RUMS! (?)

I have discovered a german blog that have events called Rums. I’m not sure I have understood the whole concept, something about showing that day something you have made, or something like that. I think that I could give it a try! And to my norwegian/scandinavian blog readers; if you visit the Rums-page, you can find a lot of links to great, inspiring german blogs!

I made this tunic yesterday for my 20 months old daughter. It is based on a pattern from Ottobre Kids 1/2009, design no. 5, but I have changed the neckline to a “No. 9 neckline”. The dots on the skirt is inspired by Sjeroks'lovely pants, I recommend a visit to her blog!

I haven’t got the time to show you how I madethese dots, but I have photos to show later if anyone is interested :-)

Birthday in the sewing room!

Early in the morning, 35 years ago, I was born in a little hospital in Oslo. The sun was shining and the birds singing. The midwife was humming a happy tune, and I smiled as I made my way out.  Or somethingn like that. If nothing else, I know that I was born early in the morning in Oslo!

This happened to be my day off this week, and there was no doubt what to spend it on: Sewing! The only plan I had, was to add something to the children’s wardrobes, they’re in need of  new clothes. One advantage of sewing the children’s clothes yourself, is that you can choose models that grows with the child, for example by using rib around the ankles on the pants. And sometimes the garment is used even when it doesn’t grow anymore: My eldest child uses a sweather that ends 3 cm above the wrist and the rib is worn out, but he wants to use it anyway! It makes me happy and proud that he loves  the clothes I’ve made that much, but at some point, he has to get some new ones. The first new one, I finished today:

It looks like a jacket, but is, in fact, a pullover. It’s actually made of a blanket from “Kid”, and the edges are not stitched on, but just used as they were on the blanket. (On the picture I have folded the sleeves, because they seemed to be quite long.) I cut out the pieces like this:

The buttons have no function except holding the two front pieces together. It is very easy to sew on the buttons when you attach them to the fabric using tape first.

I learned this brilliant trick from Shamu some years ago, and it has been of great help!

Other fabric/notions: Jersey in the hood from Stoff og Stil. Buttons from Textart.no.

This pullover was almost finished before starting the sewing day. I also made a tunic and three beanies for the one-year-old, and pants, tights and a singlet for the four-year-old. Perhaps some of it will turn up here on the blog tomorrow? But now: Good night!

Return to the “No 9-Neckline”

It’s been a while since I made a lot of these, and maybe it’s time to reflect upon it a bit. But first, I want to show you the last item:

 

I love this neckline design, if I may say so, having designed it myself :-) (I’m not at all a professional designer.)Perhaps most of all because it lets me combine a lot of different fabrics (typically five, on this garment four). Then I can make fun, colourful clothes! And I like the compromise between function (large neckline opening for a small child’s head) and the esthetic side of it.

It is also a challenging design to use, for better or worse. I guess it’s pointless to proceed with my little evaluation without explaining how the neckline is actually made.  I made a tutorial in 2011, if you don’t understand norwegian, and Google translate doesn’t work well, I think you can understand much from the pictures.

Trying to summarize what’s important when sewing it, I think it is that the edge running like the number 9 is not too loose, (nor too tight, I told you it was challenging…). You need a fabric that not only stretches well, but also regain its shape easily. In my experience, rib fabric works best. I’ve tried interlock,  single jersey and velour knit with various results (especially the last is not recommended). A drawback to the design, is a tendency that the shoulder flap on the front piece rolls/turns inwards like this:

I’m not sure I have a solution to that problem yet, other than making sure the edge is not too loose. It’s like wearing a skirt that rotates around your waist as you walk: I go tickling my children’s necks all the time, as I put the edge back in place (ehh, “all the time”; it’s not really that big problem…) Sometimes I think that it would be easier if I placed a snap on the binding at the left shoulder to prevent rolling of the edge, but that would kind of ruin the whole idea about the design. Having said that, if some of you makes a garment with this design and finds it better to place a snap there, I won’t criticize :-)

The bodysuit in this post:

The binding on this body (size 3 months) is not made with a binder on the coverstitch machine, but by stitching a double folded rib band, right sides facing (rette mot rette), with the overlock serger.  It turned out to be a little bit too tight, wrinkling/pulling the fabric together, but when I topstitched along the neckline with the coverstitch, the fabrics were stretched out ok. Twin needle on the sewong machine would have done the job too.

