"What is it?" "Salt!" "No, that's too salty!"

Looks like I took an involuntary blogging break there! There's an even longer one coming up soon because I'm going to Mexico for three weeks in September! I'm sewing some things to pack though, so expect some... pictures of sturdy and simple easy-to-care-for clothes. Ahem. Photographed in Mexico!

Anyway, today I went to see my mother for Mother's day (which we crazy Antwerp people celebrate in August, suck on that) and dragged my brother away from his studying to take pictures of me on the rooftop garden. Mom, if he fails his exam IT'S MY FAULT OKAY?

I have made the Sewaholic Saltspring ages ago and wore that dress to bits (literally-  one of the straps has come loose and it's patiently waiting for me to feel like doing some mending) so when I got this handprinted cotton at Pauwels I thought it was meant to be! (Pauwels is sadly closing by the way, but EVERYTHING is 40% off so go take a look if you haven't already!)

I still love how cleverly this dress is constructed. The lining is a bit shorter than the outer fabric so you get the blousy effect without the dress moving around too much. I made the shorter version due to Not Enough Fabric (not my own fault for once, it was the end of the bolt) and it's basically a perfect summer dress. Even my mother likes it!

This is what happens when my brother starts directing my poses. I also (finally) got a haircut and new color. There's so much blue now!

I made no modifications at all, except for changing the straps a bit (which I also did on the first version). Instead of having a strap in the front and one in the back and tying them on my shoulders I put two straps on the back and a loop on the front. No bows stuck under backpack straps!

The double straps also give a tiny bit more bra strap coverage. Constructing this dress went really smoothly thanks to the great instructions, but I would have changed one thing if I had thought about it earlier: the lining sometimes peeks out at the back (where the zipper is) because the shell isn't attached all the way. If you sew the dress according to the instructions it's the wrong side of the lining that's on show, which is fine in a solid fabric but looks a bit weird with a print. Something to keep in mind for the next one!

PS: I like to think I'm getting better at coming up with post titles. Here's where this one came from!

Very nice. Very basic. Very military - the Boyfriend

Guess what! I'm going to Mexico in September!

We had been thinking about this trip for a while but didn't get around to booking tickets until recently. We are flying to and from Mexico City and have about three weeks time to see things! We're not sure yet about how adventurous our trip is going to be, but we'll be travelling light, so bringing three weeks' worth of dresses isn't an option. I decided I wanted to make some shorts and bring those along with a few tops, a skirt and maybe some very light dresses. I finished some shorts last night so when I went to Ghent to talk business with this guy and go for a swim I took them for a test run!

I also found a jar of hair dye in a cupboard so now I'm bright blue again, yay!

The top is a simple copy of a top I already owned, made in a viscose jersey with a Vermeer painting on it. I like the idea of these paintings-printed-on-fabric but finding a pattern for them really isn't easy! This panel wasn't too massive though, just enough for a long tank. The fit is fine (since it's a copy) but I seem to have been a bit too generous with seam allowances on the armholes, since they're a bit tight. Not tight enough to want to redo them, though!

Here's a better picture of the shorts. I went through my collection of Burda magazines and went for this pattern. Burda patterns tend to fit me really well most of the time but for some reason these turned out a bit big. I went for a size 40 after taking my measurements again to be sure and had to take about 8 cm out of the waist and butt to make them fit, and they're still a bit loose. Taking more out of the center back seam would move the side seams too far back though, so I just call these my eating shorts.

Here's a jumping picture that doesn't really show anything! It just indicated the point in time when there were no more people around and our photoshoot became less stiff.

I used a khaki green linen that had been in my stash FOREVER. I'm not even 100% sure it's linen, it frays and presses like linen but it doesn't seem to wrinkle as much.

My photographer then convinced me to channel my sexy side. Little did she know this is an impossible task. I really tried.

By the way, check my fly-front zip! I challenged myself to only use the instructions provided by Burda to see if I could do it, and it was... Surprisingly easy. No problems, really. I had done a fly front before on my Moss skirts, so I kind of remembered how they worked, and suddenly everything made sense.

These shorts are a really good basic, and I like the length (not so long that they make me look like I'm on a jungle expedition, not so short my ass cheeks are hanging out). I'll probably make a second pair in a textured woven cotton, but remove the front pleat and use jeans-style pockets instead of the slanted ones here. Maybe even back pockets if I have enough fabric!

