talkin’ ’bout my best friend (over at sew together)

September 8, 2012October 15, 20128 Comments

i’m always curious how people learned to sew. after my mom got me started, i credit the majority of my sewing education to oliver + s patterns!

the lovely and talented maryanne and caroline of sew together invited me to participate in their “best friend” series, where lots of great bloggers have been sharing their best friends in the sewing world. it’s been a fun series to follow along with and today, i’m up!

for my guest post i ended up writing a 3 year retrospective (with lots of PRE-BLOG FLICKR ONLY projects included)! it was fun making photo collages of pretty much every oliver + s garment i’ve ever sewn – and believe me, there are quite a few!

head on over to sew together to check out my post!

side note: i discovered sew together during season 4 of project run & play; they make gorgeously crafted, classic clothing and i was always so impressed with their work during the season (especially their blue twirly dress and intricately color blocked pinky promise dresses). they got fourth place, the same place i finished season 3, which is really hard – you get SO CLOSE to the finale, but fall just short. i hold a special place in my heart for every fourth place finisher now.

hope you’re having a great weekend!

PS – if you caught my blog post title reference, you win the day.

PPS – season 5 of project run & play starts this week! are you sewing along?

elephant balloon skirt

August 28, 2012August 28, 201226 Comments

elephant skirt

so i was talking on sunday about how Em likes most of the things I sew for her…as long as they’re dresses (thanks for commiserating with me, by the way)! and remember how she needs to start wearing a uniform to school, so i need her to wear more than just dresses? well, this was my test to see if i could get her at least wearing skirts again.

looks like she likes it, right? it’s got an elephant (her favorite animal), it’s got pink (her favorite color), it’s got sparkly silver thread, it’s comfy…gotta be a winner…right?

wrong.

she doesn’t like it…because it’s a skirt.

this darn thing has been sitting waiting for a photoshoot for THREE WEEKS and she hasn’t wanted to put it on. i finally bribed her to wear it for these photos. i mean…seriously?

this was my inspiration, an adorable print called jumbo bubble by terry fam, which i spotted and immediately bought for her revamped bedroom. i appliquéd my design onto the kona snow skirt (loosely following the lazy days skirt tutorial with no ribbon hem). instead of having the elephant blowing the bubble like gum, i cut out a pink balloon and used metallic silver thread as the string. i thought it’d be a winner, the skirt to get her wearing skirts again, but i was wrong…for now anyway. she’ll probably insist on wearing it the minute it’s too small.

four year olds. opinionated little things.

anyway, here’s a slightly wider shot of her new pink bedroom walls. she likes those! once i make a new quilt for her bed, i’ll do a full room tour. honestly i didn’t expect to like the pink as much as i do; i’ve been dodging her requests for so long. but heck, it’s just paint and she really loves it, so i just needed to let go and embrace it.

the poor kid doesn’t realize the sea of navy blue, white, and khaki she’s about to plunge into come school-time, so at least she has her pink retreat at home! and if the skirt ends up getting gifted to a younger friend/cousin later, that’s fine with me!

film petit: introduction & the life aquatic with steve zissou

July 10, 2012October 31, 201284 Comments

my favorite thing about blogging is getting to be as geeky as i want and having friends online that are right there with me. this was not the case growing up – in grade school and high school, it was never a good idea (socially) to overtly try hard at anything. you were supposed to hang back and blend in, not talk about how you were really into some nerdy niche thing.

i’m 30 now, and i’m finally over that. the sewing blog world obsesses over fabric lines and patterns and new creative ideas. i don’t blog to put out the thing that will get 100,000 hits. i blog because i’m a bit different, you’re a bit different, and we all support and inspire each other.

all of that is to say that today i’m super excited to announce a new ongoing, geeky sewing series i’m co-hosting with my buddy jessica from a little gray. she lives in ohio, i live in oregon, we’ve never met in person…but i consider her a good friend. you may recall i competed in project run & play season 3 last winter. well, jessica won season 4! we had been casual blog pals for a while before PR&P happened to either of us, but became pretty tight during her season. i had a really fun time cheering her on, sharing my mistakes to avoid, hearing about her designs as they evolved, getting photo previews, texting at 1am…

season 4 got a movie challenge, which made me insanely jealous because i LOVE movies. jessica made this drive outfit that totally blew me away. i mean, who has the cajones to sew from a new, violent, not-so-well-known movie like that, the skill to pull off a quilted, piped, satin driving jacket and oh by the way, she also whipped up some jeans?! jessica, that’s who. because she’s awesome.

