Look at that!

My sweet friend, who is the best shopping assistant in the world, is also the best decorator in the world. What a coincidence! Above you can see an example of what her kitchen table looks like today. I had given her a couple of cedar chips filled hearts and she keeps arranging them in lots of different ways. (Btw: All of the flowers are from her own garden!)

Now I feel bad about what my home looks like and before sewing there will have to be some cleaning.

Quite big!

That's what this bag is.
I really like the combination of colors for this bag. It looks so much like summer and while I was sewing it it surly brightened up the cloudy day. I will keep looking at it until I'll hand it over to it's new owner...

(Now I can cross out the first thing on my list. Tomorrow I'll get started on the baby boy pants.)

Hooray!

I finally started another attempt to sew the diaper pouch and it worked out just fine. I'm really relieved. I checked all my Japanese magazines for another similar pattern and finally found one. The rest was sort of easy peasy. I mean there is still something to improve, but I hope no one notices.
So, here it is my first (real) diaper pouch! Btw:It matches one of the granny bags and together they will soon become a set.
What's next?! There are three more bags on my list plus one pair of trousers for a little baby boy. I'm also thinking of at least three skirts. One for my mom and one for my friend (they both look very good in any kind of skirt and wear them a lot) and I'm thinking about sewing one for myself. Not sure about that though. I usually never wear skirts and don't feel really comfortable in them, but maybe I should give it another try with the summer still lying ahead of us. The pattern sure looks nice and by now I should be able to make some changes to it, if it doesn't fit me the way I want it to.
Other than that there are still the kerchiefs on my list and bibs... (I really want to make those!)I'm just realizing that my list could go on and on, but I won't write down anymore because I could scare myself of.

Copy cat!

After last weeks "disaster" I actually did no sewing at all. All I did was eating chocolate (I'm quite good at that!). Until today I didn't feel like sewing at all. Well, maybe I felt like looking at a completed project, but I couldn't get myself to get started. Instead I looked at all my favorite blogs and admired the beautiful things I found. shim + sons had this gorgeous baby onesies and I totally fell for those. So when I was at a H&M the other day, I bought a couple of shirts and today I finally made something!
At first I had to - in some way - copy the ones I saw on shim+sons. I didn't dare to only stitch round the pears by hand so instead I used my sewing machine.
After I finished the pears I remembered a very cute design of a bird I'd seen in a Japanese magazine. The idea with the little heart is also not my own. I don't remember where it's from though. I usually just draw things I really like into my little notebook without writing down where it's from. So, I'm really sorry, if I didn't give someone credit who came up with great idea originally!

Problems!

I am trying to make a little diaper clutch and it doesn't look like it's supposed to! So now I'm all grumbly and very annoyed. I really wanted it to work out. I made up the pattern myself - nothing fancy or complicated looking, but I knew from the start that there would be a problem. I checked in a sewing book with a similar pattern before I started, but there they didn't mention any difficulties. I don't really know what went wrong and I don't know how to fix it - all I know is that I don't feel like starting all over again (at least not right now), but at the same time I really want to get it done! Now what?! Maybe something else? Something small and easy... Yes, I guess that's what I need now. And maybe some chocolate...

(I won't make another heart, because eventhough I really really like them a lot, I think I got enough of those right now. How about another strawberry? You can't have enough of those, can you?)

More Granny Bags!

I'm not sure if these are my final pictures of the granny bags. I had something else in mind. We'll see.

The blue bag was the first one I made. (It's modeled by my sweet friend - who is the owner of that bag now by the way.) As I said before, I made three more with the same pattern. For the green/brown one I chose a different way of gathering the fabric. I think it looks maybe a bit more difficult to make, but in fact it was easier and way faster than the other way.

When I finished the three bags I thought: "That's it. I'm through with this pattern!" By now I'm thinking differently. Variations maybe?

Strawberry!

Ages ago I saw a strawberry pincushion on another blog (I don't remember which one). It had a link to the pattern. (I am noticing just now that I need to check out how to put a link here!) I wanted to make one right away, but I had no emery and so I forgot all about it. Then just a couple of weeks ago I found a pattern for a scented fabric strawberry in "Tildas hus", a Norwegian sewing book. There were lots of other nice things in it, too and therefore I bought it. Of course the strawberry is the first thing I made. I'm not sure if I got all the instructions right, but I like how it came out anyway.

Oh, and this is a glimpse of something top secret! I'll show "it" in a couple of weeks.

I just realized that in fact I actually do seem to like red more than I thought. I was all wrong when I said I don't feel drawn to red fabric because there is lots of it in my stash!

Lady bugs!

A simple bag I made with lovely linen fabric. I added a fabric flower made out of cotton. I put it on with a safety pin so it can be taken of, when the bag needs to be cleaned. Of course that way the flower can also be used for multiple purposes. I wonder how long it will last, because the fabric can happily fray away...

Mean Ruffles!

Last night I was thinking about how to do the ruffles for the new dress. Lying in bed I pretty soon thought that I had two solutions which would work. This morning I wasn't quite so sure anymore. In the end I came up with something else and I am pretty happy with the result - eventhough it took way longer than I expected it to.
At the time red isn't one of the colors I'm drawn to when at the fabric store, but this combination (chosen by my dear friend and probably the best shopping assistant of all times!) is so cute I'm a bit sad I won't fit into it.