I'm going to leave you with what might be the most awkward blog picture I have ever taken. This is what you get when your photographer has never done this before and you're both super hyper and hungry:

'We need a picture of the back!' 'YES'

I heard you like ravens...

I got to release my inner party animal this weekend when my friend Maarten hosted an animal-themed birthday party! Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while (or knows me in real life) knows I'll take any chance to show up in a costume, but on this occasion I didn't have a lot of time so I had to work with my closet. Thankfully there are floor-length black flocked velvet dresses in there, so I only needed a mask to make me a raven. Or something. The Ravenclaw jacket I had made earlier was the perfect finishing touch for when the evening got cooler, so we headed to the field next door for a photoshoot.

I had this dark blue velvet in my stash for a while (as you do) and I wasn't really sure about what to do with it, since velvet can get really cheesy real fast (coming from someone who is dreaming of a green velvet trenchcoat...). In the end I went for a real tried and true pattern: the Rigel bomber by Papercut patterns.

This was the fourth Rigel I've made, and I still love it (one, two and three here). It's a remarkably quick pattern to sew, and it works for SO MANY fabrics. I made the size medium with no modifications and added a lining.

But the real surprise is in the back! I wanted to add a few Ravenclaw touches without being totally obvious, so I cut a raven silhouette and some moon shapes out of silver pleather and hand-stitched them on. As you do. It might be a bit much but I like it a lot!

At this point my friend Hélène decided to help me take my pictures. We both only wore our masks for a short while during the actual party, they look cool but it's hard to stuff your face with a beak of fox face. I made mine by trimming a store-bought papier maché mask until it fit my face better, adding a paper beak and feathers and then painting the entire thing.

She really liked that field.

I've made this jacket three times before, so I can't really tell you anything new about the construction. This velvet seemed to be way easier to work with than the black stuff I used for my Beekeeper's dress back in the day, it didn't slip around nearly as much... The only thing I had to baste was the zipper, and I noticed it turned out a bit asymmetrical. I might rip it out and do it again sometime (probably not).

At this point my friend Nena and the birthday boy also joined the fun, and any hope for serious pictures was lost forever. Maarten managed a few jumps on his bare (!!) feet and the rest of the pictures is mostly everyone laughing like crazy. It was a pretty good weekend!

I've never felt so trendy. Witness the glory of the midriff.

Finally! I have been sewing like crazy these past few weeks but my photographer was absent most of the time so we never really had an opportunity to photograph anything. Yesterday was an amazingly nice summer day so when a friend invited us over for lunch I put on my new skirt + crop top set and snuck some pictures in her garden.

Hang on, crop top? Yep! I took a page out of Hanne's book and made my own matchy outfit. Check it out, almost looks like a dress, right?

HAHA FOOLED YOU!

This was a pretty easy make. I used this Burda pattern as a base because it fit me well and it didn't need closures, and just eliminated the sleeves. And then chopped quite a bit off the length. The skirt is just rectangles and a waistband. Short rectangles since I didn't have that much fabric (I feel like I've been saying that a lot, maybe I should get over my delusion that I can make anything out of 1,5 metres of narrow fabric)! I like the proportions in the end though, a longer skirt would have made it less playful.

The fabric is a yarn-dyed hand-woven cotton that I bought at Bolt in Portland on our trip over there. It was a dream to work with, and is perfect for this in my opinion: enough body to make it look structured but still soft and breathable. I completely abandoned any pattern matching on this though, especially on the back. I couldn't cut it on the fold because not enough fabric so there's a seam, and I ended up taking a chunk out of the waist because it was just too wide so now there's an eyesore of a mismatched seam. Look away, Sewing Bee judges! I did finish all the edges and hems with bias facings, which have been hand-stitched down. Can I get some points back for that?

I did my first ever exposed zipper using this Megan Nielsen tutorial. It's not perfect, but I'll definitely do one of these again (I'm actually planning to sew this exact outfit again in a lightweight denim... And paint it of course). The only problem I have with exposed zippers like these is that the metal teeth are right next to my skin, which can both get hot or cold depending on the weather.

I also painted eyes on the backs of my shoes so I can always spot my enemies. Or something.

