Monthly Archives: November 2010

Baby blanket in progress

In my everlasting quest for frugality, especially in my crafting-life, there is hardly anything as satisfying as using up scraps of fabric. Of course, small pieces of fabric is the hardest to put to good use, but I’ve found that baby-blankets are excellent projects for scrap-usage. The summer before last, I made a baby-blanket for my then soon-to-be-born nephew:

Now I have another one in progress, and I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the color-combination is pretty much exactly the same as the last one? I think only one fabric is the same, but my stash does have a very consistent color story – I keep gravitating towards the same colors!

Unlike the first blanket, where I made the colored strips by fairly randomly sewing together pieces of fabric, I spent a lot more effort setting up a composition of colored blocks that I was happy with. I left the blanket-in-progress laying on the floor for several days, shifting pieces around every time I walked past, until I was happy with the rhythm and balance.

This blanket still has a graphic feel to it, but it’s more blocked off, and with fewer fabrics than the last one. The grey fabric is a lovely shiny linen, the two green tones some quilting weight cotton, and the mustard colored corduroy is precious left-over scraps from my mustard shorts.

I have the blanket about halfway sewn up, using strips of the blue patterned fabric to connect the colored blocks. I’ve been topstitching too, which I think makes for a nice and polished finish. I’m using the same ribbed jersey from the other baby blanket as the inner layers, but I’m thinking of machine-quilting this one, and quilting it a lot more than the first blanket. Now I just have to decide if I’ll match top-quilting to the green and orange blocks, or to the blue background!

another marie-skirt

Finally, the other Marie skirt. I made the first one two years ago, refashioned from another skirt. This past summer, I made my second one, also refashioned from another skirt.

While I find it satisfying and sometimes exhilarating to create something new out of a pre-existing garment, it has a tendency to also be frustrating and a lot more difficult than I imagine when I set out. Maybe because of my impatience since the garment is practically half-finished already, but all of my re-fashions have a tendency to be full of botched techniques and lots of fudging!

I did try something fun with this skirt, which was to use a stable woven fabric in place of interfacing – I used a scrap of plain simple weave cotton. After following sewing blogs that focuses on vintage patterns and techniques (Gertie’s new blog for better sewing and sewaholic especially), I’ve been very inspired to try some on my own! This technique is supposed to provide some stability, without affecting the movement and look of the fabric like fusible interfacing does. Plus, I’m a sucker for using things I already have on hand!

The patterned fabric I used for the waistband facing was partly just for fun, and partly because I didn’t have enough of the skirt fabric left over. Actually, what you can’t really tell in the pictures is that I had to piece together the outside waistband in several places to make a waistband at all! This is where the botching of the skirt began, by the way. I then decided to match up the seamlines on the waistband with the pleats on the skirt, but that proved to be a bit of a hassle with the less than accurate piecing together of the waistband. Also – how easy is it to sew five layers of fabric together? Hmm… yes, a little hard. That’s how many layers I had at the intersection of skirt-pleat and waistband-seam.

Regardless of the mishaps I had while sewing, and subsequent corrections I’ve had to make (did the waistband stretch because it has no real interfacing? Did I measure incorrectly?), this is a skirt I’ve gotten a lot of use out of. For proof, I present to you the outfits I made around the “another Marie-skirt” in the month of September alone, during my Self-Stitched-September- stint:


Click to see larger

I find it a little funny that I only seem to wear black, white, or grey with this skirt, but it does showcase the rich red-violet color of the skirt. So, clearly I now have two new goals: 1. wear this skirt with some colored tops, and 2. Find me a skirt to cut up for another (another) Marie-skirt. They will rule my closet!

(trainstation-photos by the boy, pattern from Burdastyle)

the object of my attention

I thought I’d share the project that is responsible for my relative radio-silence, and is taking up most of my attention at the moment! The cap-stone class in my fashion design degree is the senior collection. Two semesters are spent designing, developing, prototyping, producing, and promoting a collection.

The starting point for my designs was a “bunadsliv”, a part of the Norwegian national costume, that my mom and I found in our attic a couple of summers ago. The national costumes I’ve grown up with as ‘special occasion dress’ is quite clear in the silhouettes of the outfits I’ve designed, with a touch of the Victorian era for some nostalgia.

Design journal pages

The connection to past generations not only through these special garments, but also through hand-work, has become more and more important to me lately. And because of that, I’m planning on incorporating knitting, embroidery, leather work, and silk-screen printing into this project.

Technique samples, color stories, design journal pages.

The start of this project came about in a class prior to the senior collection was begun, so the designs have changed a bit since then. Especially the color palette has been updated, with some magenta and green-brown-yellows in addition to the more “vintage” look of dusty grey-blues, charcoal, and parchment colors. I’m really excited to see how this comes together in the next handful (hmm.. a big handful) of months, and I’m especially excited to start making all of these things. I’ll make sure to keep sharing little snippets of my work as they happen!