Twig & Tale Upcycle Tour

As you may know, I love a good upcycle challenge. It's so rewarding to give old, worn-out clothes a new life, especially when you have worn these clothes with love. I bought these red corduroy pants when I was a student and used to wear them a lot, but some years ago I decided that it was time to move them to my stash pile.

They have been there for quite a while, waiting for the right moment to make their reappearance. And that moment finally came when I was asked to participate in the upcycle blog tour of Twig and Tale.

Twig and Tale is the New Zealand based pattern company of Lisa Spearman, who designs whimsical, nature-inspired, easy-to-sew children's clothes. In her pattern instructions she pays special attention to which materials are suitable to upcycle for the different parts of the garment.  

Since I was short on time for this tour, I chose a quick project: the Wild Things Hooded Scarf. This is a hat and scarf combined in one, with ears! The pattern comes with a whole menagerie of animals to choose from; zebra, fox, bear, lion, cat, bunny, yes even a giraffe! I wanted to have a fur-lined hood, so I chose the lion.

I happened to have some colourful plaid cotton in my stash that matched nicely with the red corduroy, and therefore could be used as lining fabric. I didn't have any fur though, so I went to the fabric market where I found a whole bin of fur remnants in all colours. This orange-blue fur matched perfectly with the lining fabric.

Next up, cutting the pattern pieces. When upcycling old garments, this is always a puzzle. In this case, the front legs were pretty worn out, so I cut the long scarf pattern parts from the back legs. There was still enough usable fabric on the front legs to cut the hood parts.

The hood originally consists of three parts but since my fur was very thick, I split the front band into two narrower bands (with added seam allowance), the back part in the main/lining fabric, and the front part in fur.

Then it was just a matter of following the pattern instructions, which were clear and straightforward.

My son is almost 4, so I made him a size 3-5 yr. It's a bit big on him, and the long fur gets into his eyes and mouth. But when he's wearing it on top of his wool hat, the fur doesn't bother him. I might be biased but think he looks so cute in it. A mix between a lion and an inuit boy.

Be sure to visit the other participants on the blog tour, there is more eye candy waiting for you!

Go here for the blog tour overview page.

Rafflecopter: a Rafflecopter giveaway

Blog Line up:

Day one: Sew Shelly Sew - Handmade Boy -Nap time Creations - Boevenbende
Day two: Stylin Stacy - The Craftingfiend - Gaafmachine -While she was sleeping
Day three: Huisje Boompje Boefjes -Life in our busy household - The Crazy Tailor - Sew Sophie Lynn
Day four: Crafty like a Rox - The Wolf and the Tree - NZ Green Buttons -Vera Luna - Paisley Roots

Winterland revisited

Four years ago I made one of my all-time favorites, inspired by a sweater that my mom knitted thirty-something years ago. The original had shrunk into weird proportions, but I loved the colors and the shawl collar, so I decided to copy it.

Of course, he quickly grew out of his sweater (as babies do). Each following winter I planned to sew another version of it, but I didn't manage until this winter.

The pattern is the ADV tee by Sofilantjes, adjusted to be slightly wider and with a shawl collar instead of a v-neck. 

In order to make the shawl collar, I drew a 5 cm horizontal line, centered at the bottom of the original V. Then I connected the ends of the line with the tops of the V. Next, I cut a 14 cm wide strip of ribbing, folded it in half and attached it to the neckline, stretching the ribbing as I went.

All fabrics came from my stash. It turned out I had too little brown ribbing for the bottom band and both cuffs, but fortunately I had some rust red ribbing that perfectly matched the colour of one of the sleeves. Happy accident!

On a not-too-cold afternoon, we went to the local park for a photoshoot during golden hour. He perfectly blended in among the brown tones of the plants. 

ADVTee blog tour

Hi all, here I am again, after a long, unintended blog break. 

As a matter of fact, I didn't touch my sewing maching for a few months, feeling that my latest creation -the upcycled denim vest-  had taken so much creative energy that I needed some time to recover.

But then Anne from Sofilantjes invited me to participate in the ADVTee blog tour, hosted by Sprouting Jube Jube. That was a good trigger to start thinking about sewing again. An easy, nice sweatshirt, the perfect project to get my sewing mojo back. 

The ADVtee pattern has two neckline options; a simple V-neck and an asymmetric button closure. I chose the V-neck. Simple, but I love how it turned out with the striped ribbing.