In most cases, I have used different fabrics over the tummy and the back, but this time, I used the summer fabric on both sides. It’s been a while using the design, and I forgot that the design on the back piece overriding the front piece us turned almost upside down... I guess that the little boy on the left shoulder can say hello to the baby’s older sister when baby’s being nursed ;-) When using a fabric that can’t be turned upside down, like the fabric on the picture above, it’s of course possible to split the back pattern into two pieces, having a seam at the shoulder.

Fabrics: Jerseys from Malika og Rosa (main fabric), Stofstedet.dk (green), JNY Design (clouds). Rib bought in Denmark somwhere. The pants are made of sommerfrotté/ thin stretch terry fabric. Bought from Jydsk stoflager (living at or visiting Jylland? A visit to this shop is recommended!)

Terms of use:

If you feel challenged (not only warned ;-), and want to try the No. 9 neckline/“Nitals-opning”, feel free, I’m honored! It is a registered design i Norway, but if you want to sell garments in small scale (hobby-basis), I won’t mind. (Commercial use? Contact me…)

You’re very welcome to place a comment with link to show the garment you’ve made :-) Some have already done that, thanks a lot!:
-Einfach Ena here and here
-Stine S here

Want to see more garments with this type of neckline?
My garments are found under the label “Nitals-opning by Annwes” HERE.

Here is a little gallery of most of them:

Pysj-pose/sleep sack

Our youngest daughter almost never used pyjamas, she slept in bodysuit with this sleep sack outside it. It worked very well, the sleep sack was easy to put on and off, which also made it easy to change nappies at nighttime. And I think she would have kicked her comforter (dyne) off a lot more wearing a pyjamas than wearing this. She is too old for this kind of gament now, but now and then I make a sleep sack when friends get a baby.

If you both like to sew, and have a little baby, I recommend you to sew one and try it out! If you have a baby, but are not up to sewing, you can visit Gekkoshop and buy one there (for the newborns). I guess Gekko was the one who introduced this kind of sleep sack/sparkepose here in Scandinavia, you should stop by her inspiring blog, which is well worth a visit!

Making of:

I made several sleep sacks for my daughter, and this one is the result of trying and failing (at this point, she was not a newborn anymore...) I made some observations:

-It’s easy to underestimate how long legs a baby gets when fully stretched
-The more elastic fabric lengthwise (and sidewise too), the better (instead of pulling off the sack, the baby just streatches the fabric). I use the most elastic single jerseys I’ve got. But maybe you will come to a different conclusion regarding fabrics…
-Waistband should be tight enough

If you want to make a sleep sack yourself, you’re welcome to use my measures for the pattern.

Fabric: Single jersey designed by Johanna Ahlard. Bought from Malika og Rosa in Denmark. Rib from Stoff og Stil.

A cute little coverall

Some friends of ours got a little boy a few weeks ago, and I made this coverall suit. I thought that it could be a nice overgarment now at springtime and on cold summerdays. An d I was happy to get the chance to use the lovely isoli fabric (sweatshirt fabric/french terry fabric) that I bought in Denmark last year :-)

The pattern is fram the latest Ottobre  kids fashion magazine (1/2013). It is fully lined. I like the flexibility in the size by having folded sleeves. The overlap with buttons in front is easy to make, at leastwhen you have a binder/kantebandsapparat that can deal with thick layers of fabric. (You can bind manually with a twin needle too (tutorial in norwegian here)).

Sewing/joining: I did not follow the instructions exactly, because they told me to stitch the sleeve- and sideseams before binding the sleeves . But if I’d done that, I thought that it would be difficult to finish the sleeve edge using the binder (kantebandsapparat) on the coverstitch machine, because the binder usually demands free edges at the start and end of the sleeve-end. Therefore, when stitching the sleeve- and sideseam (one continous seam), I skipped a couple of centimetres  closest to the sleeve edges. After putting the lining into the shell, I finished the common sleeve edge using the binder (leaving excess binding in both ends as usual). Then closed the sleeve edge to a circle with a short seam in some sort of continuation of the sleeve-/side seam. Finally fastening the excess binding like I usually do  (fastening to one side by stitching close to the sleeve seam. Next, cut off the excess close to the last, short seam.).

