Crocheted necklace

Marche Special Crochet Goods

Paperback: 79 pages

Publisher: Nihon Vogue Sha (October 2009)

Language: Japanese

24 Crochet projects (brooches, hair accessories, bags, collars, etc)

I bought this Japanese crochet book, Marche Special Crochet Goods, in a whim and when I received it, found it a bit boring. It did not have that many ideas and the crochet patterns were a bit difficult to grasp. At least the pictures were pretty and inspirational, as always, and I decided to try making something from it. I settled to the easiest project: making a necklace from crocheted beads. I used leftover yarns from Hello Kitty bag and dishcloths so I did not have a lot of colours to choose from. I did okay anyway, didn't I? :)

Next time I will use a bit more stuffing in the beads. Now the are a bit too soft and don't hold their shape that well. Making crocheted beads was so easy that I might just have to make several necklaces!

Tutus everywhere

The blogospshere is full of tutus and Emma loves ballet. Therefore, I needed to make her a tutu. Simple as that :) I found simple instructions and nice pictures from ambrosialove's Flickr photostream and bought a lot of tulle to make the tutu.

I involved Emma in the project and let her choose colours. She was so happy! Surprisingly, she did not pick pinks and reds, but instead opted for mint green, lilac and white. Nice combinaison of colours! She also decided that the tutu would be a part of her fairy costume, so she also wanted mint green fairy wings. I could not find mint green wings anywhere, but luckily lilac ones were easier to find and I bought those. Actually, I probably should have made those mint green wings myself, but I felt a bit lazy...

Here she is, very happy with her new fairy costume!

 

 

Once upon a time...

My daughter has been asking me to buy her a princess dress. Since I absolutely hate spending any money on those shiny polyester dresses that are available in stores, I decided to make one myself. I mean, how hard can it be? Some tulle, some fabric and probably some lace and sparkly bits, that's what princess dresses are made of.

Since the dress was for my lovely Princess Emma, I involved her in the design process. We borrowed some books from the library for inspiration and set to work. We especially liked this book by Lenée Grue and Line Watt, Prinsessakirja.

Emma definitely knew what she wanted. She wanted puff sleeves, a flowing skirt and some sparkly bits, preferably in pink. That was the easy part. I also had my own vision of the dress in my mind and selfishly chose the fabrics. I chose green fabric for the bottom part of the dress and Emma protested. Pink, pink, pink she argued. Then I remembered that her favourite princess of all times is Princess Fiona from Shrek and that helped: Princess Fiona wears green! She also IS green, but I did not want to give Emma any ideas and did not mention that :)

Here she is, Princess Emma!

 

The dress in made entirely of repurposed fabrics. The green skirt is an old sheet, the pink fabric is from an 80's shirt my mother gave me and the white crown is made from leftovers of a shirt I used to make Emma a shirt dress. Oh, and the waist is made from an old linen napkin. I did not use any particular pattern for the dress, but I did use some different top patterns to make the sleeves and the body. I bought the crown from a craft fair, but I cannot remember the name of the maker and there is no label on the crown. 

From a granny shirt to a sweet dress

I like rummaging through stuff at fleamarkets, but I only buy things, if I can really justify the purchase. At one time, I kept buying lots of men's shirts to make dresses for Emma, but then I realised that I already had too many and the piles of shirts are still in my closet, waiting to be used. So I stopped. But then I saw this quite ugly shirt and I immediately knew it had some potential. It cost me two euros, so not the cheapest of finds, but I decided to buy it anyway. I had been planning to make a dress for Emma's friend as a birthday present and this was going to be it.

Here is the shirt, isn't it depressing! There is one, slightly bigger flower embroidery in the back and I decided to use the back side as the front of the dress.

I used a pattern I had for the top part of the dress and the bottom half was made from a fabric scrap my mother had given me. It was barely enough, but I think this dress is still kind of sweet, just like the girl who got it. Oh, and the pockets are aligned nicely, they just seem a bit warped in this picture.

