Summer sewing, so what did I do?

Hello,

Now that summer has gone and fall season is here, I decided to make a posting about my summer sewing projects.

I really did a lot of sewing this summer. I don't remeber that I've done so much sewing in a summer than the past summer. Maybe the pandemic had something to do with it, I had time to scroll through different pattern sites and online fabric stores, and when the situation was good even to go to a store buy new fabric. I was glad I found so many smaller Finnish sewing stores to support this summer.

I made a plan in the spring to get some projects done this summer and I guess those projects just multiplied in the summer.

One project I made was the Finnish Designer -pattern project (that is still ongoing). There is a monthly subscription magazine that publishes a pattern from a Finnish designer and that has been going on for some time and I decided to make those patterns.

This summer I finished sewing a tunic (from Kaino) and a dress (from Uhana). I am still making a hoodie and pants (those are not ready yet, so it became and a fall project instead). So I have to make posting about my fall projects later on. 

I really like the concept of featuring a smaller or bigger national designer companie's designs and their patterns. The magazine is called Suuri Käsityö and it is only published in Finnish unfortunately. Most of the patterns have been well written and the sizing quite good.  For the dress I bought cotton poplin with carnations, I didn't read the description for the fabric and it was narrower than I thought. I was so happy to make the dress from that fabric. I also used Framilon for the first time in my life. The back piece didn't turn out that well, but it doesn't show too much when wearing the dress.

The tunic is made from viscose jersey. I normally hate sewing viscose, it is just soooo slippery and unforgiving. But this jersey was such a find, it was nice to sew with and overlock machine and the result was pretty. I really like the red colour.

I also made a shirtdress from Marimekko's Pikkulokki fabric. It is my favourite, only prblem was that there were no parties or events to wear this dress. So it has been hanging in my closet for now. PikkuLokki was a hard pattern to match in the front. I am happy that I even bought extra pieces of that fabric just in case. It was so hard to match the stripes correctly and had to ask my more artistically talented little sister for help, because the stripes were just jumping in front of my eyes and I couldn't figure out the exact lining of the front pieces. But it was worth the trouble, the stripes look so good in the end. I'd say they are 98% perfectly aligned.

So a few dresses, and the I found Mielidesign's linen-viscose fabric. And my mom needed new linen trousers. 

I made a pair of paperbag pants, that were a frog (too small for even my smaller sister), the pattern didn't have a sizing chart (and I didn't do a mock up from any muslin).

I wanted to sew something from a Japanese sewing pattern and scrolled through many sites of Japanese sewing pattern and then I found a pair of pants (for free) from Nunocoto's website. 

I made two pairs for myself: armygreen and black ones.

I used Google translator and totally loved these trousers. I had bought only 2m of linen-viscose and had to shorten the trousers. The pattern itself was very simple and would've totally been fine made with just linen. My room was a complete mess after sewing, even after cleaning I though there were bits and pieces of the fabric everywhere on the floor.

And for my mom I made two pairs, so five pairs in total. Pretty crazy right? That was my mid-July sewing marathon.

Then I had the baby clothes inspiration and you can check my previous post about it. And that project is also still ongoing.

And of course I had to make a doll even this summer. The pattern is my own and still needs some modifications and polishing. I've wanted to make a doll that has all the pieces sewn together by machine, not by hand and this is my current version of the doll. I still have to learn how to embroider the face. I've been doing dolls for ages and I still think that the embroidery of the face is the hardest part of the doll. Now the doll pattern is in the closet waiting for the next version. Maybe that would be a good goal for the fall: to get the doll pattern and the doll face finally "right"?

I also made a dress from my old wedding dress mockup, by just adding a basic circular skirt to it. The fabric is just normal denim. I made the mockup from a fabric that was suitable for a later use a dress and now my sister has a new dress.

And then I decided to polish my quilting skills by getting rid of my scrap cotton pieces.

So I can say I had a pretty productive summer this year. So what are my tips and ideas for how to get things done?

1) Plan ahead and maybe some daydreaming: what would be the things that you would like to achieve? Is there a skill you've wanted to learn or a dream pattern you've wanted to try.

2) Go through the stash (and the endless free pattern of Internet): What could I get done from these fabrics? Is there a fabric I bought for a certain project and I've forgotten about it. Maybe scrap that idea and think of something else. I found so many good pattern sites this summer: in English, in German and in Japanese.