I wonder, has anybody else made this suit? If so, how did you finished the sleeve edges? (Replies both in norwegian, swedish, danish og english is warmly welcome on this blog. You could try in german too, if it’s not written in a complicated way ;-)

Pattern: Ottobre Kids 1/2013, design no. 4.

Fabric: Isoli from StofShop in Randers, Denmark. Lining: Single jersey bought somewhere on Jylland. Bindings: Center front/hood made of rib from Stoff og stil, sleeve bindings of interlock. Snaps from KAM/Lykkedragen.no. Size tag from Lykkedragen too?

Next time the overlock seams won’t tear…

Eit kortfatta samandrag på NORSK kan du finne på Sykroken.net her.

Have you ever sewn a garment in single jersey fabric and experienced that the seams tore when in use? I have! My youngest daughter has a bodysuit with lots of cute little holes along the seams. Here is a photo of a sleeve:

What has happened here? Answer is: I have forgotten to lower the needle thread tension compared to what I use daily. Keywords are: Thin fabric. And that it is (very) elastic. I’ll explain:

When the fabric is being stretched, the way the overlock seam copes with it, is that it has extra length of thread to offer. The looper threads goes kind of zigzag and are a lot longer than the seam. Plenty of thread! But what about the needle threads? They’re not that long. They run straight forward on top of the fabric, just to dive through the fabric now and then, giving the looper thread on the bottom a little kiss before they go up again.   I’ll go get my electronic pen and paper:

Imagine the cross section of two layers of THIN fabric (black) along the seam. Only one of the two needle threads is shown (blue):

The only extra length this thread has to offer when stretching the fabric, is what goes through the fabric. And as the fabric is thin, the extra available length is short.

Let’s take a look at the seam in thicker knit fabrics, like velour:

That’s better! The needle thread is longer! There is another thing; thicker knits are often less elastic than thinner jersey knits, and doesn’t demand that elastic seam.)

WHAT TO DO?

Loosen the needle thread tension a little bit (i.e. turn to a lower number on the wheel), and by that, the overlock machine gives the seam some more thread!

Voila! Longer thread!

Another thing you can do, is to make sure that the stitch length is not too long, and perhaps lower it a little bit. This follows from the same principle; lowering the stitch length gives more stitches, and more thread going up and down through the fabric, helping to lengthen the seam when fabric is stretched.

These principles also applies to sewing with COVERSTITCH MACHINE in thin elastic fabrics or thick very elastic fabrics.

 

Another thing I’ve experienced, is holes in armholes and crotch (i skrittet) in a jersey garment, shown here (only armhole holes shown):

This is basically the same phenomenon as above, but with a slight different mechanism. The vertically-running seams on the picture are sealed by the horisontally-running seam. But, the seam wasn’t elastic enough, needle thread tension too high. Then, when the fabric was being stretched, instead of tearing the needle threads, they were pulled out of the crossing seam. When the needle threads are gone, there is nothing to hold the looper threads in place, hence, the whole seam loosened.

*Phew* Writing english is quite demanding! This post was my friday evening… But it’s fun too, writing english again, after many years almost only reading english ( and listening to, on the TV) My husband is sitting next to me in the sofa, playing Civ 4, watching TV and helping me out when I was needing english words. Thank you, My Love!

Girl’s dress inspired by Katwise

I have visited “the whimsical world” of Katwise (internet world…). I just looked up the word “whimsical” on Merriam-Webster in the thesaurus-category. There, you first see related words, and thereafter “near antonyms”, i.e. opposite meaning. In the “whimsical” category, I guess we’ll find Katwise, and in the opposite category, you’ll find me (down-to-earth, rational, stable). She’s a hippie, I’m not. At all. But somehow, I often find myself making garments that are kind of hippie-like, and I like them. Katwise’s style fascinates me, and her tutorial is enjoyable reading!

Very much inspired by her garments and her tutorial, I made this dress for my four year old girl yesterday. And I am very much pleased with the result. The yellow colour wasn’t acually the plan, but when I told the girl I was making an purple dress for her, she replied “I want it to be purple and yellow, mom! The original plan was belt in burnt orange, but yellow it was to be…

Making of the dress:

According to Katwise’s tutorial, she doesn’t use pattern when she makes herself a sweatercoat, but more like cuts sweaters to pieces, and ads one piece after another until it fits allright. I have used pattern for the bodice (kjoleliv) and belt. Then I calculated how wide the top of a panel had to be and how wide at least I wanted the bottom to be. When I cut the panels, I made sure that the width at the top was exact,  but the rest was not exact. I trimmed the panels to equal lengths before adding the rows at the bottom. The last row is doublefolded fabric (single jersey).

