Bd girl in a bd dress

Let's continue with the birthday posts of our youngest. As always I wanted to make her a dress. Searching at the local fabric store, the www and even at our local museum with a temporary fashion exhibition and great fabric sale. With no result. So in the end my very own fabric stock was newly explored - what an idea ;) - and with success! These two grey and green all time beauties of Nani Iro I found, but were sadly both to small... So I decided to combine them.


Easier said than done, I took me a lifetime puzzling. But again: with success! Happy to have that upper little bird on the right place on her breast.
Nearly no fabric was left. As a gift, this dress forced me to teach myself how to join patterned fabric.

The pattern 'Sweet' of Remi&Cosette for teens was used, without collar and with added elastic waistband.

Nele

Thanks Nele, to allow me to copy paste your beautiful teenager sweater! I learned to use a new jersey stitch and loved it! And I changed it a bit into a dress.

The challenge of this project was to get it out of the available fabric. I bought it at MondaysMilk (check out their new Nani Iro's!) and since there was only 1,7 m left, did it take me one evening puzzling. The inside of the pockets ended up in a different fabric.

My daughter is very happy with her comfi sweater and still is after wearing it to school, where some of her classmates reacted with: 'did you forget to take off your pyjamas?' I'm so superproud that she doesn't care about it! Yes, we can learn from our children!

Nice couple

Ok, I thought, let's make some more skirts of my favorite Petit Pan fabrics. This time with side pockets and neon waistbands. L complains that she can't choose...

They are meant for L, but yesterday both skirts were worn by M and L. I must say that M is getting too old for a skirt model like this. But in the sun I especially loved the bright color of the orange skirt. I would say it's autumn orange.
"Mama, don't show my bare belly on internet!" I tried, my dear L.

Baptism

Yes! She beamed when she saw it. That's why we do this, right? Noeks showed her new fabrics in her newsletter and at once this one was ordered. Funny that right now I notice the similarity with my blog banner :). The elastic was bought in Paris - again at La Droguerie - but is as well online available here. On Sunday outside plans were skipped because the weather wasn't like forecasted. So room to sew. Not finished in an hour, like my admired Belgian colleagues, but some more. I liked the seams to be invisible (you might see one in the left picture?) and the pattern had to be taken account of.

Minadotter helped. Look at her number of skirts! And all beauties in my opinion, especially these. My elastic waistband was 5 cm wide instead of 3 cm and I decided to finish the waist a bit different. The pattern of the fabric appeared to be useful as a ruler. Altogether a sewing project to be recommended!
And now over to the more serious part of this post.

indistinct view of the skirt

side view of the skirt

front view of the skirt

Dear L, you baptized it in a proper way!

Homemade souvenir

M loved to buy souvenirs in the shops down the Sacre Coeur. But none of all possible 'I love Paris' t-shirts she liked. Some later we bumped into a great fabric shop where a friendly woman sold us quite some silk fabrics. This one was combined with a sample of a red transparent curtain. The skirt layers were wrinkled and attached to a shorter, silk waistband.

I'm glad how the length turned out.

As I don't have an overlock machine, the skirt was finished in a different way: I first rolled the silk edge through my fingers and finished it with a fine zigzag stitch. The red underskirt was already finished.
Tadaa! My first Paris buy result, today on M's hips to school.

Little piece

Don't wanna talk big, but yes, I so love this result! From the first moment I saw the pattern I knew it was meant for me. These kind of simple designs bring me joy and happiness.

Found here and made with a double yarn as described (color 2020 and 9020). I recommend this yarn, that I tested before. It's lovely soft and supple.

Dear Mees, I wish you grow fast so you can go home!

For Mees

A very little baby boy was born too early. I'm knitting to warm him when he is leaving the hospital. It's work in progress but I like to show it this way as well.

Petit Pan for petite L

L became 7 years old last week! It has been fantastic days. Today the garlands and balloons were cleared away. Last holidays were there for several preparations.
No mama, I do have enough clothes, she made me understand. But, after showing this image, she absolutely wanted to be a birthday girl in such a dress. Two Petit Pan fabrics (wow!) were ordered and, as L couldn't decide, we decided to use both. Now in the end I really love the combination of the fabrics, my first Petit Pans, including the red lining.


Making the dress was like a course for me. The beautiful book of these two sewing genius guided me. But there was a lot of error! I sewed the outer and lining fabric together on the sides and discovered my mistake quite late! Then the making of my first blind zipper. I didn't understand how to attach the lining to the zipper, but after a little more thinking it succeeded finally. But let's be positive: I learned!

And most important: L is so happy, she keeps on swirling. Something she wanted for a long, long time. And looking at this birthday girl makes me happy!

Dots everywhere

Yeah, my first result on my brand new sewing machine. Funny that I first was a bit scared to touch it, at the same time knowing that after touching I wouldn't let go anymore. Wow, sewing was never this easy. 
I couldn't test my new toy better than with this super cheap market buy, a thin jersey of which colors and dessin attracted me. What is the header of my blog doing to me again ;)?

This comfi jumpsuit is M's birthday outfit. She loves it! As she does love her accessories. And her fresh haircut. She feels 11!

This weekend she already was in the spotlight of family and neighbours. Now I'm washing her jumpsuit to be clean next Tuesday.

For those who think the trousers are short...

On the bias

Are you still curious after this post? To be honest, this dress was planned for L's birthday! Only the borders to go, I decided to quit this knitting to be continued after those busy days. A good exercise to let go!

Looking at the final result I was afraid L would refuse to wear it, but pfff, she loves it! She's wearing it now three days in a row. She may. It took quite some time to make it and you never know whether my youngest self-assured daughter likes or not, so I'm glad.
Thanks Saskia for the nice stay in your small shop and for inspiring me. Browsing through different kind of knitting books I really fell in love with this dress in this book. I used this affordable yarn. But my bag was filled with more...

Some changes I made: the description for the borders was way too complex, so I decided to do it my good-old-way. And I changed color on an even number of rows to take along the waiting thread and thus to avoid weaving in ends. Here I found the perfect rose pattern...
In my opinion the dress is a tiny bit too long right now, but she'll grow!

Festive

Our eldest daughter M got ten years old this week! We had such wonderful days and weather! Our teenager woke up, surprised by this birthday dress.
Reading blogs can make you enthousiastic. When you mix this incredible Boleo, this wow skirt of Oontje and this horse dress, you can imagine I came to this result. I loved the idea of buying a duvet cover of Ikea to use for sewing cloths. You can wait for some more items, since these's a lot of fabric left.

Thanks Sanne of Eloleo for the great pocket idea! It was great to puzzle how to make it.
Don't you think it's a stylish girl with the matching treats for school? I'll write about that later. Just let me know if you would like to know how to make these treats!

Horse

Actually I tend to buy kids clothes second-hand. This principal of buying, wearing, selling, wearing by other children and so on, feels good to me. I like to discover nice pieces and love to combine them. Second-hand means more clothes in a financial way, another advantage :).
My daughter M loves it when I make her something. This year it's going to be a birthday dress, in the early morning of the big day hanging on her closet. I really haven't got a lot of experience, but just tell myself I can do things like that. That helps. This one is a test dress.

The simple fabric was found on the market, which I combined with an experimental sewed drawing...
It fits fine. M is happy (so me too).

Smaller one

I tried to crochet this pattern. Great to do, but after a while I decided to quit. In this case the pattern is too open looped and too cold in my opinion to wear on a colorful dress with short sleeves like this one. So I started again and knitted a smaller bolero version, this time with needle 5 and this yarn.
What do you think? L likes it.