For the pocket I used a bit of the Menagerie Onyx fabric from Art Gallery. This fabric has been on my wish list for a long time, so when I found out that Petite Couture had it in stock, I immediately bought a yard. It's such a great print, with all these cute animal faces; perfect for fun details such as this pocket.

I sewed a size 3 for my 2,5 year old, and it fits perfectly. As you can see, I didn't hem the sleeves and bottom before taking these pictures. Daylight is scarce these days, so I had to take the photos before finishing the sweater. 

I'm really happy that I could join this tour, because I love this sweater. I've already printed out the size 9, to make a version for my daughter. Can't wait to get started...so I think I've got my sewing mojo back. Thanks Anne and Deb!

Curious what other participants in the blog tour made? Check out the tour schedule here:

Nov 30: From-a-Box - The Wholesome Mama - Sprouting JubeJube
Dec 1: Lulu & Celeste - Handmade Boy - Boevenbende
Dec 2: Rebel & Malice - Vera Luna - Liesel Love
Dec 3: Vaahtokarkkimonsteri - Huisje Boompje Boefjes - Khadetjes
Dec 4: Call Ajaire - Straight Grain - Nononsonsmoms

And to celebrate this blog tour, Sofilantjes is giving a 20% discount on their patterns. You can use the code "CELEBRATE" at checkout  from November 30th to December 6th.

Tutorial - string ornaments

When collecting paper for the recycle bin, I found some nice red cardboard, I was reminded of this tutorial, and decided to make some string ornaments together with my kids.

A quick and easy project, but the result is really nice. 

We hung our ornaments in the tree, but you could also use them as gift tags or other decoration.

Here's a small tutorial:

1. Cut out small circles from thin cardboard. Cut eight or sixteen slits into the circles.

2. Take some yarn (or twine as I did) and tape it to the backside.

3. Thread the string forward through the slit at the top and bring it down to the slit at the bottom. Then, bring the yarn up and forward through the slit next to the top one, and backward through the slit next to the bottom one. Continue in the same way, until you have completed two rounds.

4. Once completed, weave the yarn underneath one of the strings, make a loop and knot it.

5. You're done!

A Frozen hat

The result of my experiment! A wintery hat for M. As soon as she put it on, she burst into singing "Let it go! Let it go!" Indeed, it does remind of the movie Frozen!

M loves it. She couldn't wait until it was finished (which is why it is a bit on the small side - it's hard to keep adding rows when an impatient 6-year old asks you every five minutes "When are you finished Mum?"). She put it on as soon as it came of the needles and has worn it non stop since then (yes, even indoors).

Inspiration came from this pin. I love how the pattern slowly fades away into the white. In hindsight, I should have used finer yarn, in order to let the pattern come out better. O well, that's a good reason to dye some more yarn....

A big fat pom pom tops the hat like a giant snowball. I used up half a ball of wool for it, but it's worth it!

Below you find the pattern that I used.
The hat is 96 stitches in the round, which results in 6 repetitions of the pattern.

Snow in spring

Outside it's almost spring: snowdrops, crocuses, even daffodils are all over the place. Nature is one month ahead of schedule here in the Netherlands. Despite (or maybe because) of us having the mildest winter ever, I made this snowy sweater for my son. Inspired by an ombre shirt I bought for myself, I looked for ombre fabric to create something similar. I couldn't find any fabric, but then I pinned this picture, and knew what to do with it....

I tweaked the picture a bit in photoshop and then had it printed on a fat quarter of knit fabric by the Dutch company Exprezzit. I only printed such a small amount, since it was the first time I ordered anything there, and I've been disappointed by the quality of other companies before. However, I'm  really pleased with the quality. The fabric is quite thin, but very soft. The colors are vibrant, although they didn't exactly come out as envisioned (there's a bit of a pink haze on the top trees; I blame that on my editing though). The best thing is, when prewashing it, the fabric hardly shrunk and the colors didn't fade at all.  

The tree fabric was used for the front panel of a raglan sweater, using a pattern from Ottobre. 

I color blocked the sleeves to emulate the ombre effect, using some old t shirts and dark blue jersey. 

The same blue jersey was used for  the back panel, bottom band and cuffs.

For the side tag, I used one of the fancy stitches on my machine to create a little snowflake. Ever since I got my machine, I've been looking for reasons to use those stitches, and I've finally found a very good one. I'm definitely going to do this more often. Love the detail...  

 So there you have it, a snowy sweater for spring... Fortunately, it's rather big on him, so with a bit of luck it will still fit next season.