To get the Katwise-style, all the serger/overlock seams are on the outside. The first thing my husband said when seeing the dress, was “but you put it on inside out?!” Hehe, yes, maybe so, but it’s supposed to be like that ;-)

I wanted to ad some details, and found the yellow beads my daugther persuaded me to add to the shopping basket, once she came along to the fabric store. Acually, it was when I found these beads in the drawer that I decided to make the belt yellow. Happy that the seams were supposed to be on the outside, it was very easy to make cords! 

The loose ends of the cords are only cut before sewing with the overlock. After sewing, I weaved in the loose overlock tail into the seam with a large-eyed blunt needle (butt stoppenål) before tying the end off. Maybe you have noticed that the beads are not all at the bottom of the cords? Well, they were to begin with, but I was so annoyed by the clicking sound of the beads constantly bumbing into eachother, so I moved them :D

Pattern: Bodice pattern is drawn from Aldrich’s “Classic bodice block”.

Fabrics and notions: Various stretch jersey/ribb from Stoff og Stil and Jydsk Stoflager. The bodice (kjoleliv) and the darkest row at bottom of skirt is made from thick cotton jersey (avklippskorga på Stoff og Stil). The lightest row is made from double-folded single jersey (Stoff og Stil nokre år sidan) Cords: Striped cotton single jersey from Midha Enterprise, Oslo. Beads: Stoff og Stil.

And the girl… She was so happy about the dress, that she spontaneously asked to wear it in the Kindergarten/barnehagen today!

Preview…

Time is up for today, but I just have to show you a little preview. I love these colours!

Organizing Chores

I have big ambitions. And, perhaps this will actually work too ;-) It’s time  to include the children in the housework. The grown-ups don’t have the time, nor the patience to do all the work. And not to forget, it’s important to learn that everybody has to do their part.

Excuse me, I have to take a break from the blog, my husband reminds me that I haven’t cleared the dinner table as I should *haha, setting a good example, right…*  I’ll be back…

OK, I’m back. Kids in bed. Dishwasher running. Husband happy.

To get to the point, I have made a chore chart, and we started using it yesterday. Each child has it’s own long strip of velcro. The chart has two pockets for text tags with tasks, and each week, we plan to change the tags under each child. We thought that one task per year of age would be appropriate, but we’re quite new to this… (Does it sound fairly OK with one per year?) So far, the tasks are "setting table” (one meal), “clearing table”, “sorting laundry”, “garden work” (i.e. helping a little bit when we work in the garden, if we work there at all…), “watering flowers” (hopefully not the floor…), “dusting” (always loads available), “tidying room”, “putting away toys”. More will come, and if my blog readers have suggestions, they’re welcome!

When a task is done, the tag is turned, there is velcro in both sides. Today, both two children who have an understnadning of this has eagerly done two tasks each. If only that eager would be continuing for a looong time…

The ribbon tags belongs to a reward system that we have transferred over to this chart, but has (at present) nothing to do with the chores.

Blogging in english: I thought I should try to blog in English for a while, and see if anything fun or interesting happens. If you are a reader who is glad that I write in english, you’re very welcome to post a comment to let me know that “hey, it’s worth it!” Or if you’re norwegian and want to cry out a “help, please write at least some norwegian!”, you’re welcome to place a comment too. (I better write that last part in norwegian too…)

Eg hadde ein veldig inspirerande blogg-runde på internasjonale bloggar i påske-ferien, og eg blei så inspirert at eg fekk lyst til å blogge på engelsk. Ikkje veit eg om det vil vere verdt det, tidsbruk-messig i høve til kor mange som les. Og kanskje nokon som har lest bloggen min hittil synest at det er mykje verre å lese engelsk enn (ny-)norsk,  så om du tenkjer “hjeeelp, ver så snill og skriv i det minste litt norsk!”, så er det lov å seie ifrå :-)

Now I’m going to write a post about a dress I made today, if you love purple, you just have to see it! And to my mum, you want to see the post too, pictures of your granddaughter ;-)