LA FILLE DU FIL

Some time ago I started on a project for little Anna’s birthday. As it involves a lot of hand-sewing it still is a work-in-progress. For the moment it looks like this:

There should be nine of them and some felt has to be added. But as I might have mentioned before: I hate hand-sewing. So much for the perfect seamstress…

As I still wanted to give her something handmade, I needed something quick and easy. Once again Mme Zsazsa came to my rescue… Her idea was to make a little skirt out of an old shirt. As I still had a new and long never worn shirt hanging in the closet, I made a skirt for Anna and a normal shirt for myself, which I wore the same day. Two birds with one stone…

I tried the PJ pants on the boys. What I feared became reality. Both wanted the red one… Don D wasn’t really pleased with his green one, Captain N loved his red one ‘they look like circus pants!’ Hm… This wasn’t what I had in mind.
They are also far too big so we had to fold them.

I’m not sure about the circus pants, they’re not sure about the PJ pants, but they certainly are perfect pillow fight pants.

At the sewing lessons we are trying to sew the PJ shirt. For the first time I was fed with sewing last Monday. It’s so difficult. I won’t give up but I wasn’t in the mood for Mamasha’s Hemdjes sew along (although it looks like a great tutorial). I promised myself I’ll have a second try on it but not just now…

I had a great idea.

With my slice fabrique I would make felt letters and sew them on a shirt for my dad. I was so excited about it. He would wear it proudly and would brag about it being made by his daughter to then continue about his little paradise in Spain. So I thought a while about the right colors. I couldn’t decide.
While shopping for kids clothes one day with one of the boys I suddenly happened to be in a crafts shop. I bought the felt without thinking about the color (Don Diego was training for the marathon in the store). The felt worked beautifully with the slice fabrique. The letters worked out great. Only at the end I realised they worked out too great. Literally. Dad would fit twice in a shirt with those letters…

Grandmaster B told me yesterday I’m almost virtually dead…

Allthough it looks and feels like I haven’t been sewing a lot lately, I did use my sewing machine for a few things not really worth mentioning (but I mention them anyway):
- I repaired a colleague’s wallet.
- I shortened one of Grandmaster’s cycle pants.
- I made a shirt out of a babydoll (not sure babydoll is the right word: a shirt and pair of shorts in one, I took of the shorts to keep the shirt)
- I exercised a bit on my writing skills following Sofie’s advice:

- I made a vest with large collar, which I discovered later aren’t the right colors for me:

- I started on baby Anna’s birthday gift, which is taking me longer than expected. I hope I won’t give up before it’s finished.
- I went through all my sewing magazines and I marked the projects I really wanted to have a try on.
- I’m making 2 pajamas (for the twins) instead of one in the sewing class.
- I went on holiday twice, which hasn’t anything to do with sewing (apart from meeting Sofie in the South of France) but it might explain the virtual silence.

I still need to:
- tidy up my sewing corner, it’s a mess.
- finish baby Anna’s gift.
- make the shirt-parts of the pajamas.

I really, really, really want to:
- make a skirt out of Mme Zsazsa‘s bestseller: the A-lijn met paspelband from page 58.
- follow Mamasha’s Hemdjes sew along from May 14th till May 18th.
- start on those sewing magazines, so that I can put them away (which would make the mess mentioned above a little bit less… messy)
- meet up with Marthe for a sewing date.

Don’t know where to start… there is chaos in my head…

Handmade scarves and jackets for carnaval.
Thank you Christine for the fabric!

Since the colleagues heard about my sewing tryouts, they collect jam covers for me. You know, the round piece of cloth you typically find on jars of handmade jam. They were too small to make anything out of them, but too bright and funny to throw away. So I didn’t know what to do with them.

A day before the big day Grandmaster B told me he had a Valentine gift for. I first had to get over my surprise and then quickly had to come up with an idea for him.

Luckily I just bought myself a new toy, “a revolutionary new digital design cutter specifically created for fabric”, the Slice Fabrique.
So I tried it on the jam covers and ended up with this:



The boys (the little ones) loved it and wanted the same. The big one thought/hoped/decided it was a pajama top. Although I secretly hoped he would proudly wear it to go to work, I can’t blame him!

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my new sewing bag

formerly know as the vintage sportsbag

fake leather outside, precious and airy lining inside

and some nice details all over

I loved to make it

but I’ll think twice before making another one!

And Mia’s favorite color is purple…

So far everything is working out great for my retro sports bag. Fingers crossed it stays that way.

The outside is a hard-to-sew fake leather I found at Stoffenspektakel. The inside is a very nice easy-to-sew old pink fabric from Grandmaster B’s mum. The buttons are from Granny Gabriella and make the retro look complete. Three generations for a new vintage bag.

The bag will have two outer pockets with buttons…


… one customized inner pocket for my mobile and other stuff …

… and one inner pocket with zipper.


Each part is nicely overlocked and makes it look very professional (until now anyway)

Cross fingers, burn candles and say prayers till next post…

PS: In the meantime I also got my first order from a colleague. More about that later…

Last week in class it was all about zippers. And I hate it. Well… hate is a big word, but I did promise myself I’ll try to avoid them wherever I can.