Blue and White Summer Dress

Last Friday, the 19th of June, Sweden celebrated Midsummer's eve. For swedish people this holiday is almost as big as Christmas. We eat smorgasbord as lunch, which includes pickled herring, sour cream, potatoes, chives, eggs and crispbread. Later in the evening we barbecue and for dessert we eat cream cake with strawberries or strawberries with unwhipped cream or ice cream. During midday or early afternoon it is a tradition to gather loved ones, dress a maypole with flowers and leaves and then dance around it together with the children to violin music or accordion music.
We celebrated together with my husband's brother's family and for this occation I sewed this dress I will show you today!

The pattern is taken from BurdaStyle magazine no 6/2014. I wanted a dress with simple lines and few details and I liked the fact that it has two hidden pockets in the side seams. When I was finished I was a little unhappy with the neckline because I thought it was a bit too deep. When I leaned forward people would see more than I wanted to show so I sew the two front parts together were they crossed. However, that was not enough so I used a white tank top under so it covered as much as I wanted. Maybe I will add a white or blue patterned piece behind the two front pieces so I won't need a tank top in the future.

The fabric I used is cotton fabric with not much stretch. However, there is no need for much stretch because the zipper in the side seam is long enough to make it easy to get the dress on without trouble.
The fabric is called "Twelve Oaks" from the collection of Judie Rothermel for MARCUS Fabrics (see picture below) 

Betsy the Rainbow Cow

This weekend this lady is getting the spotlight on the blog! Let me present to you Betsy - the rainbow cow!
Just like all her friends she was once white with only black colored spots, but she felt in her heart that she was not one color - she was ALL colors! Her greatest dream was to have multicolored spots just like the rainbow. One day she found the hidden secret of the rainbow and her dream came true! Now all her friends call her "Rainbow-Betsy" and she is living the dream every day among flowers and grass. Go Betsy!

The technique I use is basically increase, decrease and stocking stitch for all parts of this cow. I do the pattern myself and from my own imagination. I think this is the perfect way for me to be creative and I can assure you that it will be many more little soft animal friends on this blog in the future! :)

Betsy is a real flower junkie and loves to relax in the grass enjoying the sunshine.

Carrot Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

What would be better than celebrating Saturday with baking carrot cupcakes?! Well, I didn't have a good answer to that question so I stepped into my kitchen with happy feet and started making some :)

Beacause I personally think that frosting that contains only icing sugar and butter is a bit too sweet for my taste, I wanted to try this frosting because I have heard cream cheese frosting is not as sweet. However, I found that this frosting also is a way too sweet for my taste so for future cupcake baking I will spread my wings and do some serious digging on the Internet to find a frosting that is very fresh, creamy and not so sweet. 

This recipe is originally from Leilas homepage but I will also give it in English here in this post - YAY!

 Carrot Cupcakes

3 eggs
270 grams of sugar
180 grams of flour
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 pinch of salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
2 teaspoons ground ginger
150 ml sunflower oil
450 grams grated carrots

Cream Cheese Frosting

65 grams of soft butter

300 grams of icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
100 grams of cream cheese 

1. Put the oven to 175 Celsius.
2. Beat the eggs and the sugar until pale and fluffy.
3. Mix the dry ingredients and turn into the egg mixture.
4. Stirr in the oil and carrots.
5. Put paper cases on a tin and pour in the mixture until the cases are two-thirds full.
6. Bake in the centre of the oven for 12–15 minutes. Leave to cool.
7. Make the frosting by mixing together the ingredients until creamy.
8. Spread the frosting on top of the cupcakes.

Drawing Rihanna

Sometimes I think it is relaxing to just sit down, listen to music and sketch. I particularly like finding a celebrity to sketch and then listen to the person's music while I am sketching him or her. For me it feels like I do a better sketch if I absorb the music while going down into the exact details of their faces.

Something that moves me every time I am sketching a portrait of a person is that a face contains so many shadows, lines and corners that I need to observe to make the face look like the original person. This time I tried to sketch Rihanna, and although I am very aware of it's not perfect I like the outcome :)

I used pencil hardness F to do all contours at first and then I used 4B and 5B to make the shadows. To even the edges between the shadows I used a stump. Finally to make sharp contours I used an oridinary mechanical pencil. The paper is ordinary sketching paper.

Baby Body with Air-Balloon Print

Children's clothes are so small and easy to make and for me the choice of colorful and happy fabric prints is the best part of making children's clothes. This time I found a very cute cotton tricot fabric with air-balloons! I tried to look for the name and the producer of this fabric on the internet but unfortunately I didn't find anything. Maybe you know?
I still have some of this fabric left and my fabric shop around the corner has tons of other cute fabrics so I will definately make more baby garments in the future  :)

For this body I used the same Burda pattern as also I used for this baby body with apple print I made for an earlier post. In that post you will also find the type of buttons I used for this garment and they are really easy to use, you just need a hammer and you will get a great result!

Summer Jeansjacket

For the past two weeks I have been working on the greatest sewing project of this year so far for me, and I am now ready to show you the result!
I love jeans jackets but I have never found anyone anywere that fit my body. I am slim and tall and my arms are quite long. Either the waist is good but then the sleeve length is too short, or I have to go up a size to make the sleeves fit but then the waist is too wide. I have been very tired of these issues for years and this spring I decided to make a jacket myself to hopefully make it fit for all parts of my upper body.

I used a Burda jacket pattern from the latest BurdaStyle magazine but because I am who I am, a girl who always wants to make changes to make the garment fit "my style" I changed some things along the way.
For the pockets I cut out the pattern pieces as the original but I only used one piece of every pocket and kept the rounded shape on the sides.

Because the Swedish summer is not very warm I wanted a lining for this jacket to make it a bit more resistent to cold weather. I used the same fabric I used to make this cotton summer dress last year and I think the pattern of this fabric fits well with the blue jeans fabric.

I made this jacket in size 36 but if I cold do one change I would change it to a size 38, at least in the area around the shoulders and maybe in the waist because it feels a little tight in those areas when I have a sweatshirt or a hoodie under it.

I sew the lining into the jacket by hand because it was quite hard to do it with the sewing machine. It took a good while to finish it and my fingers were sore but it turned out nice and I am happy :)

Knitted Flying Kite Elephant

The circus goes on with my new hobby, the knitted soft animals! And not are they only cute animals - they are kind of loony too! Watch out for this guy, Kenny, the flying kite elephant, who got tired of being related to the world's heaviest animals and made his dream come true to fly! When I took the photos of him for this post he was just all over the place! I had a tough time making him be still for just a couple of seconds to get some nice shots of him in his new kite uniform.

Kenny is the soft animal proof of that you really can make your dreams come true even if your dreams are a bit "out of the box". He wanted to fly so very much, be free like a bird, but he didn't have any wings or feathers like the birds have. One day he saw a kite high up in the sky and he knew it was the answer to his problem. Now he flies all day long playing follow the leader with his new bird friends, and the bright colors of his kite uniform shines in the sun!

 Kenny is made of acrylic yarn and I have constructed the pattern myself. It took about two weeks to make him and now he and his moose buddy Sven with the red pants is having a blast together.