About 2 years ago I gifted one of my sisters a coupon for a quilt, made to her own preferences. The process of actually getting to sewing it was a slow one (picking colours, buying fabric, designing the pattern…) but last spring I got around putting all the pieces together, and the quilt above is the result!
Continue reading “Kaleidoscope quilt”
Last summer, during my stay in the Middelaldercentret in Nykøbing, I was approached by one of the other attendants to weave a narrow ribbon for a beautiful hanger she commissioned at a goldsmith. She wanted something very simple, but comfortable enough to support the weight of the hanger. A chain was not suitable because it would cut in her neck, and a simple string would do no justice to the beautiful hanger itself. Because we were there with about 80 people form the Company of St. George, the material for the ribbon was readily available. The dyers had a beautiful assortment of plant-dyed silk yarns, and she picked a lovely dark purple. The yarn wasn’t dyed perfectly even, small areas of slightly lighter red hues show up all through the yarn.
These small variations add an interesting effect to the finished ribbon. In tablet weaving, a thread shows up every 4th turn of the cards. This means that instead of larger patches, the lighter pieces of yarn show up as tiny specs all over the end product. The ribbon was woven with 9 cards in alternating SZ orientation, all threaded with 4 threads and continuously turned forward. When too much twist built up, I flipped the cards and continued weaving. The ribbon ended up about 7 mm wide.
This was my first time weaving with plant dyed yarn, and I immediately noticed one of its unintended side effects. The last dye bath must have been indigo, because my tablets, spool and even my fingers turned blue during weaving! I will make sure to tell this to the person I made it for, so she knows it might stain her skin also during wearing. Overall I liked this small project very much, it really shows that there’s beauty in simplicity.
Every now and then I like to make a quilt, and I try to sew one for all friends who become parents for the first time. If possible, I like to connect the theme of the quilt to what they like, or something with a story attached to it. This particular quilt was made for two of my best friends and their baby, and when they told me they were expecting I immediately knew it had to be a ladybug themed blanket. I will not go into the full story here as it is not mine to share, but it was equally nerdy and endearing.
I started the idea of the quilt while my friend was still pregnant, but in between moving house, starting a new life in a new city and a head that could just for the moment not deal with designing a quilt block with a ladybug in it, the quilt was not finished before the baby was born, but I set myself the goal to finish it before their first birthday. To make my life a little easier, I reverse engineered the ladybug blocks from a patchwork block I found on the internet, and therefore I will not share a full tutorial on it. I made 8 of them, and they look like this:
I made four lighter and four darker ones, because that is what I still had in my stash, and used all kinds of green scraps for the background blocks. Once I figured out how to do the blocks and the rest, the quilt came together quite fast. The ladybug blocks have a lot of seams, and therefore were not completely flat, which caused the rest of the quilt top to also deform a little. I decided not to worry about it too much, because the batting in the quilt probably could correct for that later on (it did for the most part). To be honest, I really like quilting, but I will not fuss endlessly over things not being completely flat or not lining up perfectly. As long as it’s half decent looking, I am happy.
For the backside I found a fabric with a photographic grassy print, which I thought was very appropriate for the quilt. I used a polyester batting and quilted the blanket on the stitch lines between the blocks. The edge was made in the same fabric as the back. I think it turned out pretty good, and I hope the almost-todler by now will enjoy it for many years to come!
A few weeks back I reignited my sewing journey with the first make 9 of 2023. That’s right, I plan to have more make 9-like sewing lists! To be honest, I don’t expect to complete all the lists and sew all the things, but setting goal is a useful way for me to plan my year and have a idea of where to start. I seem to suffer from a weird kind of paralysis if I don’t have a plan, so just making a list helps me enormously!
Now on to the title of this post.. 17th century you say, what is this? Well, it’s a part of me that I didn’t write about yet on his blog, but since it consumes a lot of my hobby time, and requires a lot of my sewing skills, I figured I just might as well. One of my most important hobbies for the past 10 years has been reenactment. For the reader unfamiliar with this term: it means to portray a certain place and time in history as accurate as possible, and often it’s focussed on military history. In that regard it is quite different from LARP (playing a fantasy game often set in a historically inspired setting) or the SCA as it is know in the US (selectively recreating pre-17th century european cultural elements). It’s interesting, lots of fun and sometimes it looks silly too, as demonstrated in the picture below.
