African Print Love ♥ Vol.2

A happy new year to everyone.
So the love continues.....

Happy crafting 2016, too!

African Print Love ♥

I am loving the recent african-print fever! I always admired the african batiks ever since I was first introduced to them from a friend from Nigeria. Their colours and patterns are so unique and they are usually made with medium thick 100% cotton fabric, a great material to work with for most of the sewing projects. It was rare to find in market until recently. Learning from designers like <<Stella Jean>> whose juxtaposition is refreshing and modern. I made my own for this summer’s african-print outfit with a much more casual touch :) 3 pairs of relaxed fit pants for kids and me! For the most part I followed a tutorial found on <<YouTube>>. I added pockets and other details like side panels or waist parts with different patterns. I’m sure these pairs will be heavily worn this summer as they are very comfortable and cheerful :) 

DIY Sleeveless Shirt-Dress

My little sewing projects began from the last mini project <doodling with kids>. The first one I made with it, is a little shirt-dress. Well, the insert part of it. :) 

And here is how I did it. First I altered men's shirt by cutting away the sleeves and the excessive side parts of the shirt.

As you can also see in the picture, in order to shrink the size of the armhole and make the shirt more fitting to a girl's shape, I have pinched a little around the 3rd button with pins. 

I made the cut in the middle of the pinched fabric and switched the upper chest-shoulder part with the doodled fabric. I've shortened and cut away excessive part along the way. I've remeasured the dress at the back side, and created a pleat to adjust the length. Only thing left now is just sew the sides back and done!  Simple sewing and minimum pattern needed to complete this dress. It was quick and a good sized project for a busy mom :)

Doodling with Kids

Snowy day and kids are already bored. Yes, it snows in Greece, too :) But it rarely accumulates. So it's not enough for them to release their energy outside making and throwing snow balls. Now we have decided to sit in and engage with an indoor activity, my favourite, doodling! But this time, we upgrade it by doing so on a fabric.


We need:

-Pretreated Cotton Fabric (you can find how to do that <here>)
-Felt tip markers for fabrics
-Sponges or Brushes
-Waterbased non-toxic fabric paints
-Plastic cups for diluting paints 

We started by just making any shape we like with the markers, then connected lines from one to another. There were 3 of us, so we took 1 corner each and rotated the canvas as we went. When we were done, we air dried it, then splashed (more like bombing!) diluted fabric paints with the sponges on it. But I wished if I had heat fastened the first ink before the fabric paints rather than just air-dried. Some of the marker ink ran and left a dark smear. 

Nevertheless, the results were more delightful than we anticipated. But I was more surprised with the kids who engaged throughout the whole process for hours without even a break. 
This was definitely a great indoor activity. It gives you a bonus to go on for another day because now we are sewing these :) So to be <continued>....

Simple Skirt for Spring

I don't know if it's the Spring seems so close by. I woke up with a creativity fully charged one morning and finally decided that I want to start by making a skirt for my daughter with the <first digitally printed fabric>.  And I knew just where to look for the inspiration. I stumbled across with a gorgeous <pin> the other day. Simple, modern and original yet so elegant. Just the type of skirt that would complement the design of the fabric. I also found a kind and well described <tutorial>, which I followed most of the steps while making this skirt. It was straight forward procedure from the start till the end which I enjoyed thoroughly. And most of all, the smile and a thank you hug from my daughter! was joyful. =)

This fabric is now available at my etsy shop

Summer Doodling

Relocation, school year ending, kids parties...beginning of the summer is fun everyday, but we really have to stretch ourselves. Today I want to share some illustrations I did for relaxation to unwind from this crowded schedule.

It is something I always wanted to do, to draw the face of my kids together with their favorite things at that age. My boy 4 years old, he loves dinosaurs, cars and panda. My girl 6 years old, she loves horses, dolphins and gemstones/crystals.

I drew mostly with pencil on a plain A3 paper, then with BIC ballpoint pens. Colourings were done with Copic alcohol based markers. 

Volume down the puffy sleeve

It's been a very warm winter, and I am already bringing in the lighter jackets.
I bought this pretty nude pink short jacket online. It looked great on the model. 
But only when its arrived I realised, actually it had way too big puff shoulder for me. 
Otherwise a very good jacket for upcoming spring, so I decided that I needed to volume it down a bit. 

I didn't want to remove the entire sleeve and redo it, so I first opened top half of the shoulder by unstiching it from the lining side. 

As you can see, the sleeve side of the shoulder is much longer than the armhole side. 

So I regathered the sleeve and sew roughly with a red thread (for me to find it later and remove it) along the armhole side of the shoulder curve. 

I tried it on once to see the sleeve length and the shoulder is not too tight or be shortened too much. I then trimmed back the excess fabric, which I kept to use it for measurement for the other sleeve later. I sew it back along the red thread with a sewing machine and closed it from the lining side also....and Done! 

This one is going to be treasured this spring. :) Well I first have to fix the other sleeve for sure!