one for myself, but I think I have to go up a size then.

I like the sleeves because they're raglan sleeves and not set in sleeves, which I find hard to move in. The scalloped detail on the sleeves is very cute, but I'm not sure I would make them again because they were kind of hard to get even, we'll see... :)

I would recommend the pattern, the style is cute and not hard at all to put together. Other alterations I made was to cut the front skirt on fold instead of cutting two pieces. I put in the zipper another way than recommended. And for my next dress I would lower the neckline which is very high.

I hope to get photos of my gran wearing the dress, but we'll see.

Happy Easter everyone!!

Johanna

Stashbusting sweatshirt dress

Oh my goodness, I've been so tired this week, I've started working 75% instead of 50%. I intended to post about my sweatshirt dress days ago, I even had the photos and everything, but there was just no energy for it... Well, better late than never I guess, so here I am.

In the last issue of 2012 of Allt om handarbete Sömnad, a Swedish sewing magazine, there were a lot of dresses and raight away I liked the sweatshirt dress. I didn't have sweatshirt fabric but some heavier jersey, which I later on realized was a double knit (I have never understood when others have been writing about double knits what they were, but now I do after seeing my own fabric. It's kind of two jersey fabrics stuck together.) I traced the pattern for size EU46 which is was I normally wear, cut and sew the dress together and this is what I ended up with...

 Yep! That's a TENT, ladies and gentlemen!

In these photos, underneath the dress(?) I'm wearing sweat pants, a longsleeved t-shirt and a wool cardigan and it doesn't even show... and it's also too long.

Some work had to be dont before I could wear this in public. I had to take in the sleeves the sides and make a sort of dart down the center back. I also unpicked the hem and cut off about 2-3 inches off the length.

 

Here's the dress looking somewhat better. I lined the hood with turquoise cotton jersey, which I also used for the pockets and I found a turquoise zipper in the right length. (Yep, it's the same jersey I used to underline the Tiramisu dress. I bought the fabric at a charity shop it was 4-5 metres for about £5 and it has been very useful!)

The dress is super comfy and I've worn it three times in the last week, wearing it right now actually. The fabric is rather warm so the dress has been great now that it's been so cold here in Sweden.

Don't know if you can see the long dart in the center back, but it's there...

 

 Quite a difference from the first photos, the dress is still big (and comfy) but it's not a tent anymore. After the dress was finished, or I thought it was finished, I wore it to work one day and realised that the sleeves just were too long, something had to be done. So I cut them off! and made new, longer cuffs, which is very cute, I think.

Not the best photo, but I hope the new cuff is visible. Now the dress is finally finished. So between this dress and the Tiramisu dress I've had some bad luck lately when it comes to fit and size. Am I really not as big as I think or what's going on? Both the Tira and the sweatshirt dress were too big to start with and I had to size them down considerably before they were ok. I have chosen size after my measurements, but still ended up with too large garments. Hmm.... strange...

Anyway, I'm working on starting some new projects.and I will also be back with the result of the Stashbusting sewalong.

Bye for now,

Johanna