Scrap Sunday: It’s the little things

Posted on 02/04/2017 by atelieroursonne

If you are following this blog since a while, you will know how hard I have tried in the past years to please Mr. No thank you. This madness culminated last September when I made the most amazing play mat. For a 5-year-old. I mean how often is he going to play with it, really?

Because it’s so amazing, here are the pictures again for those who were too lazy to click on the link:

At the time, it was well appreciated, but now I keep hearing a complaint. It seems that I have ruined the whole thing by forgetting the road marking on a very short piece. Except that I did it on purpose. To have a little “one way only” challenge.

Anyway, lets just forget about this big failure of mine.

At least a year ago, I dared pointing out the huge holes on the far too short pyjama, stupidly suggesting that we could throw that old piece away. Goodness. How could I not have known that this was his favourite piece of clothing. Ever. So I suggested to use the fabric to make something. Like pyjamas for the doll. Phew, the offer got accepted. I then put it in my box of future projects where it stayed and matured.

After a little ~~accusation~~ reminder a couple of weeks ago, we settled on a cuddling blanket and I got straight to work.

First I carefully cut along the seams to get the maximum out of it and obviously we needed to take the biggest piece to make the blanket. Everything else would have been silly. The biggest piece happened to be the back of the original onesie.

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When I folded it in the middle, I thought, it looks like a bunny so we made a bunny cuddle blanket with appliqued face.

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The blanket gets cuddled a lot and is most likely the best thing I have ever made. He will take it everywhere (when he moves house, not everywhere everyday). And he said: “That was really nice of you.” Which is definitely the best compliment that I ever heard re any of my makes. At least it feels like it after having tried so hard for years 🙂

And just for the record, I haven’t just managed to please the boy. The girl has also shown a quick smile once. She kept complaining that the boys have matching clothes and that she wanted to have matching clothes with the toddler as well.

So I made T-shirts. I wanted to use different colours for the sleeves but no, it needed to be the same. Although the mint would have looked better with dark pink sleeves. Just my opinion.

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Can you spot the difference?

Correct, different types of sleeves. Luckily I got away with that 🙂

The baby version is the klimperklein baby top with buttons at the side and the bigger version is my usual pattydoo raglan shirt pattern.

I love the fabric. When I ordered it I expected smaller lions and I was worried at first how the big ones would look on a tiny baby shirt. But I love it.

Heart shaped bag and other stuff

Posted on 22/03/2017 by atelieroursonne

I know, I do not take blogging very seriously these days. The little computer time I get, I’d rather spend watching comedy shows about pumpkin skinned men with small hands and great egos but I will post more often from now on. Really.

A couple of weeks ago, our 8 year old neighbour peeped through the window and said: Wow, you can really sew very well.

Me: Thank you. Would you like me to make something for you? Maybe a hat?

Him, very politely: No, thank you. I have everything I need… Pause… (He did not say “Pause”, that is why I put it in italics. He actually paused) But I think my mum would be really happy about a heart bag. You know, a bag in the shape of a heart.

I found that really sweat and whilst I am not entirely convinced that his mum has always been dreaming about a bag in the shape of a heart I decided to make a quick one. Initially I only had visions with heart shaped front and back and a side panel going around. That would have been too much work for something that will most likely never get used.

But then I found instructions on herzekleid and there it is, my version of a heart shaped bag:

The key thing is to sew the sides together first (outer and inner fabric) and then top stitch them together. Initially my opening was too wide, you should really go quite high up.

In theory it would be reversible but I think it might be a bit bulky at the bottom corner.

All in all it took about 30 min to make it, so really not too long for a joke present. (In this case, only. Clearly it is a cute bag and it would also deserve a better execution for someone who would really appreciate such a bag)

Apart from watching you tube videos, I have also been busy sewing, a random selection of things would be the following

a dress and a hand bag for my soon to be 2 goddaughter:

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Then there is a belated birthday shirt for a 5 year old:

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and another shirt for a mortally offended other 5 year old who apparently wanted exactly that dinosaur fabric for himself. I had just about enough dinosaur fabric left for a hood and short sleeves.

