Happy Friday! The teachers’ strike finally ended on Wednesday of this week, and it’s funny how almost every parent I ran into on the first day of school commented how looooooong this summer vacation was. All told, the start of school was delayed for six days, but when you don’t know what’s happening each day, every passing moment can feel like an eternity, you know?

Anyway. K thoroughly enjoyed the extra days of lounging about with friends, and despite my best efforts, I wasn’t as successful as I’d like to have been on the work front. I did, however, sew yet another animal print dress.

Sadly, K rejected it as a first day of school outfit because…well, I’m not sure why. She said that it’s more of a second day of school dress without providing much in the way of illuminating information. Hmmmm….

I used this book, from which I should sew more. I love that it has patterns for both girls and women, and I’ve been eyeing a few items to whip up for myself. This particular dress pattern is technically meant for wovens, but since K won’t wear anything that’s not stretchy, I gave it a shot with this cheetah (?) knit jersey from here. It’s super soft. The contrasting dark grey is the same scrap knit I keep using for details.

So there you have it, the second day of school dress. Be still my heart — could I interpret this to mean that the animal print phase is almost over??

OK! Back to editing/illustrating! I hope to post at least once next week too. I wish you all a wonderful, wonderful weekend!

First day back at school
K was filled with nervousness
But it was awesome*

*She loves her teachers and most of her closest friends are in her class. Huzzah!

 

 

As you know, I’m devoted to my Japanese sewing books, but K is starting to outgrow the 130cm size which is usually the largest size offered. Luckily, I happened to be organizing all of my sewing books and patterns and discovered that I’d purchased quite a few Ottobre issues back when I’d first caught the DIY bug. Look, the sizing goes up to 170cm!

I decided to try the simple Marja knit tunic in 134cm from the Spring 2009 issue. This was my first experience with Ottobre patterns, and I have mixed feelings. Ottobre Design hails from Finland and it’s a mystery why the magazine name is in Italian (it means October). At any rate, branching out to this Scandinavian publication confirmed a few things about myself.

First of all, I am an entirely visual learner when it comes to sewing. The instructions were sparse for this pattern and there were no illustrations or photos accompanying the constructions steps. None!! After reading through the instructions twice, I gave up trying to process the words and sewed it the way I normally would. It’s a good thing I’ve made dozens of tops like this and it’s no wonder that I love Japanese sewing books with their superb illustrations. I’ve always known that I’m a visual learner, but I didn’t know how utterly dependent I am on images to follow instructions.

Second, I used to be convinced that my perfectionism was unparalleled, but this top proves that I’ve become much more laissez faire. Or maybe just plain lazy. I initially missed cutting out the front bottom piece and seeing as to how I only had 3/4 yard of this lovely 95% cotton/5% spandex knit, I had to do away with the gathering and reduce the width of the bottom pieces to squeeze out the needed piece. I actually shrugged to myself and muttered, “oh well.” Believe me, a few years ago I would have scrapped the whole project at this point.

This top would have been much cuter with the gathers, but you know what? K likes it a bunch. I realize that her smiles up there look more like sneers, but she was actually singing the whole time I was snapping away with my camera, and singing always means thumb’s up.

Related to the easing of my perfectionism, but not exactly the same thing: I’ve relinquished all control of trying to style K’s outfits. That purple tiered skirt and the animal print headband would not have been my first choice (I had visions of pairing the tunic with grey leggings and a cute neutral scarf), but hey, the combo makes her dance — another good sign. She happily wore the top for the day and now it’s in the black hole we call the laundry basket. Who knows when we’ll see it again.

M tells me I’m uptight (in a way that’s not annoying, he adds. What??), but I beg to differ and feel that I’m practically Rastafarian these days. Case in point: I haven’t even bothered to make her a first day of school outfit mainly because I have no idea when the first day of school is. It was supposed to be today, but negotiations for salary increases and other amenities are underway and teachers are on the brink of going on strike as of this writing. Maybe when this post goes up, it’ll be resolved. I hope so.

Alright, the cafe where I’m typing this is closing so it’s a wrap.  I leave you with this image — don’t the pocket edges look like closed eyes? I suppose this tunic would also make an excellent pajama top…

Good morning! Everyone knows about K’s love of animal prints. And most people know that I make all her clothes, so of course, she received two yards of animal print fabric for her birthday.

“Pants!” she said without an iota of hesitation when I asked her what she’d like me to make with her special fabric. Pants it is.