I told ya!

So I told you I would show more of those dresses I posted this morning and here's another one already! Same pattern, but this time with ruffles. I wasn't sure about the combination of these two fabris at first, but by the time I finished it I knew that the friend of my friend had made the perfect choice! Right now I'm making another one with ruffles, but unfortunately it seems, that the fabric I chose for the ruffles might be a bit thin. I started with the zigzag around the seam and had to undo it again, because it didn't look like it's supposed to. I'm through with it for today! I will get to it tomorrow and hope that I will be able to come up with something that works.

Pink dress!

Last summer I made this linen dress for my friends little daughter. It is a size 6M (Gr. 68) and she can still wear it as a tunic this summer and possibly even the next! Clothes that can be worn for such a long time at that age are the best thing ever, aren't they?

I love this pattern and it is really variable. Pockets or ruffles can be added and I'm thinking of a differnt closure over the shoulders, too - eventhough the knots are probably what make this dress so cute and different from typical dresses.

I already have made quite a lot of these dresses. Sometimes (actually very often) I forget to take pictures of them, so I won't be able to show them all. But there are more postings with different fabrics on their way!

More Aprons!

Shortly after I had decided to make an apron for my mom, she asked me if I could make one for a friend of my grandmother. So I figured it would be good to make them both at the same time and let her choose the one she likes best.

Well, here they are:

The brown and green one fits my mom better, because it is a bit smaller than the other one. Unfortunately she likes the other one better. So after all I might have to make a fourth apron...
I was just thinking if I should give the brown and green one to a friend of mine as part of my wedding gift (they are getting a pasta set) or do you think that that would be some weird stereotype now? I guess I'll have to think about that!

Yeah! + Oh well!

Yeah! I can do it! So I finally found a quicker way to post more pictues at once. Not using flickr the way I planned, but it works just fine. So this is a kerchief (?) I made for the little daughter of my friend. It has been my second try to make one which will fit her nicely, but it still doesn't! The pattern (if you can really call that a pattern) was from a japanese magazine and they too only had a picture of it lying on a table - no child wearing it. Now I know why. The "construction" is all wrong! But luckily my friend has now bought a kerchief that fits her daughter really well and I can see where I need to improve the fitting... and it is so easy. Great! I will make lots of those! And then the only problem that we will still have to solve is, how to keep that little girl from pulling it down everytime we try to put it on.

Close up!

I keep finding it much simpler to add a new post by using flickr. Unfortunately I don't know how to add more than one photo at a time. Suggestions?!
Anyway, here is a close up of that first granny bag. I thought one couldn't really see the fabric details.

(That's it for today then. Really! I'll go and try to figure out how to blog a couple of photos at once (using flickr that is) - because I really don't think anybody will tell me here.)

Tough one!

Why didn't anybody tell me how hard it is to take nice pictures of granny bags? I'm not really happy with the results! And it ain't just the weather (which still is not perfect for a photo session). I need to improve the overall look of the picture. For now I'll show just one of the three bags, because it will change hands soon.
It's quite big and offers lots of room for everything you need during the day. It is very comfortably to wear and best of all: it is reversible!

Green Dress!

This is a dress I made a while ago. Actually the first one of that style.
I really like the button line at the back. Buttons in general appeal to me and can be a nice extra. Too bad most of them are so expensive. Maybe I should try finding some vintage ones at fleamarkets?

I found the ones for this dress on ebay. They were new and the price was okay. I guess I should have bought some more. Oh well...

Oven Mitt!

Okay, no granny bags today. I just didn't find any time to take pictures and the weather wasn't that good for taking pictures anyway.

So instead I'm posting an oven mitt and a matching oven cloth. The mitt is inspired by Denyse Schmidt. I was two lazy to actually go out and enlarge her pattern and simply drew a similar one of my own.
These two things will be on their way to my aunt in Chicago pretty soon. She is one of the best bakers I know and so oven mitt and cloth will probably be used quite a lot.

First Apron!

This is the first apron I made and it's also the first time I tried to stamp on fabric. It worked really nicly so there are more experiments with that to come.
This apron was a gift for the sister of my friend. My mom (who is modeling it by the way) really liked it, so I'm going to make a similar one for her soon.

Yesterday and the day before I made three granny bags and I really would love to show them here now as well, but unfortunately my boyfriend took the camera while visiting his family. Maybe tomorrow...

Hearts!

I've been making quite a few of these... I think I can't count them anymore! They are filled with cedar chips and cloves. Because of that they are supposed to keep moths away. Actually I don't care if they really do - they smell good and make the perfect decoration for any room. By making these little things I can finally use up some of all those scraps I've been collecting and which filled up a whole bag by now...

Shorts!

In my last post I didn't really say anything about the picture. That little pink and yellow thing was a close up of some shorts I made last summer. They were a size 6M (68) and now, almost a year later, the little daughter of my friend can still wear them!
By now I've made two more of those and everytime they are finished I'm charmed by them. They are so cute. Definately one of my favorite patterns. I especially love the little zigzag on the hem.