3) Going through the sales: I always get ideas I want to do, when going through fabric sales. I have a million ideas going inside of my mind.

4) Write the ideas down: on your sewing planner, on a post-it note.

5) And honestly I kind forgot to watch any tv-series this summer and did just sewing. I guess it was just so much more satisfactory to get a sewing project done than to finish a tv-series.

My "Baby Box" and ideas for constructing your own box.

 Hello,

I hope you are all having a nice and productive autumn season this year, even if the year has been quite different from expected.

 

Staying at home has really given me so much inspiration and motivation to do sewing and sew stuff that has been unfinished for years.

At least for me seeing my fabrics more often than normally gives rise to countless ideas to do and this baby box idea has been in my head for a while.

I have a lot of different jerseys and colleges I've collected and saved during the years. Some of the fabrics are even older than I am. So I decided it is time to finally do something about my evergrowing stash and a box of baby clothes is just a perfect project to use all the scrap jerseys. This box is far from finished, but I guess this is a good start and I couldn't wait any longer to do a blog post about it.

At the moment I've done:

Four shirts, a body, a zippered one piece, two rompers, two trousers. And currently I am knitting a cardigan and planning on sewing couple of bibs later.

How to construct a baby box?

1.  Go through your jearsey stash and use your imagination:

For me it was all about stash busting my jersey and college fabrics that are filling my storage boxes. I save quite small pieces of leftover fabrics and try to imagine them as baby clothes while cutting my original project. My stash consists of mainly green and blue fabrics and that is the reason for a boyish color-themed clothes. I've done so many jersey/college clothes for my brothers and saved the leftovers.

But you can choose what you want. More hot pink or neutral colored clothes? Whatever is in your stash or who is the recipient of the box: do you plan to give it as a baby shower gift or do it for your own baby.

On the left are my two favourites. The green striped shirt I found in my stash and I had to invent a way to finish it. I had too small pieces left for the front panel. I just sewed two pieces together and cut the missing front panel. The shirt is a bit short, but the color is just sooooo cute.

I love stripes and dots and animal prints more than single colors. 

2. What does the baby need?

Ask the-mom-to-be. Has she already a closet full of warm winterwear, but would love to have some light summer clothes or the other way round. Does she have colors that she likes/dislikes. Are there clothes that she has, but wants similar in different sizes. The baby will grow out of the smallest sizes very quickly, so better to make them look extra cute (IMO)

For me it was also important to use the fabrics that can be washed in 60 degrees celsius. Some moms like to use baby pants and other prefer rompers (with open feet/closed feet). Everyone has different preferences. And some babies just tend to kick off all the socks in just a matter of few seconds.

I had in mind to make those small sizes 50-62cm, because I used the stash fabric. But many moms will probably apprecieate even the sizes 68-74cm.

3. Scrolling through the pattern pages

I love free sewing patterns, don't we all? But there are just so many different styles and sizes. And that is the reason for planning, what are you really looking for to make:

1. Certain sizes?

I planned ahead that I wanted small trousers with side seams

So I made two size 56cm trousers. The blue and white is a leftover from a t-shirt I made for myself probably in fifth grade and the green-violet ones are from an old stash fabric.

2.Certain fabrics that require a specific type of pattern. (What I mean is: you can only make baby rompers from this fabric - kind of thing.

 I couldn't think of any other way to use my elephant

fabric. I bought it from a localfabric store prbably close to fifteen years ago, when they used to have these 2x/year sales: "fill up a bag for 10euros" and there was a elephant themede college. I actually made two of these, but the other was a bit large so it is now in the storage (again)

3. Certain clothes? 

I like baby rompers, the very traditional ones. And I wanted to something else than just the basic white or yellow one.

I made some clothes from a magazine I've subscribed to, they had a pretty good pattern for rompers.The green one is from that pattern. The striped one I found in my stash, I had to add additionalt pieces to the legs, because initially they were unevenly cut. I tried to make as little extra seams as I could.

Don't be afraid to try something you haven't already tried. For me it was german patterns, that I found for free. But Google translate is just amazing and free dictionaries are so helpful. There are even nice japanese baby patterns to try, if you are up for a challenge (I haven't tried those yet :) )