deondergangvanmijnouders

Hi! Welcome to my fabulously printed Kim Dress blog post! It’s full of brightness and clever camera angles thanks to my clever clogs Husband and his new camera attachment on his iPhone! I’ll tell you about that at the end, but sewing this dress was fun! Pity I didn’t get the fit right! I bought lots of light fabric this summer as I visited the markets here in Shanghai. It’s been very hot and I wanted to be prepared but I actually couldn’t sew much. I got too hot even inside with the AC on. Of course I did sew up a few things, but it’s only these last few weeks that I’ve felt like sewing again. Luckily, in Shanghai it’s mid 20s for a while and it doesn’t seem to get cold at nighttime till November (I remember really balmy November nights) so I might be ok with making these lighter dresses … as I have a purple one on the go this week. But ALSO, we’ll be visiting Australia for a bit, so I’m hoping it’s not freezing cold there when we’ll be there! So, this is the Kim Dress of the By Hand...

Ha! I have a great summer frock for you today! AND some fun nighttime photos! Sewing in Shanghai in Summer is getting *very* hot! Wearing clothes, sewing clothes, all exhausting! I have lots of projects on my wishlist, but I also have lots of water, swimming plans and cocktails on there too. Fingers crossed the humidity here in Shanghai doesn't melt us all away! OK, so firstly, the photos are very rough, but cute... Husbie and I took them very quickly after Pizza Friday (just made that up) and we did try to get some daytime photos on another day, but our darling boy wasn't interested, and then we bumped into friends and we drank and laughed the day away while the children ran around in the afternoon shade. A lovely afternoon, but yes, that's why we have some fun and spontaneous photos for you... but it's kinda funny to show you a totally random Shanghai street! That white shop bag! Felix showing off his many facial expressions! Onto the dress. Yes, this is my THIRD By ...

Oh yay! I started writing this post (I like using Evernote for my writing) feeling a bit lost but then I found this draft I’d started last week, while I was sewing this, how organised! Oh hooray, so now I can fill in the gush and happiness now I have such lovely photos of this Anna Dress! For the last week I’ve been thinking about what makes By Hand London’s Anna Dress pattern so popular… for a group of sewing friends (all online and friends through instagram - love it! Here's Pip's post that covers the girls party idea) threw each other a birthday party of the virtual kind and as a celebration lots of sewing people made new Anna dresses and swished around a lot over the weekend! Well, that’s how I’d like to imagine it, a lot of swishing of frocks around the world and online! It’s kind of funny to think of it all, and certainly a lovely thing that passions like sewing can make a large group of people feel so happy by wearing all different versions of the same dress! So I m...

Totally excited! I’ve been thinking of this dress for a while, having bought the fabric a few months back at a fabric market trip! And THEN we’ve been held up with the weather here in Shanghai because this is NOT a dress that could just be photographed indoors. It rained for about 2 weeks nonstop and then we had a typhoon! ARGH. So! I’ve named the dress Cheeky Stewardess Sophia because I have a friend called Cheeky who I was thinking of a lot during the making of this dress, I can’t remember why but I like to think about people, particularly awesome women in my life, while I sew… maybe Cheeky came to mind as I miss her, but also because when I lived in Sydney I would take photos of planes a lot and I love planes and being inner west to have the low flying planes overhead. And she and other friends would quite like to talk about my fascination with planes and all the plane photos I collected up on Facebook. Yes it was amazing! So, red retro looking fabric AND planes are a total win for ...

Happy Friday (evening for me) guys! Hope you've had a great week! Did you know that Palazzo Pants are described (on Wikipedia!) as "extremely wide leg that flares out from the waist”, and with a Shanghai summer creeping on the horizon, I decided to give a pair a go … but I think these really are mini palazzo as they’re not ‘extremely wide’ of the leg and are all kinds of petite… and even a bit too petite for this petite babe/dickhead who writes you this blog right now! They may not be now, but they were striving to be Palazzos! As 150cm/4 foot 11 tall, I’m firmly not on Team Culottes… I made a pair once in my early sewing days (before blogging!) and I suddenly became 2 foot tall and could never be taken seriously ever again. So I think I’m a Palazzo fan because I remember fondly the two crazy pairs I had as a teenager in the 90s, they were floaty loveliness with my heeled boat shoes and my Reality Bites Winona Haircut. Anyways, the fabric first came to be at my local fabric s...

Voila! My Sophia Dress, a variation of the latest By Hand London pattern, and in this case a very nice wiggle dress. Warning, there is a lot of wiggle in this blog post, but not a lot of wriggle room in my dress. This is my first muslin/toile of the Sophia Dress, so I'm not 100 % on the fit, but I do love my tush in this shot though! Before I talk about making this dress, I wanted to send a little "Thanks & Congrats" to the By Hand London team, who announced last week they'll be changing their focus a bit in the future . The whole indie pattern vibe (for me anyways) really kicked in with their creations - and Megan Nielson  & Colette Patterns  before them. I was pregnant & then breastfeeding while their patterns started to come out so haven't really rushed into buying them all, but I've made lots of Anna dresses and their free Polly pattern before... so seeing them stop printing paper patterns (and their fabric printing shoot off as well) was a li...