kzjo'studio

When do you sew?

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. When do I love to be creative? When is the best time of day for my sewing time? How can I be more productive when working on my projects and patterns?

For one, I am striving to "shake" this year up and fill it up with "passion" (my word for the year). I have a big goal for the amount of patterns I want to get out this year, along with a lot more in the works. In order, to get out as many patterns as I want I need to fit in lots of sewing.

The thing is I am not a good "night-time sewist". Seriously, night-time sewing fills me with many seam ripper induced moments along with endless frustration complete with under-my-breath mumbling. I am an excellent "morning sewist", however, it's my jam! Fewer mistakes, faster sewing, and usually better looking finished products. My sewing steam usually makes it into mid-afternoon.

So with that in mind, I am really making it a priority to start heading to the studio bright and early at least twice a week. In order to make it happen, I am working on a getting things prepped and organized in advance. Sticking to a schedule, keeping organized (hello, day designer!), and making sure when I leave the studio I have things ready for the next sewing filled day. So far a lot of these things are helping me to get more done.

It leads me to wonder when is your favorite time to sew? Nap-times? Evenings? Mornings? How do you squeeze in as much sewing as you can?

Blanket Scarf Tutorial and How I Wear Mine...

I have totally fallen onto the blanket scarf trend bandwagon. I love a good scarf, I love a quick project, and let's face it, I hate being cold.

 

Not only was this project quick and something that I finished up in just an afternoon, but has been something that has constantly been on rotation in my handmade wardrobe. I like to wrap mine twice around my neck and get it really bundle and cozy right around my neck. Here's how I made mine.

Click the image above to make larger

Most of the time I just wear it with a plain black long sleeve tee and my puffy vest if I need a jacket. My winter uniform is really starting to have a lot of black with red and winter white. I have really fallen in love with it and already have fabric to make a couple more in colors. Spend an afternoon making one of these and I know your neck will thank you when your all warm and cozy :)

The only handmade gifts I managed to get finished before Christmas...

I only managed to get a few handmade gifts done before Christmas and they were literally made/started and finished in about the 3 days before Christmas Eve. After the crazy flu/cold/hold-me-up-on-all-my-holiday-game-plans illness of early December, I really had to narrow down what were the most important and what I could actually get finished in the few days before Christmas. Let's face it, I had to be on real-sewing-time not fantasy-sewing-time. So here's what went down:

Fleece Infinity Scarf for S:

This was the fastest of all the projects and I found a remnant of this zebra print lace at Jo-anns. I think the cost was around $3.00. It was a winner and went in her stocking. It's soft and she is getting lots of wear out of it, plus it is zebra print (her favorite of all time).

The next thing that I knew I needed wanted was to make a Christmas Eve present! I knew that pjs were a must! Along with some fun pillows and a movie for them to watch on Christmas Eve night. So, in all my years of hoarding, I remembered that when I was a kid one year I made my cousins some really awesome felt pillows and lucky me my mom saved the patterns. I proceeded to hoard hang onto them for years. I made S a pair of sunglasses and I made X a surfboard.

 They turned out awesome and lucky me I had all the felt in my stash. These came together in just a few hours.

Next up were Christmas Eve pjs that coordinated but not necessarily matched in style. One girly and one boy-ey (if that's even a word). First of all I had scored a major deal on some sweater knit at Jo-anns, I bought all the had left and made an "Eleanor" cardigan from it and still had several yard left. I knew it would make for great Christmas Eve pjs, and would work year round.

Christmas Eve pjs:

I made X some really simple shorts from a pattern I had in my stash-- I can't remember who it's by but the size I made for him I really had to make quite a few adjustments because once I made them they were huge! Otherwise they were a straight forward and really fast short pattern and I will probably try and make some more for him to wear in the spring and summer.

For S, I used the Greenstyle Girls' Everyday Yoga Pant in a size Medium. I did make a few adjustments to the pattern, I tapered the legs in to make them more like regular leggings and I added cuffs to the bottoms. That turned out to be a great addition because they would have been to short if I hadn't. 

Here's a better picture of the cuff and the foldover waistband:

They ended up to be perfect and the sweater knit isn't see through so these have moved up from the pj world and she has been wearing them with some tunic style tops. I already have requests for more and hopefully I can get a few more pairs made this month.

For the shirts I took the quick and easy way out and picked them up at Old Navy. I think that they worked out really well and all the handmade items are in heavy rotation around here. I call that a win!

So there you have it, all the gifts I managed to get made before Christmas. This year I plan to start much early, probably like July!

Whoa.... 2014, you were a busy one!

Here we are into Day 2 of the New Year and already 2015 is looking to be pretty exciting and super busy! Tomorrow, I am going to be sharing a new weekly project that is happening here on the blog. I am so excited for a new challenge and being able to fit some more creativity in 2015. Next week, I am going to be back in the studio working on the next pattern which I hope to get into testing in the next couple of weeks!

Before jumping into a bunch of new projects here on the blog (and really setting to work on my handmade capsule wardrobe), I thought I would take a look back at some of my favorite projects from each month last year!

January- Covered Button Earrings (tutorial here)

February- Cross-stitched onesies (tutorial here and find patterns from my favorite cross-stitch                  pattern company, The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery)

March- Oliver + S Capelet (pattern found in this book)

April- Infinity Scarf (tutorial found here)

May- Mini Cross Stitch wall hangings

June- 4th of July wreath (tutorial found here)

July- Elsa dress for a friend's daughter (the best part was adding the rhinestones)

August- The release of my first pattern: Genavieve! (find it here)

September- Another Hemingway Hat (pattern found here)

October- Ballard top from Straight Stitch Designs (find the pattern here)

November- The release of my second pattern: Eleanor! (find it here)

December- Faux fur mini tree skirt

The time I made 12 hats and 14 scarves...

my mom is one of those amazing teachers out there who is always going above and beyond. (I might be a little biased but she really is the best!) This year we brainstormed some gift ideas for the kids in her class and we came up with an awesome idea. Hats for the boys and scarves for the girls with their initials on them. We bought the iron on transfer, the fabric, ran the fabric through the washer, and we were ready to roll.

Then I got sick....over 12 days of not feeling well which really put a damper on our project making. As a team, we got the scarves done a little over a week ago minus the initials.

Details: Jersey knit from Joanns; Infinity scarf tutorial found here; Measurements: 12" x WOF; DecoFabric White Fabric Marker

The hats I cut, assembled, and finished on Wednesday afternoon.

Details: Jersey knit from Joanns; "Frost" Children's Beanie free pattern found here; Marvy Uchida Black Fabric Marker

Now for my biggest hurdle with this project.... we had purchased the iron-on transfer roll for using with my Cricut. However, I didn't take into consideration that I had the original Cricut and there would be no way to reverse the image to make the transfer work... project idea fail #1. then I decided I would try using my Sizzix to die cut out the initials... project idea fail #2. I was losing steam on the initial idea, so I tried to come up with project idea #3 (that just had to work!): fabric markers and a stencil.

After a quick trip to Michael's, I ended up with one white fabric marker and one black fabric marker along with some alphabet stencils. I quickly did a test on some scrap jersey...

And it worked! Thank goodness ,since this simple project ended up with several somewhat annoying stumbling blocks during the process. The black marker worked a better than the white, but overall I was happy with the results. The best part is that the kids in my mom's class loved them and in the end that is all that really matters!