Author: skandimama

Shiny glitter skirts and culottes for the girls

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Fabric and elastic gifted from Stoffstil

Earlier this summer I was sent some great fabric from Stoffstil. It has been put to good use, and I have made several items from this very sheer and shiny drapey fabric.

I made some quick culottes measured from a pair of Jolinas leggings. Cut with a fold in the side seam so there was hardy anything to stitch together. Just the center seams and the inner leg seams. Then a cool glitter elastic tape on for the waist, and they were done.

The girls really like them, and I will use this method again. For stretchy fabric it works well.

I also made two faux wrap skirts for them in the same fabric and also with the elastic tape for the waistband. I made them the same length for both of the girls, so it is slightly longer on Roxie, but she enjoys it that way. It is her fancy skirt. I might show that DIY later on.

As these photos show they also enjoyed wearing them on one of our cozy holiday trips to Aarhus. Roxie had her set on with the banana tee and the culottes for the first day of school today. Then you just know, that you have made something good when it gets chosen for that!

Thefabric and the style matches super well with the banana tees that I made in the Spring, also with fabric from Stoffstil.

So awesome testing out fabric and DIY-patterns this way. Thank you for the fabric Stoffstil!

Refashion a Summer kids dress

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This is actually a project from last year – and so looking at the photos I can´t stop thinking how little Roxie looks.. She has grown like crazy this year.

This dress is super easy – made from two tops. One vest that Roxie had worn that had gotten a bit too short, and a top that I had bought for myself in the kids section at H&M. But it never really fitted me. Probably because it was from the kids section..

I cut the bottom of one of them and the top off the other and simply stitched them together while gathering the bottom part to make a bit of ruffles. A super quick make.

Candy Cardigan

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Hello, fellow creative people.

First of all, I am not a knitter. So please don’t laugh at my modest achievements.

My nan taught me how to knit when I was a kid, and yes, I did knit sometimes, but I was never any good at it. And if you think about it, the creative thing I love the most is sewing without a pattern to make it as swift as possible, so it does make a lot of sense, that I have never been good at sitting down and spending the dedicated time to knit something really nice. I could sew 300 garments in the time it takes to knit a jumper. Almost.

I still do not know how to follow knitting recipes, but guess what, I still knitted something that I am really happy about. A candy striped cardigan.

I was yarn shopping with Jolina and my mum for materials for a knitted jumper, she wanted to make me. And then, right there on the shelf I fell in love with the candy coloured mohair. And so I had to get it, to see if the awesomeness of the yarn could be motivation enough to knit something I could use and be proud of.

And it was.

I now have a cardigan I really love.

Don’t look at it too closely – and yes, my mum helped me with the edges, but still.

It was my dedication and patience that got me through the knitting of the endless rows.

So happy and proud. And already off to the next cardigan. Still not with a recipe, still just freestyling, and I will try to make it with raglan sleeves for a slightly better look.

  • And I did enjoy that it actually took time. It felt very zen to sit and knit and just enjoy the quiet time that comes with that. Also lovely with a crafting hobby that you can do in the sofa under the blanket while watching a bit of flumph telly.

The yarn is from Uldtråden in Brønderslev. A really chic and cosy yarn shop, I always love coming there, and now there actually is a reason to shop  some more yarn soon.

The old denim jacket that never dies

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Gifted zipper in the post.

I have already shown you some of the things I have made from my lovely Stoffstil present. The sweet little haberdashery elves that work there (in my imagination they are super cute) also heard that the zipper on my denim jacket broke and sent me a new one. Pink, gold and pure cool.

The denim jacket I have is an old thrifted one from back in the day when I just started trifting with my very cool cousin in the 90´s. yikes. That was when it was not normal to go through the thrift shop bins, it smells nicer in the shops now than it did then – but my cousin was awesomely cool so she let me know it was fine. That means the jacket is at least 25 years old cause that’s when I got it, but looking at it, I would say its from the 70´s.

I am never getting rid of it. The wash, the cut and the softness of the denim makes me forever hang on to it.

But the zipper was broken.

Fixing it was easy. Just took it out with the seam ripper and put the new one in. the girls said I should put in on the front, so you could see all the cute pink and gold tape, but I did put it in just like the old one was in stead.