I myself am not very interested in military history, but since history is full of civilians, there is much to choose from! I am a member of a military-oriented group called Compagnie te Voet (Company afoot), which portrays a pikemen division from the Dutch army in the period 1600-1630. This army was usually followed by a large group of civilians or camp followers (similar to the German tross), offering their goods and services to the travelling army. In the past few years our group started to put more energy into this part of the army camp, and we now have a pub, a stall with baked goods, a stall with hot foods, someone selling clay pipes and tobacco, and more on the way. My plan for this year is to start a small sewing and repair business. War is hard on the clothes, and not an event goes by without a burst seam, a sock with multiple holes or a request for a needle and thread to make a quick repair here and there. I am going to look more into detail on how those things were done in an army camp, and will base my research on information on tailors and seamstresses of the time for now.
So what are my goals for this year? Completely in style with my previous post, I made a ‘make 9’ layout. Coming up with 9 projects to work on was easy, but since I know they will take a lot of time, I am pretty sure I will not finish all of them (and that’s ok).
Looking at the number of events we have this year, I feel very motivated to complete at least a few of those projects before the season is over. I’m already working on some of them to be honest, so updates soon!
Oh my, have I been inactive here over the past year! Many awesome things happened, but sewing wasn’t one of them. At least… not sewing as I envisioned it to write about on this blog. It’s time for a few minor changes here, which I plan to introduce over the coming weeks, and from there hopefully for the rest of the year… let’s hope I find back the time and energy to not only sew a few things, but also write about them!
Last year was (at least in the Netherlands) a year where most covid restrictions got lifted. And to be honest, I think everybody was a bit confused what to do with the regained freedom. The year was full of events, activities and trips, which I all enjoyed so much. It also meant my head was not in the sewing space. In addition to that, I did not have a physical sewing space yet. I moved house late 2021 and my hobby room was a painting/storage room wel into 2022. It’s all fine and understandable, but I do miss sewing a lot. As I follow a lot of makers on social media, I was sometimes feeling dismayed, overwhelmed and even a bit disappointed. Therefore, I decided not to look back too much sewing-wise (but all the more to the beautiful experiences I had!!) and look forward to 2023, a year in which I hope to revive my creativity in my new and awesome sewing room.
One of the creators I have been following and supporting for a few years already is Gretchen Hirsch, or Gertie. She is well known for her super cool vintage-inspired patterns, and I have a very long wish list of patterns I want to make. If you are a Patreon member, you can enter the Discord group, with lots of sewists showing off their creations, helping each other and discussing everything sewing related. Every year she designs patterns around a different theme, and for 2023 it’s ‘Society of Charm’, which sounds promising! Of course I don’t know what patterns are going to be released, but I made a selection of patterns from last year that I would like to make this year, and compile them in a dedicated Make 9 for 2023. Let’s dive into the list!
I think this list is attainable and balanced. Although it contains four dresses, one of them can be made as a blouse and the rest of the items are very suitable for day to day wear. Let’s get started, I’m looking forward to 2023!
Last year my sister decided to buy a van and convert it into a small camper. She loves the mountains, and this tiny house on wheels would allow her to travel and set up camp very easily, so she and our dad worked weekend after weekend to build the interior. I wanted to give her a ‘housewarming’ gift, and decided a quilt would be suitable. Evenings in the mountains can be chilly, and who doesn’t like a cozy quilt anyway?
Because I wanted it to fit into her ideas perfectly, we made the design together. She wanted something with mountains in subdued and calm colours… We settled on a design of diagonal squares with stylized snow on the mountain tops, and a bit of grass in the foreground. Since I am not very proficient in elaborate piecing (I also don’t have the patience I think) everything is squares, triangles and rectangles. To add more visual interest I proposed to go with batik fabrics, and my sister picked the colours. That’s where the calm colours went out of the window, because Quiltshop-online has so many pretty choices. The pinks and reds represent mountains at sunset, and I liked the idea instantly.
