A little late but - Happy New Year to you all!

I hope you all had a great holiday with your loved ones!  We sure did!  After WAY too much eating and not exercising at all over the holidays, I am trying to get into jogging again and so far it is going quite well.  Just hope I'll be able to keep it up.

I have been sewing some lately and my head is full of ideas on what I want to make.  

I made christmas presents for my incredibly cute nieces and I made Anita a christmas dress but I never got around to make a shirt and a tie for Viktor as I had planed.  Since the holidays I have made to more dresses for Anita and a T-shirt for Viktor and next up are some pants to go along with it.

I thought I'd start by sharing Anitas Christmas dress.

No pink stuff today!

I don't sew pink dresses all the time! It's about time I show off my little boy again.

I have made him quite a few raglan sweaters and he loves them.  I blogged about one here and two here and now I'm going to show you two more!

Gaman!

First I want to thank all of you who took the time to read my last blogpost and for all the 

amazing comments - WOW!  

I have gotten some questions on if I plan to start selling some of my creations.  Lately I've been thinking about how I would go about doing that.  I do have a none sewing related job and 4 kids to take care of so I think I would have to base it on special orders.  

I don't have the capacity to sew up whole collections in many sizes and colors.  

Not yet anyway!

My good friend Lena, who is an amazingly talented painter asked me if I could incorporate some of the characters  from her paintings into childrens clothes.  I have been playing around with that idea for some time now, I'm sorry Lena I'm so slow!  Since I have no experience in pattern designing I have been trying out different patterns where the designer allows the sewer to sell items created from the pattern on a small scale.  

So far this is what we have come up with.

We call our project Gaman, which is Icelandic for fun.  A web page is in the makings as well. 

Anita has a new outfit!

Sometimes I have SO many sewing plans but just can't seem to get anything done.
Or at least so it feels but since my last blog post I have sewn I think 5 dresses, two cardigans and some matryoshka bins.

The reason I haven't been blogging recently about my sewing adventures is that I am not liking my photos.  I totally do not understand my camera settings now that I have to take pictures inside due to the colder weather, even though my husband has tried to explain this to me I just can't seem to get it right.  Maybe I should just make him be in charge of the photoshots.  

So I am sorry if the photos you see here are very far from perfect.  

Any tips are welcome!!

Today I'll share with you a Norah dress a pattern by Mouse House Creations and 

an Aster cardigan a pattern by LBG Studio for Willow & co

 I made for Anita.

The Fawn Lily.

I have one projected from last summer that I haven't blog about yet, and that is because the photos I took aren't that good.  Even though Anita has worn the dress a lot I haven't gotten around to take new photos so I'm just going to go ahead and post the ones I have.

The dress is The Fawn Lily a pattern by Rock the Stitch for Willow & Co. 

Pants with a happy ending.

Since I have decided not to buy any clothes for Anita and Viktor, at least now for the time being, I really needed to make Viktor some pants.  So I printed out the pattern for the Kudzo Cargos by Charming Doodle for Willow and Co and thought I would make him the skinny version.  And so I did in size 5. Thankfully I tried them on him before attaching the waistband and I panicked!
They were way to tight on him!

What to do - what to do??

Well, I had enough fabric to make a new one and Anita could always use a pair of pants as well.  But she is not in a size 5 by far.  Then I read in the instructions that one could add elastic to the waistband, so that's what I did and just shortened them some.  And BAM they both got a new pair of pants!

Getting ready for fall.

I figured Anita needed some pants and sweaters for this upcoming season.  

I mean even a princess can't wear dresses all the time.  So I've been stocking up on 

knits and fabric for pants lately.

My happy dude!

It just melts my heart that Viktor and Anita really love the clothes I make them - so far at least!  

Viktor has been waiting patiently all week to wear his new clothes to daycare so last night we had a quick photo shot so he could wear it today.  And this morning Anita threw a massive tantrum because she wanted to wear her blue dress ( the skater dress ) but it needs to be washed so after a lot of bargaining she put on the clothes I had found for her.

Back to Viktors outfit.  I made him a pair of Tree Climber Trousers by Go To Patterns 

and a Recess Raglan by See Kate Sew. 

A Skater Girl

As we transition from summer into fall it is time to start on my fall/winter sewing for Anita and Viktor. At the moment I'm working on an outfit for Viktor but I'm not ready to share that one just yet but don't worry I do have something to show you. 

Yesterday I sewed up a Skater Dress for Anita.  The Skater Dress is a Kitschy Coo pattern which I got as part of my August patterns from The Sewing Rabbit. Which by the way is a great club to be in if you want to expand your pattern collection, for just $ 10 a month you get 3 new patterns each month and so far at least all the patterns have been great!

Accessories for boys

I always get so frustrated when I try to buy accessories for my little ones.  There is this huge selection for girls, just name it and they have it!  And then in the boys department there are like a few belts, caps and band-aids maybe, at least that was the selection last time I went to H&M.

Anita has her Hello Kitty handbag with her everywhere she goes, she even sleeps with it!  Viktor being only 18 months older than she is, they kind of do everything together and always want the same stuff, so he has been borrowing her other Hello Kitty handbag for his treasures.

So armed with Pinterest and a sewing machine I knew I just had to make him a cool messenger bag.  I bought some fabric with pictures of cars on it, but he didn't like it and insisted on a Lightning McQueen bag.  My local fabric store didn't have that kind of fabric but they did have some iron-on patches so I got that and some red and blue fabric.  I used this tutorial for the bag but I cheated and bought a ready made strap.