I wore this to a friend's garden for lunch first since this is a pretty new silhouette for me, and I wasn't sure how comfortable I would feel with a short skirt and a top that shows skin where I'm definitely not used to showing skin (I haven't even worn a bikini in years). In the end I felt all right in it, so this is an experiment that went well!

Bonus picture of Morris, my friend's awesome cat. The only reason he's not desperately trying to escape my arms here is that there was a bird outside.

I'm covered in ink. It's awesome.

Hi guys! No sewing today! I have one finished dress to photograph and show you, but the truth is that I spent the past few weeks working on a pretty big project!

A while ago a few friends contacted me with an idea. They had wanted to start a little collective for a while, a group of arty people who made fun things and sold them together at markets. I thought this could be the perfect thing to give me a kick in the butt and get me to draw more, so I was in right away. We gave ourselves a deadline and went to work, and a few days ago launched De Veranda.

I had decided I wanted to sell printed tote bags, but the success rate with lino printing isn't that high so it would be a pretty massive investment if I had to take the amount of misprints into account. I looked into getting them digitally printed but again, printing small numbers of anything gets real expensive. So I bought a shitload of blank canvas totes, turned to a friend who is awesome at screenprinting and begged for help.

so fast the camera can't even capture it.

I had done a tiny bit of screenprinting before, but never truly from scratch. Charlotte helped me prepare the frames and got me going. It went super smooth with two people (one printing and one putting away the bags) and we managed to print 70 bags in a few hours!

Screenprinting is a really cool way to get designs onto paper or fabric. You basically turn a very fine screen into a detailed stencil by coating it with a light-sensitive emulsion, covering the parts you want printed, exposing it to light and washing away the unexposed bits.

Ink is spread on the screen and then pressed through onto the paper or fabric. I chose to print my designs in one colour each, but you could make different layers and print in more than one colour!

Now, how did the bags turn out?

Love!

I'll be selling these in person in Antwerp on Saturday the 25th (come say hi if you're around)! But if you really want a bat bag (or you understand Dutch but live too far away and want one of the two others) email me at caramin.anneke@gmail.com. Bags are €10 each + postage!

I also made a few magnets! These have a diameter of 37 mm and are €3 each + postage! 

I'm really happy with how these things came out and hope you like them as well! Keep your eyes peeled for more...

Cosmic Dalmatian

Quite a few people I know are getting married these days. Which is awesome, because it gives me a reason to sew impractical fancy dresses I'd never get to wear otherwise! And also, you know, love and stuff. That as well.

Joost was sweet enough to invite a few sewing friends to his amazing wedding a while ago, and even though we all knew a long time beforehand there were still a few late nights involved to get our outfits finished! I knew exactly what I wanted to do but just... Didn't get around to it in time. It happens. Here's the result though, and I'm thrilled!

Look, here's a super dramatic photo that doesn't really show any details at all. I call it 'building the tension'.

I made a silk Nicola dress a few years ago (for another wedding) and thought it was a perfect pattern for such an occasion: nice and dressy, a few special details and not too fitted so I can eat lots. Winner! This time I decided to lengthen it into a maxi for extra drama.

With the pattern sorted I started my search for a fabric, but I had a pretty small budget and couldn't really find anything that screamed my name. So of course that small voice in my head started shouting: 'just paint your own fabric! How much time can that take anyway!'

Ahem.

In the end I bought a very budget-friendly navy woven viscose and went to town. The sewing came first, and was pretty uneventful. I tried on my first version of this dress and found it was a bit too large, but this was solved by making the overlap a bit bigger (which also solved the cleavage problem I had before!).

To lengthen the skirt I just measured how long it should be in the back, chopped the skirt pieces in two and lengthened accordingly. Sewing this was really quick, especially once I got past all those darts! I followed the instructions, using a slightly crisper cotton for the facings to help the drapey viscose keep it's shape, and didn't line the skirt for maximum flowiness.

The sleeve hems are finished with a self bias binding that I handstitched in place instead of topstitching. This was going to be a FANCY dress, and topstitching felt too... Easy. Haha! For the hem, I turned it under twice and did even more handstitching. Still not as much work as the painting!

That was basically my face at one in the morning when I realised I had not even done the sleeves yet.