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and a tiny applique 20170319_104326

I have to say, I really love this one. That red and yellow stripy fabric is clearly one of the best fabrics I have ever bought.

I have lost count of the various dresses and shirts that I have been making recently. I was really trying hard to destash (and get more room for… well you know what)

One particular custom order for a 6 year old birthday girl is sticking in my mind though. She chose two fabrics for her dress that not even I would have combined. One of them I hadn’t even shown her initially, only once she was not satisfied by my first selection of what I thought would be suitable for her.

Voila: Birds sitting on flowers.

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To me the birds look like penguins but I did not want to make this process even harder 🙂

And I think the result is not bad at all. The sleeves and the yellow seam at the hem bring everything nicely together. It might not be to everybody’s taste but I think it really suits the character of the little girl.

You are probably a bit bored already to always see the same kind of things on this blog. (and I didn’t even show you all of the dresses and shirts, I told you I need to make room)

I guess you are right, I should really stretch myself. Good news is, I have been working on other projects too. So there will soon be a post about an exciting upcycling project (exciting in the sense of my first ever upcycling project) and a very useful collection of tops for myself to replace the bunch of old T-shirts in my wardrobe as I do not seem to own a single T-Shirt without holes.

And as I have already filled the holes in my fabric cupboard, there will be a really cool looking coat soon. (Hopefully)

Classic black and white collection

Posted on 08/02/2017 by atelieroursonne

I guess, I haven’t exactely been known for my sophisticated and classic taste when it comes to clothing. Or anything else. So you might wonder why my blog is suddenly featuring a black and white collection.

I guess, this is what you are expecting on this blog:

Back to black and white and a more classy approach. But lets do it in small steps, we don’t want anyone to have a heart attack from sudden and big changes.

I wouldn’t say that I have a favourite colour. Lets not get too philosophical but you always need an opposite to actually appreciate certain features. The non-colours black and white are only classic and elegant because there are people like me who think parrot style is best.

So, looking back at the colours above, the trio of pink-orange-teal seamed to be the perfect combination for quite a while. We found it in the old scarf from 2013/14ish (still wearing it by the way)

and it came almost back in the famous Fashion Course Dress

but in order to get the best possible marks, I went for the more classy shiny black/dark grey instead of pink

Slowly, slowly my hair turned a bit more silver and with the silver matured my taste for colours. I realised that silver or, as others might call it, “grey”, is actually the new black, and so I happened to purchase grey wool for this year’s baby jumper.

But if grey is the new black, what is the new white?

Surely it must be yellow.

I was never really a fan of yellow, but now that it is officially the new white, I have realised that it had already creeped into my fabric cupboard.

One of my favourite examples for the amazingness of ~~white~~ yellow would be a top that I rather accidentally made a couple of weeks ago.

I meant to make a shirt for a 11 year old girl with leukaemia. But have you ever tried to choose a fabric to please an 11 year old? As I personally have the taste of a 5 year old, this seamed far too difficult… until I came across a fabric with little monsters who reminded me immediately of leukaemia cells. So I thought, if I can not match her taste anyway, I will take the fun route and make a leukaemia shirt. I chose light pink sleeves to make sure it was still girly.

The colours in this picture are rubbish. As the shirt is with its rightful owner already, I took a daylight picture of the fabrics to give you a better idea.

Still a bit pointless, I know. I should have kept the shirt to take a decent picture before handing it over.

Anyway, I found the idea of the leukaemia shirt so great and also the yellow version of the sleeve fabric so amazing that I made a tiny version for the girl’s 1 year old leukaemia buddy with yellow sleeves.

And there it was: my new favourite trilogy, the new black and white! What you all have been waiting for ~~since reading the title~~.

