September 2020 #Instagram

 

This is the second jeans that I lengthened!

I showed you my way some days ago. This way I saw on pinterest. Look for "lengthen trousers by adding a cuff". I really like this method as it is nearly invisible! And because normally I don't have trousers that are too long and needs to be rolled up 😉

Maritime still life!
This has been all summer the decoration on my couch table! Nature is turning quickly into fall and I soon need to think of something more seasonal. But not jet! This weekend is announced to be summer like again!
Stones painted by me - wooden fish carved by one of my sons - snail shells, stone with hole and fossil sea urchin found at the Baltic sea coast
Happy weekend to everyone 🙂☀️

This pretty bunting is a gift for a newborn 💙

Because of the very dry summer the blackberries in our region are very small and quite hard, but nevertheless the taste is good!

It took me over one hour to just find 700g! So I filled up the pot with apples, cooked it and after smoothing all through a colander, I got by chance nearly exactly the 1kg for one recipe of jam 😊

😘 Very yummy and smooth! Apples are great to put in jam if you don't have enough other fruits as in my opinion they are not changing the taste!

For my blackberry-apple jam I designed nice labels at the computer, printed them on normal printer paper and glued them with milk (!) onto the jars!

Thanks @mamas_kram: I saw this method at your account and I tried it for the first time! It worked so well! Apparently the labels are coming off very easy later. I hope for that as I hate scratching off glue remnants!

Had lots of fun making paper with both children crafting classes this week!
Step 1: ripping a roll of toilet paper into a bucket with warm water (kids think this is super funny)
Step 2: mixing the soaked paper to become a kind of ugly pulp (kids think this is disgusting but still attractive - when they put their hands in they love the smooth texture) no photo :/
Step 3: giving some of the pulp in a bigger box with more water and fishing with a frame an even layer of pulp (needs some practice) see video - we added some confetti to decorate the paper
Step 4: transferring the paper mud from the mesh on the frame to a tissue. Doing this several times and piling up the wet papers! Photo missing :/
Step 5: Pressing the stack of tissues with the wet paper between so most of the water comes out.
Step 6: hanging the tissues with the much thinner now papers pressed on them out to dry
Step 7 - my favourite: peeling of the dry papers from the tissues!
That's it!
Easy for me because my husband had a press and he also built two frames for me already in the summer when we tried several methods to make paper pulp!
And the finished toilet paper paper is really nice. Fun drawing on it (see my flower doodle some posts back)

I had a lovely afternoon with my boys at a little river!

Feeling the fresh air over the water, the sound of the river, the green filtered light through the leaves is soul food and calming down! Did you also recognize that water can wash away stress?

We had yoghurt and blueberries for picking and guess who forgot the spoons? 🙈 But we had a knife and carved some tools! They worked somehow 😊 and we had fun!

Selfmade camera strap!

Inside it's an nylon belt which you can see on both ends where are rings to fix the camera with smaller straps to. Around the belt I put one layer of thick fleece and covered it with a pretty cotton fabric. Like this it will be more comfortable to hand the camera around the neck!

It's a gift for our goddaughter who will buy herself a new camera!

Results of yesterday's crafting class!

Together we made stamps in geometric shapes from wood scraps and foam rubber. We made 4 different sets for 4 different colours.

The kids stamped castles and drew the details with black pens! They had so much fun to invent stories of what's going on in their castles and where are the bad guys and the good knights! 🗡🛡

So nice to see or better hear their over boarding imaginations 😊

Autumn wreath!

Made it from rose hips, hop, ivy flowers, moss, some poppy capsules and an other climbing plant I don't know the name of!

Manikin 😍

Aren't the two guys adorable?

Made those with the kids of my mondays crafting class as well as autumn wreaths. They managed astonishingly well the binding of the wreaths and they just loved the manikins! They bild whole families. Some wanted to attach them to their wreath. See some cute little man on the second picture!

Couldn't leave my little guy's without a home!

Made this as example for tomorrow crafting class. I'm very curious what the kids will create!

The top of the house is the tip of a wooden pole that we used for a garden project already several years ago. We just needed poles but not pointed ones, so I got lots of wooden cones. My boys used them for a while as trees in their Lego world. And now they will become fairy houses! No waste :)

 

Inspired by this weekend's skies (stormy, cloudy and lots of rain) I tried to paint clouds by dotting the colour with a little sponge.

I am not really satisfied with my picture, but today I let the kids of my crafting class do it and from 6 kids we got 6 completely different skies. Then we added dried leaves to imitate autumn trees. See the last two photos. One had been my favourite for the clouds, but in my opinion the leaves ruined the composition. The other example is the opposite: I didn't liked the clouds in the beginning, but with the trees it became a very nice picture with the illusion of wind.

Every time again fascinating to see what different hands and heads make from the same idea! Love to observe that!!

Easter fabric tableau with rabbit

For my youngest niece (9month) I made a fabric tableau for her first Easter feast. The background and the base of the tableau is thick felt. The rabbit is very soft to touch as it's made from artificial fur. The daffodil is three dimensional and you can lift up the petals. 

To learn slowly the secret of egg-hunting I made some eggs from cardstock with fabric around. You can hide them in the grass around the rabbit and I think even a baby will have fun picking them out.

Easter is still 5 weeks away, but it already feels nearer.

A bientôt,

Jane

Baby changing equipment

My brother and his wife are expecting their first baby. They are in last preparations now and asked if I could make them a utensilo for the wall with some pockets to put in diapers and other stuff. Color wishes have been blue and/or green.