once her season was over, we started chatting (texting constantly) about how it’d be fun to do something together where every so often, for our own amusement, we make outfits for our kids inspired by movies. we’re not talking about your classic “nice” movies here. we’re talking about kinda weird, indie, random movies inspiring outfits that are hilarious on little kids…and lo, a new series was born.

we’re calling it film petit and we’re just gonna launch right into it!

as soon as i saw the season 4 movie week challenge, i knew i wanted to sew ned plimpton/kingsley zissou from the life aquatic with steve zissou, directed by wes anderson. ned plimpton is a pilot, and steve zissou’s adult son (allegedly). steve tells him “i would have named you kingsley, if i’d had a say in it,” so kingsley it is. a good part of the movie is ned/kingsley and steve developing an awkward father-son relationship with each other (as they hunt down the fabled jaguar shark). i didn’t have time to sew this during the sewalong, but luckily it’s jessica’s favorite too and she was happy to indulge me now!

my husband and i also share a love of movies, including this one. when i was pregnant with Em, i bought a light blue sleeper and red infant hat for him to open at christmas. that was 2007!

now that we have a 19 month old son, i figured it would be most fitting to make him the full zissou uniform. here he is next to the real kingsley zissou, played by owen wilson.

wes anderson is famous for his careful attention to detail. i tried to get my little outfit as close as i could while making a few intentional changes (shorts instead of pants, kona cotton instead of polyester, no gun strapped to his thigh), but i did miss one major detail that’s driving me a bit crazy. i’m sure you spotted right away that their stoplights don’t match. AAAARGH!

i used the oliver + s sketchbook shirt and shorts pattern in the 12-18 month size as the base, appliqueing double stripes to the placket, sleeves, and sides of the shorts using steam-a-seam lite and topstitching them in place. i chopped a few inches off both the sleeves and the shorts to give them a more retro look, and bound the sleeves (and used binding on the shorts hem too) for accuracy and to reduce bulk. i added epaulets at the shoulders and a team zissou patch to the pocket.

his cap is the family sweater hat pattern from handmade home by soulemama, which i cut several inches longer than the pattern and folded it up to create a cuff. i hand-tacked it in a few places, then appliqued the felt stoplight on top. the hat is made out of an old tank top of mine (same one as strong boy).

here’s mini kingsley on a ping island rescue mission…

getting towed into port-au-patois harbor…

and relaxing with a snack at the zissou compound…

i finished hand sewing the collar the night before we left for hawaii…so worth it for the perfect setting, right?

head on over to a little gray to check out jessica’s version of how this series came to be, giggle-out-loud at her steveZ swimsuit, and admire her adorable little crayon ponyfish dress! so, so great. of course she sewed for both kids…that’s the mark of a champion right there.

***

here’s how film petit will work.

every month or so, jessica and i will sew an outfit (or outfits) for our kid (or kids) inspired by a movie we love.
starting next month, we’re going to invite a rotating third blogger to join us! we’ll decide on the movie together, link to each other, and it’ll be fun to have a fresh face sewing with us every time. our friend gail from probably actually will be joining us in august!
we started a film petit flickr group to celebrate the love of sewing inspired by movies, and have added a few of our past projects in there (i know, i sewed a dorothy outfit – i’d only been sewing a few months, gimme a break!).
feel free to add any movie-inspired sewing you’ve done in the past, and if you decide to sew along with our film petit movies, we’d love to see that too! once we get a good number of projects in there, we’ll start doing roundups (or maybe ask you to join us for a future film!).
this is a pretty relaxed series, really the only rule is to make handmade outfits for kids based on films you love. if you have any questions, please let either of us know!