At first I had these ideas of painting stars or florals all over it, but the tiniest hiccup on that would look very amateurish very fast, and I had no time for a backup. So in the end I took a small brush and silver textile paint and just made a stippled gradient from the shoulders to the hem of the dress. It looked a bit dandruffy when I started but the finished effect is really nice! A cosmic dalmatian, thus explaining this post title.

I used two dainty buttons, one for closure and one for symmetry, and made my first thread chain ever. It was super easy and quick to do, but I made it a tiny bit too large I think. I made a sudden movement during my bike ride to the venue and almost flashed a park full of children. True story.

Speaking of bike rides, this dress sadly isn't that bike friendly. I used a safety pin to keep it closed and my underwear hidden, but removed that as soon as I arrived. There were no problems while standing/walking/eating/dancing though!

Hanne, Lieke, Stephanie and me were super stoked to be invited to Joost & Sorcha's wedding, and we all had a blast. Joost made his own wedding shoes! With purple soles! I tried to wish them the best of luck with a handmade card that got a bit out of hand:

Next up is Hanne's wedding! But maybe we should try and finish her actual wedding dress before worrying about our own outfits...

Hallo Kevin

(Just a heads up: there's an image at the end of this post that might be considered sliiiightly nsfw. But hey, you shouldn't be reading blogs at work anyway. Unless that's your job of course. Lucky bastard)

I went back to Berlin! And I packed a pair of dungarees that I barely took off since finishing them. Take a look:

That doesn't say too much, I know but we'll get there!

I had bought this stretch jeans from the Sew it Up shop a while before (no link since they sadly closed up) and figured I'd give another pair of dungarees a try, with a different pattern this time. I made the Turia dungarees before and was happy with the fit in general, but thought It needed a lot of tweaking the actual construction before it looked like a 'real' pair of dungarees... So when this pattern popped up in a recent issue of Knipmode I did a little dance.

Now, I don't know about your experiences with these patterns, but they tend to run HUGE on me. I haven't made too many of them since they aren't really my style most of the time, but the previous pattern (a maxi dress) was so large that I ended up chopping the top off to make it a skirt. This pattern was designed for stretch jeans, and when I compared the size I was supposed to cut according to the sizing chart with a pair of stretch jeans I own and like the pattern was almost 10 cm larger all around. There would have been a clown pants situation if I'd just cut the size I needed according to the size chart!

In the end I'm pretty happy with the fit (no muslin, yolo). The closures at the hips have a bit of strain and gape going on, partly because I changed the slanted side pockets to more jeans-style curved pockets and could only use two buttons instead of three. This pattern has loads of topstitching and jeans-y details, like a fake fly I finally understood the instructions for right after doing it wrong. Ah well!

I topstitched with regular thread since, again, sort of wearable muslin, but I'll go through the pain of changing thread all the time next time, promise! The finish on these is pretty clean inside, especially on the top. The front and back bibs are completely lined and there are no raw seams to be seen, unless you take your pants off completely.

I added some rivets because I love hammering away at things, but the jeans buttons really gave me a headache this time. I use these Prym kits that include a little tool to install the buttons and never had a problem before but they seem to have changed the thingy to something way too floppy, so the buttons wouldn't stay in place properly and got crooked and misaligned. I messed up a few times, went looking for the old thingy from a previous kit and bam, problem solved. Better hang on to that.

Now, I wasn't in Berlin just for a vacation! I had an appointment with a German tattoo artist in Amsterdam, but when she had to cancel the trip (and our appointment) I realised that a cheap ticket to Berlin costs about the same as a train ticket to Amsterdam, so I took the trip. And after two and a half hours of pretty intense discomfort (but still not as bad as I expected) Laura Yahna sent me back home with this (look away mom):

It's almost fully healed by now and I LOVE it so much. It looks like it breathes when I take deep breaths!

Anyway, we had two days before my appointment (and one day after but I felt like I had been punched in the ribs by then so couldn't do too much crazy stuff) and we spent most of that time hanging around with our host Miro and other friends. It was a really nice trip, and I already want to go back again!

For those of you who are wondering about the title of this post: my friend Karen gave me the most amazing buttons for my birthday, and these have been on these dungarees since I finished them, but I took them off since I wasn't sure about what security would think about all the pins and didn't want to risk anything! For Dutch-speaking people who still have no idea what this means, look here.