Princess and the Frogs

 

Because Wiki decrees it and ergo it must be true, there are several collective nouns for a group of frogs- a colony (too boring), an army (unlikely), a knot (incongruous), a bundle (no thank you) and a froggery (redundant). Oh, and a fester of frogs. You win, fester, for your apocalyptic  imagery.

A customer recently sent this lovely bubblegum pink fabric with lime green frogs for me to fashion into a party frock for her daughter.  I found a perfect two-tone pink speckled fabric in my stash for the lining and away we went.

The cut I was sent was a lot more than the pattern required so I made the skirt super gathered (almost 100 inches around!) with a deeper double-folded hem for extra body.

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The Rainbow Party Frock

I was asked recently to make a dress for a little girl's rainbow themed birthday party. A bunch of Kona solids and some tinkering with my party frock pattern and voila!

From the bottom up the skirt has violet, blue, green and yellow strips....

An orange sash, and red bodice. I hardly ever work with solids (in fact I had to order then especially), but it made a nice change from sewing prints. In my typical 'more is more' fashion I thought about adding an additional rainbow applique or some other embellishment but, actually, I'm really happy with the simplicity of this dress just as it is.

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The Reverse Engineer

I was contacted by a customer recently about making some custom sheets to fit her Stokke crib. I really wish I could see her nursery because the cruise-ship fabric she provided is ace!

It took some doing to get the pattern right because the Stokke mattress is oblong rather than rectangular... thankfully she provided another sheet for a template as my geometry skillz are not quite up to the task of determining the volume of a oval mattress and transferring that into a paper pattern.

According to the customer, the sheets she could find were either bland, prohibitively expensive (or both), so if anyone is interested in custom Stokke sheets, send me an email.

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The Sneaky Sneaker Hoodie

Broken record time: I love it when people send me fabric. Despite my ridiculously good taste in fabric and notoriously feeble control of my buying impulses, I do not own every cool print in the world. And sometimes, just sometimes, I don't even know that the certain cool fabric exists. I do not know how this happens.

The most special thing about this hoodie is that the customer found out about me from seeing the PinUp Girl and Pirate Boy hoodies I made Soph4Soph... and then she choose the sneaker fabric that Soph4Soph had... who kindly sent me it... and commissioned another hoodie with an even more awesome fabric! It's like a circle of hoodies. I hope it never stops until the next Sookie Stackhouse book is out.

Watch your back, Coolest Family in the World TM, this hoodie is going to the same family as the retro cowboy hoodie of yesterday's post. They are amassing an arsenal and they're not scared of you.

But what exactly makes this the sneaky sneaker hoodie? I snuck it on Jamie for a minute to confirm I got the size right on my newest draft... The recipient is a year an a half younger than Jamie so this should be just right.

Thar be a menace in the backround

If you've made it to the end of this post, I commend you. I'm very tired today and rather less than compos mentis.

Submitted to:

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I'm not the only one with a doppelganger

I was very excited to see the modelled pictures of the Pin Up and Pirate Boy hoodies that Soph4Soph posted the other day.


But also alarmed. Because Soph and Maia are basically twins. Scary, no?

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Pirate boy hoodie

As I mentioned in the Pin Up hoodie post, I was asked to make not one but two hoodies for Soph4Soph. This one is for her one of her middle sons.

I was sent both the white and the red colourways of this pirate fabric as we weren't sure that there would be enough of the white one to make a whole hoodie. When I layed the pattern pieces out on the white (which came in two smaller pieces), I reported back 'Yay!' and asked if rather than the mono-colour flannel lining I usually do if she wanted to reverse it with the red.

Little did I know that it would actually be the red I would be short on so after lots o'staring and playing around with different combinations in my head I came up with this as a solution:

Both sides of the hood have a fat black flannel band around the face which I'm rather pleased with (if I do say so myself).

My favourite view is from the back where you can see both the prints and the black band. This is the first time I've lined a hoodie with another print and I think the black band breaks it up a bit and stops it looking uber-busy.

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Pin up girl hoodie

I mentioned the other day that the lovely Soph4Soph had sent me some fabric to make hoodies for her progeny, and that you should prepare yourself to die a tiny bit. Well, here's the first one, for her little girl Sophie:


I'm very excited to do these commissions because it's always fun to get fabric outwith my stash... but also because Soph4Soph is a children's clothing designer too. She has an amazing selection of fabrics (which don't overlap mine too much) and I have to fight the jealousy when I see what she's using. Except for this time when I get to partake!


This fabric has lovely bubblegum colours, but it's not over-saccharine. It's lined with cream flannel with red cuffs and waistband. I'd also like to note that Brighton has a preponderence of incredibly stylish children, and second to Edinburgh has the most children sporting my wares.

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Warning: You might feel giddy

Remember the other day when I said that as well as sending me the pink manga girls fabric, Kirsty also send me The Most Fabulous Fabric in the World *TM? And that you should take your meds in anticipation? Well, I hope you have been because I take no responsibity for heart attacks, panic attacks or any other pre-existing condition you came to this post with.

Yowzer, those are some mighty fine Care Bears. The only thing that would make this fabric more awesome is if they were doing a Care Bear Stare. Fabric designers, do not steal my ideas.

I have fashioned the Care Bears into a hoodie and tempered the potential saccharine overload with dark purple cuffs. Oh, and a goth side.


Now she can also wear the Care Bears with irony. It has big pockets.


This took me much longer than planned because the time was nigh to construct it entirely from the inside. This meant sewing the zipper in blind and the most counter-intuitive sleeve finishing ever, but I pulled on my big girl pants and figured it out. I definitely prefer this construction to the way I was doing it before and it should take less time now I've got the hand wringing and teeth gnashing over with. Now I just need to rewrite the tutorial and it should be ready for testing!

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Pink manga girls tunic. Wait... pink?

Those of you who have memorised my fabric closet might be thinking, 'Wait a minute, I thought she has every Thunderflower colourway except pink...'. How very observant of you (if not a little bit obsessed). I have red. I have blue. I don't have pink. But Kirsty does! And she sent me some to make her daughter a tunic.

The poor mite has chickenpox. Might a manga tunic cheer her up? I hope so. If not, Kirsty also sent me The Most Fabulous Fabric in the World *TM to make her a hoodie as well. Better start taking your meds so you can cope with the awesomeness, you will not even be able to stand it. Watch this space.

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I am a thirteen year old boy

Did you know that if I lined up all the hoodies I have made / am currently making this month it would reach to the moon and back? Or, at least down the hall. Seventeen hoodies.


But this one is a bit special because a) the customer sent me the fabric which is always fun b) it's for a thirteen year old. It a little bit blew my mind because the measurements she provided are really not that much smaller than me. And lo and behold I tried it on this morning and it fit. Strange stuff.

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Bittersweet bicycles

A customer sent me some beautiful bicycle fabric to be made into something for her daughter (remember The Coolest Girl in the World?) and I fell in love. It's called Dream Bikes by Heather Ross and you absolutely cannot find it anymore. Which is pretty much a crime against humanity, because it's gorgeous.


The challenge was that she only had a scrap left, less than a yard and a bit irregular. Luckily she had plenty to coordinating dotty fabric to send my way too.


And I managed to squeeze this out of it! I love it so much, I wish I could keep it. In fact, I wish I could wear it.

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