Getting my hands dirty: Itajime silk shirts and an Anna dress in the making

When I was in New York I took an itajime class with Shabd Simon-Alexander which was amazing!

Dissolving the paint

She has just released her first book, Tie Dye, dye it, wear it, share it, which I really recommend. I haven't made any of the projects out of the book yet, but the instructions and the pictures are very clear and beautiful.

During the class I painted some silk and cotton which I bought at Mood during Lladybirds meet-up.

Silk painted with nickel and grey

Before washing it properly, the colours are a bit softer now

I made two shirts with the silk, and I'm thinking about what to make out of the cotton (it is pretty thin and see through) but I am a bit low on ideas for that one..

Any ideas for the cotton fabric? I have around 2.5 meters of it.. (around 3 yards).

Any ideas?

This shirt is made from a self drafted pattern which is a great pattern for loose fitting tops.

This robins egg blue one is made without a pattern and I arranged the pleats on my dressform and then sewed it together. This approach has caused the side seams to move a bit towards the back, but I'm calling that a design feature :) The armholes are a bit too large, but it doesn't really bother me.

Quite flowy, sorry for the crappy lighting

For the button holes I reinforced the fabric with a white cotton on the inside. I recycled the buttons by cutting them off one of my boyfriends old shirts and then using the wrong side, which was less shiny and has more colours than the right side.

Enjoying the French country side

Begging? What's that?

Both shirts have french seams and look really clean on the inside, which I really like.

This weekend my sister, Eef and me dyed some cotton scarves and some silk. At first my sister was sceptic about folding techniques, but look what she made!

Very concentrated workers

My sisters creation

I used a new technique from Shabd's book, which allows you to make polka dots and circles, how great is that?
I want to turn this piece of silk into an Anna maxi dress!

The green is a bit faded in the picture, but in real life it looks beautiful!

These photo's remind me that I should try and make a black skirt, since it is a very good staple piece to wear with all my new shirts. I was thinking this one from Pattern Cutting looks quite good to me..

Art and the Datura blouse

Last sunday we had an art opening at our friends house and studio, it is an amazing place, where a lot of artists live together and they have some very cool art there! I decided it would be the perfect event for me to wear something which I made with my dyed fabric.
It was a very sunny day, which was awesome, but makes it difficult to photograph the white fabric..

These are his paintings, Thanks Ted Parker for letting me use them as a background!

So on sunday morning I sewed my first Deer and Doe pattern ever, yay! I've been keeping an eye on them ever since they first came out. In my mind I  had to sew other patterns first before I was allowed to purchase more patterns..  So after finishing a couple of patterns from Victory Patterns I put in my order and was super excited when they arrived in the mail.

Roxanne will you be my bff?

For my birthday my sister (thank you again!) gave me all of the Victory Patterns, definitely an awesome present! First on my list to make was the Roxanne pattern, and I knew exactly which fabric I wanted to use.

These pictures were taken at the awesome old farmhouse  (built around 1700) where my grandparents live

The patterns are designed very well and the instructions are awesome! The only thing that baffled me at first was the sizing square, which was a different size than the description said.. I decided to follow the sizing on the printed pages, which is the right way I think. There are some tucks at the back, which I pressed nicely, only to discover that I had folded them the to the wrong side, so I redid those, luckily I found out before sewing them!