Make a skirt bigger - thrifting-sewing tutorial

What? Sewing tutorial from me? Well, yes, I thought I would give it a try and we will see how it goes. :)

I really like thrift stores and I have often praised the ones in Sweden, there are lots of lovely things in the so called "loppis" shops. Unfortunately, used clothes are quite rare, and in the charity shops they are not too cheap. At least not if you still have to do some work with them so that you can wear them.
Anyway, last Saturday I managed to buy a skirt for only 10 crowns (about 1,20 Euros or 1,50 dollars). I loved the fabric and thought if I can't use it as a skirt I can always cut it up for quilting.

The skirt was way too small at the waist, but then I found a way to sort things out. And it took me about half an hour.

(Just in brackets: I love the many thrifting-recycling-refashioning blogs out there. But most of them follow the same pattern: buy something for the fabric, something that is too big for you and make it smaller. I however find it difficult to buy things that are too big for me.)

I have tried to make a pun once, when I upcycled my old cardigan, and I will repeat it again, perhaps someone will like it this time: up-cycle can mean UP a size :D. So here is how to make a skirt, that is too small for you, bigger.

The skirt needs to be long enough, and flaring out at the bottom. That means if you cut off the top part, it should still be a good length, but the new topline will be much wider.

Here is the skirt I bought:



It had a line of buttons on the front. I tried the skirt on and checked where is the point where I could button it up. It was at 18 cms from the waistline.
I don't like a skirt that buttons all the way, I have had a few uncomfortable incidents with buttons opening in critical places. So I decided to cut them off.

Then I marked 18 cms from the waistline all around the top of the skirt. Like this - there is very faint blue line starting at the 4th button. I cut off the top part along that line.





Then I cut off the buttons and sewed the front together, hiding the buttonholes. Sorry, forgot to take a picture of this phase.

Then folded over about 5 cms on the top, ironed it down, and took it to the sewing machine. Folded under about 1 cm, and sewed a line all around. I feel like I am not very good at explaining this, I hope the photos will help. I didn't pin much, just in a few places to keep the side seams together - since the part I folded down was a bit narrower than the part where I folded it down - so I had to do a bit of easing.






I left a little opening where I pulled in a piece of elastic. Then I sewed together the ends, tried the skirt on, then cut the elastic, cut off about 8 cms and sewed it again. Every time I cut elastic, I measure it around my waist, cut it a bit smaller - and it always turns out too lose.






Anyway, my skirt was almost done. I just had to sew back the buttons, only for decoration, so I decided to go lazy and only sewed back every other button :). And here is the end result:






It is still long enough to reach a bit under my knees. I am actually very proud of myself. :)

I am hoping to wear it tomorrow, will try and have a photo taken in it.



All this has just happened and I sat down to write a blog post about it quickly, but I know I promised some other updates.
Let me just boast say that I have finished my Swedish course, and got a B as a final grade which I am really happy with. But I am still so very tired from all that really intensive work.

There is some cross stitch I did but not much, and I also started quilting my first quilt, made some mistakes, and now it is waiting for some unpicking... I will be back with some photos soon.

Just to say hi

Hi, friends,

sorry I haven´t been blogging for so long, haven´t even realised that it was more than a month ago. I have been really-really busy trying to finish my Swedish course in time. I have a few more days to go and hopefully it will be completed by Wednesday. Then I will be back with some progress reports - although not much. :(

Anyway, hope everyone is doing well and stitching away happily. Have you stitched any of my patterns? Would be lovely to see.

Coming back soon.

Agi

Free bookmark pattern - based on an old sampler motif

I have been playing again with some patterns from the old Swedish books that I bought at an antique fare.
Just so that everyone know, I would like to make it clear that I am not using copyrighted material as my own. I know these is a difficult area so I will try to explain how I see this.

First, these books are about 70+ years old, although I am not sure when the copyright would have expired or how. But most of the patterns in them are really patterns that can be found all over Europe. There are patterns that I see again and again on old Hungarian, Ukrainian, German, Austrian, Latvian etc., etc. embroideries, not to mention Quaker an other early American things. It might be because of this that I "feel" they are in the public domain. In Hungary we say folk art is something that wasn't created by one person, but kind of a common creation: we don't know where it comes from originally, and everyone changes it a bit as they use it and share it. So there are endless variations of it.

Secondly, even so I never use these pattern as they are, I wouldn't copy a pattern from a book here and say they are mine. I use them more as inspiration. In this pattern, what I liked was the very simple form of the flowers, and the original red and blue colours. We also have red and blue together in some areas in Hungary. But apart from that, the overall design is my own work: the size of the motif, the layout, the repetitive element, the border etc.

