More January Sewing

I was very productive in January and I did a bit of selfless sewing too. I forgot to take a picture of the blouse I made for my mother and I already sent it away, but here are a few pics with notes on the other stuff I made.

Alex requested a new set of bedding and a new pair of pajamas and I was only happy to oblige. The new bedding is 100% cotton ranforce (high quality cotton bed linen fabric) - flat sheet with elastic, duvet cover and two pillow cases. The pajama set (the blue color on the first picture is the true color) is made out of cotton knit using the Movie Night Pajamas pattern by Sew a Little Seam.

Pattern: Movie Night Pajamas 

Size:  SM

Fabric: cotton knit, 1.9 m

Time to make: 2 days

I also made a pair of leggings for Gaby, using the free children's pattern by Love Notions. Although they are labeled for children, size 14 is actually pretty big and can easily fit a slim (xs or s) woman.

Pattern: Leggin's by Love Notion

Size: 14

Fabric: cotton with lycra

Time to make: 1 day 

And a few phone pictures from my stroll through our park yesterday - the weather warmed abruptly (10C according to the thermometer on the building across the street) and all the snow of the previous week turned the park into a bog. But it was so pleasantly warm and it smelled like spring. I can't wait for the winter to be over, I want some green already!

Overdyeing Drops Muskat

While visiting a yarn shop downtown I found that it had a sale of a limited quantity of Drops Muskat yarn.I've knitted with Drops Muskat before and it is truly a very high quality cotton yarn, with luster and durability. However, the colors they had available in the sale were so not my colors. I bought some other yarn that I had planned to buy and left somewhat regretful. And then it occurred to me - why not purchase Muskat in a color I don't like and overdye it, the price of the yarn was quite tempting. I returned to the shop and grabbed 8 balls in this hot pink:

With the help of my umbrella swift I wound the yarn into skeins and then dyed them one by one into a solution of black dye. The resulting color is dark purple with very subtle variations:

After I dyed all of the skeins, I washed them and then put them into the washing machine, using my hand wash cycle and washed them again. I wanted to be sure that the color was fixed. Cotton is a sturdy yarn and it took all of these manipulations quite well, I'm as pleased as a punch :)

While shopping downtown I grabbed some 100% cotton ranforce for bedding and I sewed two pillow cases and a fitted sheet. This is the first time I've sewed a fitted sheet for our bed, adding an elastic. It turned perfect!

And just a strange coincidence - my new purple cotton yarn and the purple part of my Dotted Rays shawl are the exact same color, though I arrived at these colors via absolutely different paths, one on 100% cotton and the other on 100% wool. Curious, right!

The Second Phone Case

Today I finished the second phone case - I'm getting better with these small cases. It's almost the same as the first one and still far from perfect - there are a few things I would do differently next time. I have a bag of little worn clothes I could recycle - you know how fast teenagers grow, so I'm tempted to make a few more of these, just for the fun of it :)

And I finally made the second set of bedding too - and it's been already slept in (as is probably noticeable :)))

Bedding

Last night I made a new set of bedding for my girl's bed. There's such an extended choice of bedding fabrics for big or small girls - plenty of flowers, hearts, balloons and bright colors. And although, being a Libra, choosing is never easy for me, I picked this colorful cotton fabric without much hesitation.

 

The bedding consists of a flat sheet, a duvet cover and a pillow case. I know, not much of a seamstress achievement, but it still took me all late afternoon and evening to finish planning, cutting the fabric and sewing the seams. I made all seams covered (closed?), using as reference my old book on sewing - I had to search really long for it, for I hadn't used it in years :)))

 

Now I'll have to find matching fabric for my boy. I talked to him about choosing it together, but in the end he just told me that he didn't actually care that much about the color of his bedding, I could buy the same fabric as for his sister, if that would be easier for me.
And you know what, I just might do that!