Upon arrival of the fabrics, I fiddled a bit with the design, shuffled the mountains a bit back and forth, and started cutting. I don’t have any pictures of the process, but I started in the top right corner of the center piece and worked my way to the opposite corner in diagonal rows, always trying to keep the pieces as large as possible. Then I added the green strips for the grass. I had enough dark green left to add a border around the center to “close off” this part. Without this border the front would have looked more pale, and I think this was the best decision.
The quilt was still a bit small to be a decent lap size quilt, so I added a simple white cotton border to solve this. The quilt was then batted with a cotton batting and a blue-grey back with a honeycomb-like pattern. I used a meandering freeform stitch to quilt the blanket. It looks nice, and saves the effort of perfectly stitching on the lines of your quilt. Then I used the back fabric for a narrow border, and the blanket was done!
Below are two more pictures of a happy camper and her blanket. Dear sis, I hope you enjoy your camper, trips and blanket for many more years to come!
Oh my, where does the time go? In January, I made a promise to myself to be a bit more active here, and it’s already March… So much for that resolution! But it’s ok. If I look back at the past half year, I am not surprised I had little to no time for sewing. A lot of big changes took place, my life has turned upside down, but to be honest, it’s mostly good things!
Last September, I realized the house I was living in was no longer a home for me. It’s the house I lived in with my ex boyfriend, but after breaking up, almost two years of covid and meeting new love, I decided it was time to move on. Not just mentally, but also physically. My former house was huge, with 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a huge attic and a garden. Way too big for one person, too expensive, and poorly located. Yes, one of my best friends lives down the street, but my workplace was always a 50 minute drive away, the house very often damp and cold and so much work to keep in a reasonably clean and neat state (especially the garden). So I started looking for a new place…. and got ridiculously lucky! I registered with a housing company someone recommended to me and saw an interesting place, on a Monday. That following Friday, I could have a look at the house, and the Monday after that it was mine! Although I was very happy, it was very sudden and therefore, a lot had to be done in a very short time. Paperwork, packing boxes, throwing away a lot of stuff, and then fixing up the new place. In the Netherlands, rental houses come without floor (my international friends think it’s the stupidest thing ever) and the walls could use some paint and new wallpaper too. In the end, we managed to do almost everything before I moved in, and all that is left now are small DIY jobs that can be done in my weekends. I guess I won’t be sewing for the coming month or so (mainly because my hobby room is still a room for some painting projects etc), but at some point in time, I am sure I will bust out my sewing machines again! In the mean time, I might just write about my DIY projects in and around the house 🙂
Continue reading “Update and Make Nine 2022!”
This is part two of the outfit I put together back in April, the Evely skirt by Seamwork. I had been eyeballing this skirt already for quite some time, because I thought it looked really cute. It’s simple and flattering but the two layers give a bit of interest and also the potential for nice variations. This one is just simple black, but can you imagine a lace top layer for a festive look? Or a sheer organza top layer with embroidery? Or maybe an eyelet top layer over a simple plain underlayer? I see plenty of possibilities here!
Continue reading “The Seamwork Everly skirt”
It has been a while since I posted here! Last time was in April, and so much has happened in between. The lockdown got lifted (and reinstalled partially) here in the Netherlands, social life opened up bit by bit and with that my priorities might have been not entirely with sewing all of the time… And especially not with taking pictures! The outfit I designed back in April was ready already in May I think, but has been waiting for forever to be taken out into the world. But alas, here is the first project and review of that outfit!
Continue reading “The Colette Aster Shirt”When looking at my Make Nine 2021, the most obvious thing is the Dreaded Basket… ever since I wrote down I will try to empty it this year, it has become an even bigger eyesore. But I also have a lot of new plans I would like to realise, so I decided that I will start designing outfits that consist of one item from the basket, combined with a brand new project! This way, I can make sets of items that go well with each other, but also with already existing pieces in my wardrobe. I hope this will help me expand my wardrobe a bit more consciously, and tie the whole thing together. I like to practice making costume sketches, so this is what I came up with:
Dutch Sewing Scientist 