Monday, April 13, 2009

More than weaving

I finally decided that I needed to put ALL the handwork things that I have been working on in this blog. If you look at my blog, it appears that I don't get much done, but in reality, I don't get much weaving done. Instead, I make toys, knit, make clothes, patch my sons ever growing stack of holey clothes, or cut off holey pants to make shorts. I decided to day to upload a couple of things I recently finished.

I was reading Disdressed, one of my favorite sewing blogs, and was inspired Liesl's transformation of her daughters old toddler jeans into a skirt. I don't have toddler jeans left, but I do have lots of jeans from by son with blown out knees. I took a pair of these and converted them to a skirt for my daughter. I was too lazy to put on handmade yo-yos, so instead I used some ribbon that I had laying around and put it on top of pink bias. I put on a heart patch over a paint stain and used the leftover ribbon to swirl around to cover up the little paint stains. I thought it turned out really cute. I am thinking of making one for myself now.






Speaking of Liesl and Disdressed, she has a company called Oliver+S, a really cute company that makes kids' patterns. I bought the Sunday Brunch Pattern. I love it. It was easy to sew, although I did struggle for a little bit how to add length for my very tall but skinny daughter. Other than that, the pieces sewed together easily, except for a minor errata with the waistband, but I emailed the company and Liesl herself got back to me quickly and helped me find the fix. I have sewn two skirts with the pattern and one jacket. I have to say, I hate to set in sleeves, these are sewn in first and not set in, so the jacket went together very easily. I thought the outfit turned out very professionally. One of the skirts I modified by sewing on a flounce.









Finally, I found this great book called Wee Folks at the library. I thought it was a beautiful book. I have tried many times to make little toys for my kids. The books that I get often have beautiful toys, but I find them difficult to make, or that they don't turn out like the pictures. I feel that I am pretty crafty, so I find this kind of discouraging. But, this book was different. It has clear instructions, and the fairy/knights that we made came out wonderfully. The kids love them and so do I. My son, who is 8, sewed some parts of the pants and wrapped some of the pipe cleaners. Hope you enjoy them