The Garden Girl Collection: The McKenzie Tunic turned Dress.

Anita:  Mom, why do you make me so many dresses?

Me:  Hmmm, because I really like making them.

Is it possible that she has too many dresses?  

Nahhh, I girl can never have to many dresses!  Am I right?

She is very happy with her newest addition.  Of course she wanted to wear it to kindergarten today, but she agreed to pick out another one for today so she can wear the new one tonight when we attend Roberts graduation from 10th grade.

My to oldest don’t get profiled much here, or not at all.  I have only sewed one pair of pajama shorts for Robert, which he refused to model for this blog, and nothing for Hartmann.  I guess it’s a bit trickier to please 16 and 19 year old boys than the little ones.  Maybe one day – we’ll see!

Ok, now the star of this post

This is made from The McKenzie Tunic pattern from Shwin Designs.

It can be bought separately or as part of the Garden Girl Collection,

which then includes The Stella Tunic and leggings

and The Jane Top & Dress.

I made her a size 4 and added 10 cm to the length.  That means that she is going to be able to use it for a long time.  First as a dress and then as a tunic, because she is so petite she has some room to grow into.

This was a breeze to sew and no buttons or zippers so it only took me a few hours too make.

The pattern pieces are perfectly made and the instruction are great.

With the deep opening in the back it’s easy to put on and take off.

I love the big pleats!

It even has some twirl factor!

The yellow fabric is Hello Petal Handstands by Aneela Hoey for Moda,

I bought it from Urban Sew.

The gray is quilting cotton from Stof bought at my local store, Kreaktiv.

Now for some picture overload, but that’s ok right?

Thanks for stopping by!

Love

Dagbjört

Shorts = Summer?

We are trying to stay optimistic that there will be summer here this year so I keep

sewing summer clothes for the kiddos.

Now it was Viktors turn, and he wanted shiny shorts!

Oh boy how am going to pull that off, I thought!

So together we looked through my fabrics and he found this great cotton + steel xoxo in green

I bought from Miss Matatabi.

So green and gold shorts I made.

The only thing was that I barely had half a meter of this fabric

and it was so close being enough for the shorts.

But you either have enough or you don’t!

We started digging through fabrics again and then I remembered another cotton+stell fabric

I had, Arrows in navy metallic, which I bought from The Laughing House.  It is sold out there now.

Perfect match!

I used the Kid Shorts pattern by Made in size 6

This is a simple pattern with lot of options and possibilities to make them your own style.

I made them last summer as well, such a quick little project.

Ok, lets turn to his shirt.  I was going to make him a tank to go with his shorts.

Like I said we still have hope that summer will come to us.  I didn’t have any solid color knit

in my stash that could go with those busy shorts and in Norway stores are closed on Sundays.

I really wanted to take these photos yesterday though so I could post this today.

As he was trying on his new shorts I noticed that the undershirt he was wearing was actually

the perfect navy color so I decided to just spruce it up a bit with some gold fabric paint I had.

We love how it turned out, even though the shirt is old and worn and kind of stretched out.

I guess when you are as good looking as this young dude you make everything look good!

Love

Dagbjört

Pleasing a picky little customer

I had mixed emotions when cutting out my fabric for the dress I am going to share with you today.

I truly loved the color palette I ended up with BUT I was not sure at all how my picky little customer would react.

Almost no pink, common how is that going to end well?!

Well…

She loved it!!

Declared even that these were her favorite colors!

Phew…. !

Let me introduce you to the Ishi Dress from straight-grain, if you don’t already know it.

I totally fell in love with this pattern when An the mastermind behind straight-grain used it to showcase some great fabrics from miss matatabi, and hoped she would make and sell the pattern.

So when she released it I was probably among the first ones to buy it!

But then started the heartache of choosing fabrics!

And the circles I went in, omg!

At some point I almost had all my fabric on the floor trying to come up with the right combo.

This dress is just sooooo perfect and I am so proud of how it turned out!

Anita wore it to a birthday party yesterday, and we got so many complements!

Then she insisted on wearing it to kindergarten today.  So maybe these are her new favorite colors after all, although I think the pockets are playing a big role in her excitement about her new dress!

I made size 4 with the slanted pockets.  I added some flat pink piping to the pockets.  I was going to add it to the princess seams as well, but I kind of messed it up so I dropped it this time around.

This dress has a hidden zipper in the back.  The second one I do, and it came out absolutely perfect!

I don’t have any photos to prove it, so you just have to trust me!

I got a hidden zipper foot for my new sewing machine and I guess that makes all the difference.

The main fabric is from Robert Kaufman called Modern Bliss by Andie Hanna, I believe I bought it from fabric.com but I can’t find it there now.  I have probably had it for about a year at least.  The pockets are made from Amy Bradley Designs for Timeless Treasures bought at my local fabric store, Kreaktiv.

The centers of the flower blobs are almost the exact same lime color as the pockets.

There is really not much more to say about this great creation.

So if you sew you need to buy this pattern!

There is even an Ishi contest going on with some great prices, and if you like my dress 

I would love it if you vote for me when the voting starts at the beginning of July. 

Love

Dagbjört.

Penny Dress

Well hello!

I’m still here even though May didn’t turn out quite as productive on the sewing front as I had hoped.  It took me some time to decide what to make, there where a couple of long weekends and I got hooked on Mad Men.  When I get hooked on something I just can’t stop until it’s done!  I only have a few episodes left and then I’ll dive into my lovely fabric stash again. 

So far I have only sewed from pdf patterns and this time I thought I’d try sewing from an e magazine.  I know it’s basically the same thing but I thought maybe the instructions wouldn’t be as detailed.  At least when I was reading through them before cutting my fabric it all seemed so much harder.  But then when I had all my fabric pieces in front of me it all made sense. 

I made the Penny Dress from issue 6 of One Thimble magazine.

This is the first e-zine I buy, and it is great!  It includes 10 patterns and a whole lot of articles on sewing.  Perfect for a sewing geek in training!

With the Penny Dress I liked how you can play around with fabric combos.

And those pockets!  Anita loves the big pockets!

I will probably find a lot of treasures in there before washing it.

I made her a size 4 as I have been doing lately and the fit is great, a little roomy but that’s how we like it.  She doesn’t like to wear clothes that are tight and when we are at home she only runs around in her underpants so she likes her freedom.  Just like her mom, I am told!  I have outgrown that habit by now in case you were wondering.

The main fabric is called Hello Petal Jump Rope in pink from Aneela Hoey, bought from 

Urban Sew looks like it’s out of stock there now.  The purple is quilting cotton from Stof bought at my local fabric store, Kreaktiv.

Do you like her shoes?

She had her heart set on wearing her slippers and nothing could change that!!

We are happy we have found yet another pattern we like.  What I love about pdf patterns is the size range you usually get the patterns in, like this one goes from size 1 – 10 so you can get a lot of use out of your patterns.

There was too much direct sunlight when I took these photos so I ended up with a lot of unpleasant shadows that I had to try to edit out, which made my final photos quite grainy.

I am sure that is just do to lack of know how on my behalf.  No matter how much I read or am told about camera settings and all that picture taking stuff, it just doesn’t get saved in my brain.  I might have to outsource that part of this sewing-blogging adventure of mine.

We had fun as usual.  Anita danced around and sang one of her self composed songs.

And talked a little bit to the trees.

Now I better get to selecting my fabrics for my next dress which is also a pattern for multiple fabrics.

Love

Dagbjört.