 

Japanese craft books, part 2

My plan is to feature all my Japanese craft books, one by one, with examples of the clothes and crochet works that I have made. This is now the second post on the books and - surprise, surprise - the second book! I know, I am not very funny, but at least I am trying very hard... Or not. Sigh.

This time I am featuring a book that I was a bit disappointed with at first, but learnt to love. The patterns, although there are only a few, work and have something extra in all of them.

 

Shirley Temple Handmade Clothes

ISBN 978-4-7661-1778-3

Paperback: 79 pages

Publisher: Graphic Sha (March 2007)

Language: Japanese

Clothes for sizes 100-130 cm

The book has only a handful of clothes patterns and the rest of the pages are filled with accessories. The theme is obviously Alice's adventures in Wonderland, even though the book title suggests something Shirley Temple themed. I Googled a bit and it seems that Shirley Temple is a children's clothing brand and is not actually meant to define the content of this book, except that the clothes are definitely cute. It also has a sister line, Emily Temple Cute , which is meant for grown ups.  The latest Shirley Temple collection was introduced in the shortcoco. magazine (You gotta love the name!), vol. 13. That's an interesting looking magazine and I might just have to order one from Amazon.  Oh, the dangers of Google - You end up spending money on stuff you didn't even know existed! Anyway, back to the book. To my dismay, some of the nicest garments in the book are not included in the patterns, but luckily they can still be used for inspiration. For example, there is no pattern for the dress in the cover, only the top hat hair piece is featured.

 

I made a pair of capri pants for Emma. The fabric is actually an old pillow cover and the rest are also repurposed cloth pieces. These are a bit small for her, so for next summer I will need to make a bigger pair. I loved these!

 

By the way, that was Emma's favourite pose last summer. I have no idea where it came from!

Crocheted dish cloths

Bamboo is a very trendy material, it seems. I have seen many articles praising bamboo's excellent qualities and also heard that bamboo yarn makes excellent dish cloths. Bamboo is naturally antibacterial and it also dries fairly quickly. I bought a few really nice bamboo dishcloths from Pino, but they were outrageously expensive! That got me thinking... After some research I realized that I could crochet them myself, I bought some yarn and here are the end results:

 

The yellow yarn is Sublime Bamboo & Pearls with 70% bamboo and 30% pearls. Lovely yarn, although a bit pricey. The dish cloth works very well, but the cloth shrank quite a bit in the wash. Next one I make needs to be bigger, so that there is room for shrinkage. The green yarn is Novita Bamboo (68 % bamboo/ 32 % cotton). Also very nice and works well. The yarn is also a couple of euros cheaper than Sublime yarn, so I think we have a winner :)

I have now made several dishcloths: pink, white, green and yellow. They are very quick to make and really usable! The pattern is very simple and very basic, that's all I can do :)

 

Pyjama pants

My mother made new bed linen for Emma from a pink Hello Kitty fabric. Emma loved the sheets (Um, Hello Kitty AND pink, how can one go wrong with those?) and I took the fabric scraps even though I didn't have any idea what to make from them. To be completely honest, I do not like to use fabrics that have cartoon (or tv or whatever) characters in them, I kind of feel like they take all the attention from the actual garment or it's wearer away. Or that they block my creativity. I don't know... Pretty stupid, I know!

Bearing that in mind, I did not like to see that fabric in my scrap pile. Emma was in desperate need of new pyjamas, so I decided to use the Hello Kitty fabric to make her a pair of jammies. They actually turned out quite nice!

I did not use any particular pattern but used an old pair of pants that I cut to pieces as the pattern.

I made one mistake, though. I didn't wash the fabric before I made the pants. I bet you can guess what happened... Yep. They shrank! Luckily I made them extra long, so even after the shrinking, the pants were still usable. I will never make the same mistake again!

