Stripes

in shirts are Elf Son's favourite. I could buy my son a top to the price of making one, but the quality of the material would not be this good. They wash without piling and look as new after heavy use. And as before, no Mums were harmed in making of these garments!

 I bought the material for these in here. Although the material needs to come all the way from Germany, it is really worth the wait. I generally wait until I have a need for  several things and then order "in bulk". Many of the fabrics do have the "oeko-tex" mark. The 100% cotton jerseys are thick and really good quality.  Their viscose jerseys are nice too, just much more slinky to handle, naturally. I made a grey skirt of it last year.

I don't make all my son's clothes, not even nearly. We get some hand-me-downs, I buy some second hand and few new. All in all he doesn't seem to need or want too many clothes and wearing a uniform to school takes care of the everyday clothes. Obviously he changes when he comes home, but a set of clothes can be worn several days at this age.

Confession: I took the black and white shirt off the son's back and artfully folded one sleeve as to hide a food stain on the sleeve. 

Storage Jars and Homemade Trousers

This is a project I have thought of doing a long time. I even bought the blackboard paint and had everything ready to go in my craft room. Alas, other things were more pressing, like making trousers for the Son.

I cannot claim any originality with this one, but I took what I need from other people's ideas.  I used normal cello tape to mask the glass and painted over twice. I did key the jar lids with sandpaper before painting. The little 250ml jar of paint covers approximately 3 square metres, so plenty to go with, if you plan to paint this type things. It cost £5 in our local paint shop.

I could have painted the lids with another colour, but for us the lid is the important bit. We have most of our dry goods in drawers, and the lids are the bits we see most. I did paint the lids twice as well, although once might have been enough. I plan to make many more of these.

 

The painting makes a haphazard collection of recycled jars to stylish "set" and makes labelling easy.  I am in two minds whether I bother putting the "labels" on the rest of the jars. You might think "What about when you open the jars and they are not labelled?". The foods I keep in this type of jars are easy to identify, either by sight or by the smell in case of spices. On the other hand I am about to take my liquid chalk pen to my flour jars and mark them. The pen does not need the black paint, it will stick to glass directly. I usually leave a cut out from the flour bag in the jar to tell us what is inside. Writing on the jar would ease the identification.

I made one for the Son as well

 

The black Dalek is one of the plastic ones in the jar painted over with the blackboard paint. He can choose what he is going to put in it, the aliens were in the jar just for the photo purposes. I have seen some really cute ones painted with spray paints sporting different plastic animals from kids' play sets.  I have another idea brewing, I'll show you, if it is a good one.

Sewing machine has sung quite a lot lately, the results cannot be shown as yet. The above mentioned trousers have been finished though. They did not come out perfectly, mainly because I went and changed the pattern a bit, which then skewed the whole thing.  The material was actually "too good quality" for the pattern I had decided to use. In hindsight I can see I should have changed the pattern to suit this fabric.

 

The back, please do not scrutinise a la "Great British Sewing Bee", would get many "tut-tuts"

I think it is worth showing the things, which did not come out perfectly, because quite honestly, that happens to everyone. A lot in my case. These trousers will do for this summer, they are likely to be used like this anyway.  By the way, the Son doesn't have a double chin in normal circumstances, but was pulling faces and being silly. I did mean to cut the picture further down...

I choose to be grateful that he still would use clothes made by Mum. On the other hand I know that he hates shopping, so homemade has the allure of not having to go to the horrid shops and try clothes on.

Originally I was about to buy him a pair of trousers, but it is almost impossible to predict the sizes of the used ones and there are not that many on offer anyway in his size. I don't want to buy the horrible cheap ones, as the price in the other end is far too high. (We all have seen the reports from Bangladesh disaster). The fabric for these ones cost me £9. It is quality you would find in likes of Barbour clothing, so nothing I could have found on the racks of the shops I can afford. And no Mums were harmed in the making of this garment.

Have you chosen to sew anything instead of buying?

Change of Year and Colours

This time of the year I can feel my colours changing. You know the reds and oranges and yellows turning into teal and turquoise and sometimes fuchsia. In my mind that is. I am simply reaching for different colours in my wardrobe and in my fabric stash. I used to spend a lot longer time in a colour in the past, but now I seem to get  largely through the rainbow in a year. I keep my base colours grey and white and very little black in the background all the year round. Before I felt always unsure about a new colour, because it felt as such a commitment. Now I am rather relaxed about "going off" a colour and won't get rid of a piece of clothing too soon. If I haven't worn something during last 12-18 months, then it might be recycled or re-purposed.

As I am not going to show my wardrobe with its washed and worn long sleeved t-shirts in all colours of the rainbow I thought I show you a set I made for a little girl last summer. I had bought simple polka dot cotton in an intense shadow of green for trousers and paired it with white peasant shirt made out of sheet cotton. The doily on the front was a thrift shop find and totally transformed the shirt to something special! Both the trousers and the shirt were made with very simple patterns, so sewing them didn't take long at all.

The little princess looked fabulous in the ensemble.

Do you shift your colours like a chameleon?

Jolly Pinny

I made this happy pinny for a little girl as a surprise. I used a thrift shop table cloth as the main fabric and added big polka dot details from the stash. I like it a lot and thought that I might just have a rummage to see if there are  more nice fabrics like this!

Baby Yogi

I go to a yoga class weekly and this winter one of the ladies gave birth to an adorable little princess K. The Yoga teacher was collecting money to give something to the newcomer and asked me if I was up to making the baby a present as it would be nicer to give a unique gift.

I think that it is a hoot sewing baby things, because so little goes so long. We agreed that I would make one of those baby sleeping bag dresses, as they are handy. I was very sure that I had a pattern for those somewhere, but alas no. So I got to the Ottobre site and had a look through their back catalogue. Luckily there was one in 5/2006. I had thought of making an apple green one, as the project started before the baby was born. I had eyed a lovely jersey for it, but when the pattern arrived, it said to use cotton fleece outside. That was not widely available and at this point I luckily knew that we had a princess and went for fuchsia. I still made the lining of the said apple green jersey and comforted myself with the fact that if the Mum really hated the colour, she could use it inside out, and nobody would probably notice.

Because the sewing of the sleeping bag was just so easy I felt as if I had cheated, so decided that we needed to give a bit more. I looked in the same magazine and found a pattern for this.

I used a thrifted XL ladies' cardigan as the main material and the skirt bit is Marimekko jersey from my stash. The little princess goes to mums&babies yoga class and has reportedly been admired in her personal yoga gear.