I did not get it quite even on both sides, so I can´t show you a picture of that, ha ha. Perhaps I will one day get annoyed, take it out and put it back in, but who am I kidding, I will probably keep it like this for the next 25 years.

And then here are just some very cute pictures of me and me girls. All in thrifted denim jackets. And attitudes that are all homemade.

The favourite tiered dress DIY

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Gifted fabric in the post.

Stoffstil were so kind to send me a Summer present, and I have already had a lot of fun sewing. Basically that was what I did most of my Summer holiday. Thinking up styles, cutting fabric and sewing has really become my go-to-happy place, when I have a moment alone, so whenever time allowed these 3 weeks I had off from work, that is what I did.

The tiered dresses are what I am living in since the heat has been quite heavy on me. The airiness make them perfect for wearing, and I feel both casual and a little bit cute in them too. So I seem to just keep making them.

I have made a lot from refashioned scarves  but this is from a brand new fabric – not thrifted, a woven viscose from https://www.stoffstil.co.uk

Top part is cut from boxy top I already had. The two layers were cut approx. 1,5 x times wider than the previous one. There needs to be some material to ruffle it from. Looking at the dress now I realize I could have given it even more ruffles. Everybody wants more ruffles! It just takes a lot of fabric, really, and there is somehow never enough. And it is also still very nice, airy and pretty.

Bottom and sleeve openings were folded to the back and stitched on. The neck opening was finished off with a very narrow white cotton bias tape. Simple and quick.

I love the viscose fabric in this weather. And the print is great – red and white narrow stripes with wild pansies – one of my favourite flowers. So lovely.

I can´t believe it´s more scarf DIY!

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When is she gonna stop it with the scarves?! Never!

My last post about the scarf refashioning got a lot of really nice comments on a Danish facebook page about minimalism and sustainability. That made me very happy.

I have continued in the scarf department since then. I was fortunate enough to get a scarf refashioning DIY in a Danish magazine Hendes Verden  – yay, that is me on the front page.

And I just cannot stop with the scarf refashioning. There is so much you can do with them. And usually the fabric is really soft and the prints or weaves are awesome.

I had two partisan scarves in my stash from a trip to the very best thrift shop AVV and even though one was pink and one was red I was sure they could look great together.

And so they do!

Top part is made cutting from a boxy top I had. Bottom is made freehand just cutting a skirt shape with the size of fabric available.

Then they were sewn together. Bottom part wider than the top part, so I made a few ruffles along the way.

The bottom and the sleeve openings were really easy, cause I did nothing to them, haha. They already had finished edges I could use.

The neck opening was finished with a white satin bias tape. Looks really nice and an easy way to do it.

Another lovely and flowy dress made with two thrifted scarves that cost almost nothing.

Scarf refashioning bonanza!

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I am lucky enough to have another submission in the Simply Sewing magazine issue no. 58.

It is a refashioning DIY of one of the many scarves I had at home into a cute tube dress – perfect for the beach.

I still have quite a lot of those scarves, they are often in the thrift shop I go to, and lovely patterns and prints are just too hard to resist for me.

Recently I saw one of my friends and she was wearing an awesome tier dress in a beautiful floaty fabric. It was out of my price range, and I thought I could do something like it with my many scarves. And thus the tiered dress factory began.

I love the dresses and will live in them this summer. I also made some for the girls.

Some of them are in two layers because the fabric is too see-through, and with some of them I have made an inner layer from – guess what – more scarf fabric!

The scarves are different in sizes, so some of them have been cut a bit imaginatively, and off course they could be made even longer for a full length version. Each tier has to be wider than the previous, so there is enough to gather from – so there is lots of width and floatiness.

I made a pattern from a wide too for the top bit and the sleeves. The neckline is finished with bias tape in contrasting colours. Sleeves are made differently according to how much scarf fabric was available.

The layers coming were just made from the fabric that (kinda) matched and fitted in width.

I also made one short top – that works well too.

I love the boheme look, the pattern mis-matchiness, and that I could use some of the many scarves I had in store for some dresses that have already been named favourites in the wardrobe for summer. Refashioning is one of my favourite things to do – to be both sustainable not throwing clothes away and use creativity to make something great.

Here I have used my pattern for a dress in a very light fabric on sale at Stoffstil. It is very sheer but with bike shorts underneath it´s fine. And super airy and light for this hot weather.

I hope this will inspire you to make something awesome. Happy making!