Japanese craft books

I don't remember when I first set my eyes on Japanese sewing books but ever since I have been hooked. I am always looking for a new one, something with new ideas and - above all - lovely pictures. The books are so simple and stylish, and the patterns so very easy and beautiful.

This is the first one I bought.

 Girls Style book

ISBN-10: 4579111818

    ISBN-13: 978-4579111817

Paperback: 87 pages

Publisher: Bunka Shuppan Kyoku (March 2008)

Language: Japanese

24 Full-size patterns of girls' clothes (sizes 100 - 140cm tall) 

The book has lovely images and very easy sewing projects: dresses, tunics, blouses, pants and accessories. I made this top (model M) for Emma from a vintage fabric I found from my mother's fabric stash.

 

It was really simple and still I managed to get something wrong: I forgot to attach the sleeves... Luckily it did not really matter, I like this top anyway. Oh, by the way, the hanger is from the time I was a baby. A long time ago.... I got a set of those when I was a baby and love them still. I would like to get more of them, so if anyone knows where to find these, let me know.

Emma liked the top but did not want to model in a picture. Here are some shots I took when we were waiting for a bus - I felt like a spy, since I did not want her to see that I was photographing her!

 

  

 

Hello Kitty bag

A year ago I would not have even dreamed of crocheting anything and did not even want to. I am very impatient, so I want to see results immediately and crocheting takes time. But then I won the box of doilies from an auction and my creative juices got the better of me. I started to search ideas for using the doilies in craft projects. I found very nice and inspiring crocheting blogs and many Flickr groups full of crocheted goodness. Then I realized that my doilies were not enough, I wanted something else. I was especially smitten by some really cute Hello Kitty accessories and I wanted to make those for Emma. After a long search I finally found what I was looking for and ordered a crafts book called Hello Kitty Pompom and Knit Goods  from eBay, bought some yarn from a Finnish yarn shop, Lankaidea, and got to work.

It took me almost three months to finish this one, since I only made a few squares here and then, and never seemed to have the time to actually concentrate on this. Then one day I realized that I had more than enough Hello Kitty squares ready and it was time to assemble the bag.

This is the end result. I am very happy and proud that I managed to make this. My friends couldn't believe that it was handmade and by me :) The lining and handles are my own design, since I did not like the original design.

The yarn I used is Mandarin Petit (from Sandnes), colours 1001 white, 2004 yellow, 4505 pink and 4301 light pink. The lining is light pink flannel, leftovers from a night gown I made for Emma.

Here is a close up of a Kitty square:

Since I had more squares than I needed for the bag, I decided to make some coin purses as well. A while ago I ordered some zippers from an Etsy seller and even though the colours are lovely, I had a little mishap with unit conversions. I ordered zippers that were too short to use in any of my clothes-making projects. After making these two coin purses, I only have 48 short zippers left... Any ideas what to make with those?

A little skirt - with a bird!

I am a big fan of Marimekko, especially their fabrics. I cannot pass their sales, it is quite impossible and I get this urge to buy a few meters of fabric every time. I never seem to be able to make anything from them, since they are so precious to me. Silly me! This time I decided to make a skirt for Emma and was determined to make a dent to my fabric stash by using one of my Marimekko finds. Her favourite shirt at the moment is green ( a welcome aversion from pink) and that shirt definitely needed a pretty skirt to match.

I did not use any patterns, since most skirts are so simple to make anyway. Just cut a rectangular shap of fabric, sew it together from sides and add elastic to the waist. Done! 

I chose Karmiini fabric in red, pink and green. I love the fabric, it is so versatile! I am planning to use it in other projects as well.

 

I also bought the fabric in turquoise and love that too. Very fresh, I think I am going to make a dress for Emma, I have the perfect pattern for that.

I liked the basic skirt but somehow it lacked something. I added some ric-rac to the hem and appliqued a white birdie to the skirt as well. Here it is, very simple and very cute :)

I also made the little brooch she is wearing. It is made from an old button and some fabric scraps.