I hope I am expressing myself clearly. If anyone knows for sure that I am in the wrong, please, correct me.

So, after all this, here is the bookmark that I created inspired by some patterns in an old Swedish book, but I wouldn't say they are really Swedish patterns, more like old European sampler motifs. Apart from using the original colour scheme, I also made a more modern, fresher looking one.

Which one do you like more?




Click on the pictures for the pdf.

Swedish folk pattern and some WIP

Hi, dear friends.

I have been really busy lately with my sewing machine and other stuff.
I am learning quilting. Here is my second attempt. (The first one was a simple piece sewn together from 10 x 10 cm squares, not very well - I am still thinking to do something with it.)

I was trying to do a log cabin quilt. I cut lots of 5 cm wide strips and started working. I don't have a real fabric stash, absolutely no quilting fabric, only some odds and ends that I bought in second hand shops or got as donation from colleagues. I tried to pick some light and dark fabrics, and started sewing them together. Here are some pictures of the process, but mostly I was too excited sewing, so I didn't take many photos.







As my blocks grew, I had to realise that my seams are not precise and my cutting was not ver exact either, so some of the lines on the blocks turned out to be a bit wonky. After some thinking I came up with a "brilliant" solution - I will make the blocks so that the log cabins are leaning a bit to the left and right, this way it won't be so visible that they are not perfect. Ha! As if this was a solution - for someone who is a beginner!
I saw some pictures and calculated for myself what size triangles I need for the edges. And I didn't have much fabric that was good with the other colours so had to be careful. Of course, I made mistakes when cutting and sewing again, so at the end it turned out even worse. There were even more seams to match.


In the close-up you can see the not-so-matching seams:




But there are some that are almost OK - purely by accident, though:





Anyway, here is the final result - and in spite of all the mistakes I am VERY happy with it. :D





This is only the quilt top, now I am going to learn how to quilt it. I don't have any batting, need to buy something for the back, too. Until I can do that, I will practice with smaller pieces. It will have to be straight lines quilting, because I also need to buy a free motion foot for the sewing machine and buying all that might take some time.


I have also been knitting a pullover for my daughter. It is almost ready now, I only need to sew in the sleeves. It was made, as most of my knitting, without patterns, just improvising. I knitted the body on the round, and the cowl neck, too. One of the problems with improvising is when you have made one sleeve, it is terribly hard to duplicate it - so I decided to make the second sleeve different. Purely for laziness - but I think it looks really cool. I hope Eszter will like it. It is absolutely soft and warm, it is an alpaca boucle yarn from Drops. Of course, since spring is here, she will need a really warm pullover - NOT. But I didn't manage to finish it in winter, so she will have to wait until next autumn to wear it. :=/







And I also crocheted a little cat for her, to go in the packet when I send the pullover:



This was also made without pattern. Perhaps I should try and write it down?


And here is a small Swedish folk cross stitch pattern for you all to enjoy, I think it is lovely. It was inspired by some old patternbooks I have.

Have fun :)

Pastel biscornu

I created another biscornu pattern with geometric motifs, in lavender and mauve colours. I just love how these colours look together.
I also made a repetitive pattern for covering bigger surfaces, using the same motifs as in the biscornu. Perhaps someone has a good use for it.

Enjoy :)

Butterflies - free cross stitch patterns

I have been stitching quite a few butterflies for the charity quilts lately. So much that I got bored with all what I had . I wanted to make my own pattern, and here it is.

I hope you like my butterflies and they can bring some spring to all of you. God knows we all need it now. :)

My new dress

I have been sewing again.

This time I chose a commercial pattern that, luckily, we have at school. It's an Onion pattern, 2032.
It is good because it goes up to size 48. I actually thought I need 50 so I drew my pattern a bit bigger - than had to reduce it when I sewed it together.
I had this nice knit fabric, which is not very stretchy, just a bit. It wasn't easy to sew though because the edges curled up, even though I ironed it. Anyway, I managed.
The pattern description is in Danish (!!!). I did understand (or guessed) some of it, based on the little Swedish I know. Those two languages are quite near each other. But I wasn't sure I understood how to sew the pleats in front, so I just did it as I thought and they didn't turn out perfect. But they are not too bad.

Here is the result. All in all, I think this is a really good dress, considering how much experience I have. I used an overlock stitch to sew most seams, then cut off the excess fabric, and a stretchy straight seam for the hemming. So it looks almost professional from the inside, too. I am VERY happy with it.




It was March 15th, Hungarian national holiday, that's why the Hungarian ribbon. In the background, on my pinboard you can see a photo of my Mom.


What do you think?