I couldn't stop me from making also some more pieces. Lot's of little washcloths (with a baby you need lots), a divided basket, a pouch and two towls to put under the baby on the changing table.

I hope they like everything and that they will use it a lot.

A bientôt,

Jane

Something's gone wrong ...

I wanted to sew a little outfit for a baby born last November to an old friend of mine. For being sure that it fit, I choose size 74 and made a shirt from a pattern I already used several times (for example here).

For the trousers I tried out a new pattern and ... have a look: Do you think this is the same size?

I have the impression the trousers are huge. Even when you like the style of oversized skater pants :-) What I can't imagine with my friend.

A bientôt,
Jane

Baby clothes

We have the greatest sunshine today! I took the chance and went to the garden to take pictures of all the baby clothes I made lately. A lot of administrative work is stopping me from bigger projects, but those little trousers are the perfect quick projects for in between when you think your head will explode in front of your desk. 

I mainly used the same patterns like for the clothes I tested in December (here). This time I made the "milkmonster"-trousers from jeans. I reused the legs of an old jeans from my darling, he is always wearing up his jeans in the upper part and I already gathered a lot of legs for future projects.

Two of the shirts are again from Schnabelinas free pattern. I just wished I had added an other dividing stripe in the front of the owl-shirt.

I like that pattern, it is great for using up little pieces, but for motive-prints the parts are quite small, so I tried out an other free pattern I found in the web. 

I had quite some difficulties to follow the instructions. My normal machine doesn't have an elastic stitch, so I try to avoid sewing jersey with it. I used wristband material for the neckline an fixed it with the over-lock, but I have never opened up so many seams. Finally it is not too bad, but I have to "use" my little niece again to try it out. 

I also changed the order of sewing it together, I thought it would be too fiddly to close the body and sleeves first and then put it together. 

The only thing I am proud of on this shirt: The stripes in the fabric of the sleeves are lining up perfectly on the seam :-)

A bientôt,
Jane

Baby outfit

For my seven weeks old niece, that is growing faster than her parents can buy cloth (so they say), I made a very cute little ensemble of shirt and trousers. Since I detected Mara's blog I wanted to sew also baby clothes. It seems that she is sewing everything for her little daughter from body's to jackets. There have been lot's of links to patterns and some of them have been free books, so that's perfect if you just want to try out. 

It has been so much fun to do those little little pieces. They are in size 62/68.

Why didn't I know how to sew those, when my boys have been little? 

The shirt is from this free pattern and it calls "Trotzkopf" what means stubborn. I hope the name is not program for the child inside!

The trousers are from "Milchmonster" (milk-monster) and called Frida. You can have a free version in the sizes 50 to 62. For bigger sizes you have to buy the e-book.

I made the trousers from corduroy that has been in my u-f-o box for ages. I tried about 10 years ago to sew a coat for me, but the shoulders have been never fitting correctly and I gave up. Now I don't have to be sorry for the waste of fabric, I made this lovely pants from it. 

I hope very much that they are fitting and that the parents like them too, because I am eager to sew more of those!

I didn't realized it, but the last post has been already the hundredth blog-post! I had fun writing them all and I hope that some out in the www liked to read them. I can see in my statistics that there are often visits to my side, but I can't see if someone is following regularly. 

When I started in January I didn't know if it would please me to blog, but now I will continue, as it is like a nice little journal for me about my creative life. Also I find so many inspirations in the blogs of others and I hope that some might find my ideas inspiring too. 

A bientôt,
Jane, qui attaque le prochain 100!

Bibs with sleeves

I get already in Christmas stress. Too early? No, it's not! The next two weeks we have fall-vacation (we are leaving for 10 days to Germany, so less or no sewing), then it is already November and in the end of November there is the Christmas market where I have a stand. And between vacation and Christmas market there is also a Halloween-night-walk to organize for the school and the birthday of my eldest to celebrate. Do you understand that I am getting nervous because of all the ideas in my head to try out before the market and not enough time to manufacture as many things as I want/need? 

And like every year I ask myself: "Why didn't you start earlier?" :-) Always the same...

I made lately some bibs. I didn't made those since my youngest can eat more or less properly. I nearly forgot how messy it is to cut and sew terry cloth! Fuzzes everywhere! 

I am convinced that the only useful bibs are those with sleeves, as baby's like to hang also their arms in their plates and not only dripping sauce to their body. So I get rid of all simple bibs very early in my career as mom and made only sleeve bibs from a pattern I formed from one single bib I bought at a flea-market.

These are the six ones I sewed last weekend and decorated them with applications:

As my darling took my camera to a business trip, I had to activate an old camera. After some problems with the picture size and quality, I made photos and I will put them in the shop as soon as a friend corrects my french description. I also photographed some more things I made lately, but those are for tomorrow ... or Friday.

A bientôt,
Jane

Doudou

A new baby has been born and I want to visit her and her mom in hospital. I needed a little something for the baby and hadn't anything for girls on stock. 

Yesterday I made some cuddling cloth's, in french they are called doudou. (I made a test one before, you remember?). I like them a lot. The colorful fabric has been a leftover piece from a blanket I made some years ago. This is why it is smaller (25x25cm) and the one with the red cocks is 30x30cm.  

For the backside I took soft moleton fabric. If I am sewing for baby's I use only cotton and no synthetic fabrics. The only problem with moleton is, that after some washing it might loose it's softness, but you never know before. I already tried a lot of different qualities.

A bientôt,
Jane