I used the “slim pants” pattern from this great book, but made a few mods in addition to lengthening the pant legs by 1cm. I changed the front pockets (the original design has front patch pockets) and skinnified the legs, which were easy modifications — I’ll show you what I did in more detail on Wednesday!

K is very, very happy with these. Her one complaint was that she wanted them to be skin tight, but despite having a little bit of stretch, making them any tighter would not have allowed her to have the range of movement she so loves.

Rockstar pants, don’t you think? The shirt is a hand-me-down from her slightly older neighbor friend, and K inherited a huge bag full of bright and colorful clothes. It almost made me toss out my plans to sew school clothes for K. Almost, but not quite. Sewing back-to-school clothes is a ritual I consider sacred.

We tried the pants with the black stripey tee for a different look. That tee gets worn a ton.

I’ve been meaning to make these pants for years but the zip fly had me cowed, as many zipper projects tend to do. I took the plunge, though, and I’m glad I did because it really wasn’t all that bad. I also had it in my head that it would be incredibly challenging to add one of those adjustable elastic waistbands, which turned out not to be painful in the least.

The one snafu I ran into was the shortage of waistband width, and rather than cutting out a new waistband, I got creative and folded the fly guard instead. It worked! So much so that I wondered if maybe that’s what I was supposed to do and the instructions just didn’t include it…who knows?

At any rate, these pants resulted in much jubilation! I would like to try the Peekaboo pattern next. [I originally wrote Small Fry, but I’ve already made a pair back in November. See what I mean about my memory? Thank goodness for this blog!]

Look at all these fun denim colors I have — K is going to love them!

What about you? Any fall sewing plans?

 

 

Good morning! We’re still recovering from the Fourth of July party, the heat and technical blips, but I have a new garment to share today, and that’s always an energy booster for me.

A few months ago, I had fun sewing up the Franklin dress + tunic (in fact, K wore the tunic when we went to see the fireworks on Saturday). The lovely Erin of Brooklyn Pattern Co. contacted me again recently to see if I’d be interested in giving the Henry dress a try. But of course!

I had a hard time deciding on the fabric. The combination of the feminine pleated puffed sleeves and the more geometric angled pockets (which I absolutely love) had me scratching my head a bit. I wanted a sort of gradient look and have this fabulous pink linen that I wanted to use, but I only had one yard of it. So I burrowed into my endless fabric supply, pulling out gingham checks, my default navy-and-white stripes, a madras seersucker, a couple of knits with bright prints… None of them felt right.

I struck gold when I found this gradient striped fabric at the bottom of one of my bins. I think it’s a cotton poplin, and I’m all about the various shades of grey. The one stickler was that the stripes run parallel to the selvage, so I had to cut the patterns cross grain. This made it tricky for K to get the dress on since the fabric couldn’t stretch much width-wise and there are no closures.

For the neck and pocket facings, I used the thinnest cotton lawn in a refreshing mint color. My neck facing didn’t like staying in place despite my understitching; if you look closely enough, you’ll see the neck facing scooching up and revealing itself in small tufts. But check out my stripes-matching — I’m quite proud. I might have to start thinking about dipping my toe into quilting.

The instructions are superb, but I did a few things slightly differently, just because:

1. To make finishing the sleeve edge easier, I double-folded and pressed the sleeve edge before sewing the underarm portion of the sleeve together. It’s always harder for me to press sleeve edges in the round, and with the added bulk of the pleats, this turned out to be a good move.

2. I raised the skirt hem by about 2.5inches. It looked too long to me when K tried it on.

3. I basted the pockets on each side before assembling the front of the dress. The instructions guide you to simply pin the sides. By basting each side of the pocket to the side panel, the pockets are nicely attached and makes the next step easier.

On a side note, I think a sleeveless version of this dress would look wonderful.

The verdict? Thumbs up from both me and K! I cut out the largest size, which is 8, and the fit is perfect. I really like how modern it looks (though maybe she appears to be heading to a corporate board room and just needs to locate her Manolo Blahniks?) and K asked if she could keep it on after the photo shoot. The ultimate sign of sewing success! She even volunteered to add some modeling oomph with her prop of choice:

Thank you for the pattern, Erin! I thoroughly enjoyed making the Henry dress, and K is a happy camper. Make sure to check out the other blog tour participants and Erin is offering a coupon code for you! Readers receive 20% any pattern in the shop with the code: SUMMERFUN15. The code runs from 12:01 am on July 6through 11:59 pm on July 15.