Well, with a little bit of teal. Good things always come in threes anyway. Whoever claims anything else on this blog is stupid 🙂

I am so pleased with those two shirts, especially the yellow version. I suppose the look is more suitable for a 1 year old than for an 11 year old but she was too polite to show it 🙂

So, it looks like my love of orange-pink-teal has secretely turned into a more toned down and mature yellow-grey-teal so who knows, I might really be wearing black and white in my next post.

Good things always come in pairs

Posted on 31/01/2017 by atelieroursonne

I have no clue if that sentence in the title is true but I finally got hold of the camera with quite a few pictures of things I made ages ago. And I realised that I seem to have made a few things in pairs for whatever reason. (As you clearly can see from those few lines, I am highly motivated, focused and know exactly what I am doing or talking about).

As it is rather a lot, lets just look at the pictures as a sort of resumee.

So there are the octopus trousers (klimperklein pattern). The first ones where too big, so I had to make smaller ones for the small one. But then the big one liked them and wanted to have his own pair. Rather unusual to want the same as the baby but if it happens to be a really cool baby then why not.

The original ones, with aubergine cuffs (which you clearly can’t see in this picture) are my favourite:

They are ready for next season. Still, the aubergine is pretending to be some kind of black, a colour which I clearly don’t even own:

For some reason I did not actually take a picture of the one that gets worn a lot these days. (I guess another sign of overwhelming lack of motivation), so here comes the picture of the big boy version with pockets next to the baby version one (who is officially totally a toddler, sorry)

I made the big version with pockets as big boys clearly need pockets

and I thought it might be a good alternative for leggings, maybe even to be worn to nursery. At least on dress down Friday. But obvi0usly they never got worn, ever. Why “obviously”? Clearly you are new to this blog. I am talking about Mr. No Thank You. I’d like to point out that I am not embittered. Yes, I could have used this huge piece of cute fabric for some other cute baby items for any other cute baby with grateful parents and yes I could have used that time making something for people who would then have been happy about it but no, I am not embittered. Why not? Well, because I kind of knew anyway.

In any case, I found those baby trousers extremely useful so I made another pair

for my nephew, using the fox fabric of the reversibble jacket.

And since I still had some of this fabric left – a rather thin sweat by the way – I made another little jumper for another baby

And I made hats for these two babies, stupidly I only took a picture of one of them:

These hats not only come in pairs here but rather in bulk. I don’t even know how many I have made over the last few months, I love the pattern (klimperklein, Wendebindemuetze) and I love the fabrics (Boo and Zoo by Hamburger Liebe)

As I realised that these hats are actually not made for Austrian winter, I quickly had to knit (yes, I am still doing that too) a hat for Mr I Am Not A Baby Anymore.

(Ok, technically it does not fit into this post as it is not part of a pair and as it is really made of the tiniest left overs you could possibly imagine, it obviously belongs in the Sunday Scrap posts but once again, motivational issues make it unlikely that I will sit down again and write a whole post about a silly knitted hat so lets just enjoy it here.)

But enough of these old pictures, I have more recently produced proper pairs:

Two pull over scarf thingies (“neck socks”) with a soft and thick cotton fleece as a lining, much better than long knitted scarfs that might dangerously get caught somewhere.

A set of hats for twins (klimperklein, Minutenmuetze)

Please check out the pattern of the lining. I really love it. Tiny balls are the new stripes.

Technically the hats are reversible. But that makes the animals stand on their head. Clearly someone hasn’t been thinking this through.

Phew, that was quite a lot, wasn’t it. But that happens when you do not write your blog posts on a regular basis. To be honest, we are not quite done yet but I am jsut as tired as you are so I’ll leave the cutest pair for another post, especially as the colour combination deserves your full attention. I think after years of pink-orange-teal I have finally found my new trio….

Atelier Oursonne

handmade for you

Category Archives: children

Scrap Sunday: It’s the little things

Heart shaped bag and other stuff

Classic black and white collection

Good things always come in pairs