PS – do you ever wish you could breathe underwater?

later alligator lazy days skirt

July 3, 2012July 3, 201220 Comments

here is Em posing like a boss in hawaii with her pink pool noodle, wearing a skirt full of alligators!

the fabric is tammis keefe tribute later alligator by michael miller, which i picked up at bolt. tammis keefe was a pretty cool lady, you can learn more about her here. i got the fabric when it first came out, and this skirt has been an unfinished object for a long time! i don’t actually have many of those floating around; i tend to finish what i start or it bugs me, but i think i cut this one and sewed the center back seam during a KCWC (maybe last spring?) and never finished it. luckily, i cut it long enough that it still fits my little beanpole.

i used the oliver + s free lazy days skirt pattern. i know i’ve mentioned my love for that pattern before; it was my first sewing project when i started to sew as an adult. i’ve made many since. it’s an easy sew, but has a lot of style. it made me fall in love with making clothes for my kids, liesl gibson commented on my flickr photo which made my stomach do flip flops, and i became quickly addicted to both sewing and the sewing blog community. this little free skirt pattern probably changed my life. sappy? overly dramatic? true.

there is one change i make when i sew these skirts: when i first pin the ribbon to the skirt, i align the long edges with each other rather than placing the top edge of the ribbon 1/2″ above the raw fabric edge as instructed. i sew the top edge of the ribbon per the pattern, then trim away all but 1/4″ of the skirt edge before folding the ribbon over to the right side and stitching the other long edge. i think this small change just makes it even easier for a beginner and saves time, because you’re not fiddling with making sure the floating ribbon is right where it should be. you could also simply mark your fabric 1/2″ from the edge with disappearing marker/chalk to guide your pinning and follow the pattern exactly, if your ribbon is so wide you’re worried your sizing might be thrown off by aligning the edges.

as i sewed this skirt, however, Em claimed she didn’t like it. i was bummed but didn’t totally believe her (because of the pink ribbon and the fact that “never smile at a crocodile” from peter pan is her jam). but while we were in hawaii, she picked it out to wear multiple days in a row! yay! she actually doesn’t want to wear skirts very often these days – only dresses – so i was pretty relieved.

finally, to wrap up what is turning out to be a more emotional post about a skirt than i intended, i want to put in a plug for “skirting the issue,” which is a great new series going on in the month of july from liz and elizabeth, the ladies in charge of project run & play. they are pulling together as many skirts as they can from the greater sewing blog community to donate to girls in foster care around the country. i’ll be posting a fun skirt tutorial later this month on the project run & play blog, but if you would like to sew for a great cause, the lazy days skirt is a great project (especially if you’re a beginner, someone that has a sewing machine but has never used it, or a mother of boys that needs a little girl sewing in her life! if you can thread your machine, you can make a lazy day skirt). find out more about skirting the issue here.

okay that’s all. late night slightly jet lagged blogging for the win!

double bucket hats

June 7, 2012November 24, 201338 Comments

i found something out as i got ready to make the kids some new hats for summer…they have almost the exact same size head! my 18 month old’s head is just 1/4″ smaller in circumference than my four year old’s! kinda crazy, eh? i checked, and it turns out my husband and i have the same size head too. i accept full responsibility for largeheadedness of my children.

the pattern is the oliver + s bucket hat from little things to sew, also available as a free download. both are mediums and both fit perfectly. i really love this pattern – these are the fourth and fifth versions i’ve made (others here and here)! O’s is sewn mostly from the pattern, though i did try my buddy jessica’s no-hand-stitching method for the first time. genius. this side is heather ross far far away ii moons, which i’d been hoarding.

the other side is a dark blue thrifted corduroy. i like using at least one heavier material when i make these hats, it gives them nice structure. this hat has just one layer of medium weight interfacing in the brim.

we’ll see if he keeps it on, he likes to say “haaaa” and pull it off, hang onto it for a while, then try to put it back on all by himself. maybe he’ll get more used to it as summer wears on.

Em’s hat is also long-hoarded heather ross, this time far far away i double gauze. i first used it here and had just enough left! i widened the brim 1.5″, again a tip from jessica the bucket hat queen. her mini tutorial is here. i interfaced both sides of the brim but it was still a bit too floppy, so i added three rows of topstitching to give it more structure and add a little detail.

the fabric is a hemp blend from bolt – i’ve been saving it for a while for a skirt for me, but i think it’s perfectly rough and rustic when paired with the pink heather ross.

aside from the widened brim, i constructed this hat the “traditional” way, joining the layers by hand-stitching at the base of the side panels. i’ll give you a wild guess which side she prefers.