deondergangvanmijnouders

Hello! Today I have another Couture Nomad dress, sewn up over several weeks at my lovely Teacher Catherine's Couture Nomad Sewing School here in Shanghai! This is called the Pusan dress , and part of Catherine's Urban Jungle collection. She uses a business shirt style fabric for her version, and when I saw how easily she pops on her pushbike with it, I thought I've got to sew it up for Spring... well spring kind of came and went here in Shanghai, there were some nice warmer days, but it's RAINED so much. At least once a week, and today... it actually was quite cold. Humid AND cold. Not fun! So I started this to wear in Spring, and only just wore it yesterday on a lovely humid & sunny day... AND in our NEW HOUSE! I have so much to tell you about... I definitely need a pause button for our life right now! Pusan Dress was Couture Nomad's Pattern of the Month a few months back, and is a light and loose wrap dress with optional collar and different ways to tie/c...

So here’s another funny thing I’ve made recently! I noticed a lot of ‘dress ups’ floating around our apartment recently… a pirate costume from Halloween, a ‘Backson’ outfit I made for our Winnie the Pooh loving child and lots of accessories like dinosaur tails and binoculars always on the floor. Time for a dress up basket! Without ever wanting to spend money on anything, I decided to try some large scale crocheting with my rope that was too thick for my normal sewing machine… and using a small rope as the main crochet or weaver material… it was a long process but it’s a fun and easy accessible basket for the small boy. I used the large crochet hook, and used the thinner rope as the main crochet thread... and crocheted around the big rope, I didn't really know where I was going, so just went around in circles for ages and then adjusted it for the sides as I went around and around... After lots of sewn (zig zag machine stitched) rope bowls, my domestic machine isn’t keen on sewing th...

As it’s winter here in Shanghai, and probably will be for a while now we’re in the very low temperatures, I have been sewing with warmer fabrics and first up is Sew This Pattern’s Venus Kimono . It hasn’t been below zero (celcius) that often but kind of averaging 3 or 4 degrees this week. Last week we had snow a couple times and frozen water pipes! EEP. Anyways, let’s talk sewing! This is a pdf pattern, and I’ve been avoiding them just for the time factor of sticking them together… For a while, I had a problem communicating to the printer place about the large copy shop size… Over summer I tried to print my Lily & Sage dress at the full size, but they just couldn’t. It’s hard enough getting the size right with printing places, but also tricky without speaking fluent Mandarin. But, I had some successful attempts and was able to get the Venus Kimono by Sew This Pattern printed up, so no stickytaping for me! Yay! I chose this stretch fabric offcut I got for cheaps at the fabric m...

A few days before Christmas I had a quick idea, my son was getting a few Duplo boxes for Christmas (we found a special deal on Taobao on the famous 11.11 sales) and as I suddenly realised he’ll need some extra storage for the colourful blocks, I remembered the lovely playmat I’d seen on pinterest five years ago (or around then) that you could easily build and sift through the blocks, but then once finished you can draw it all up and hang it on the back of the door or somewhere out of the way for next time. I googled up a few photos and tutorials, but for these first attempts, I followed the very straightforward Fabric Mill idea . It was great and used up some fabric I had in the stash leftover from birthdays through the year and other bunting adventures… the smaller ones are for smaller children who also got their first batch of Duplo this Christmas, so a useful bag for them for the next year. The one I made Felix is bigger, around a metre wide at least… and now that I’ve sewn it...

My first sewn up thing to show you this year! And very unlike me, it’s a top... that’s woven! It’s also not my best effort but oh well, it’s wearable! I saw online that Lilith & Eve needed pattern testers for their second pattern, released last month, and thought I’d volunteer… mainly because it’s a woven top, and I wanted to sew something like this for something different. I always sew stretch fabrics when I wear tops and t-shirts, I'm so boring! The Lilith & Eve patterns are pretty new, I don’t know much about them, but I like the idea that they offer two versions (a Lilith and an Eve one) of their patterns and had some time in November so volunteered to sew their second release LE201 , a long maxi dress or a casual top, both with the raglan sleeve/neckline. The positives for this top is all the Lilith & Eve design, it’s cute and relaxed. The pattern is really clear, and I didn’t have any major concerns with the pattern pieces, or the instructions. (The girls had...

We made it! Ah! It's a Happy Friday! Here's my second version of the summer dresses I've made recently; for some reason the entire week has flown by due to sickness in our house! *glee* being ill in summer just hits you for six! *gush* love being sick with a toddler around! *squeal* (actually genuinely here) I watched the rest of Orphan Black season 3 and now all of Sense 8. I am officially addicted to Sci Fi TV shows when I'm sick. Learning new things all the time about being me! This fabric was also from Taobao, and while it's not my usual colour, I actually just picked it because it looks weird. I thought it looks like pixels like the flowers are hidden underneath gingham pixels or something. I like it. It also has a little stretch in the fabric, and while I used the same pattern for the bodice pieces as my black dress , this fabric is a lot more floppier, so stretched out a little differently widthwise... I noticed this week after wearing it a bit that I have ...

Darlings, today I have some double trouble darling dresses! Have you ever needed something sewn up super quickly because the weather calls for it? You need to wear it EVERY day because everything else in your wardrobe is so hot and heavy, you need a floppy frock STAT! Here’s my quick fix for that humid hotness and I quickly created two dresses at once and I made this first black one, put it on, and then started the next one right away. Shanghai has been a huge bowl of hot velvety air, and just these last few days thanks to a (very) southern Typhoon, we’ve started to breath normally again and felt some fresh cooler winds! Oh it’s hard to do anything when it’s THAT hot, so you can imagine me slowly plodding through the days with a 2 year old…dragging him from various pools to indoor play centres trying to avoid the crowds and any stickiness! So, the first dress to talk about today is the black one, and tomorrow I’ll post about the creamy/greeny one! The fabric is light cotton, that my ...