Burda

For Mother's Day last year, I got a subscription to Burda World of Fashion magazine. And I love getting it, although it seems as though there's an every other month pattern of including patterns I'd actually wear. Or make, I guess. There were a couple of coat patterns that I adored, but the likelihood that I will make myself a nice wool coat is low, mostly because I already have one. Anyway, in all this time, I've never actually made anything out of the magazine, even when I liked things. No real reason why, I guess, other than that tracing the patterns (and figuring out which lines to trace!) seemed like a pain.

But in the last few days, I finally made something! It's from the December 2009 issue, and it's a hooded shirt (pattern 122). I used a super soft jersy-ish knit from Joann's, and this is how it turned out:
(There aren't any weird horizontal lines on the shirt, by the way; the camera was doing something funny.)
Back view, including the hood:
(Oh, I finally figured out how to use the timer on my camera, so these are timer shots. Ignore the goofy smiles.)

I quite like how this turned out - it's comfy and casual and cute. It was kind of a pain to make, though - there were supposed to be bands along the opening in the front. However, I read the instructions for that part literally 15-20 times and couldn't figure out what they were talking about. I finally gave up, folded that bit over, and sewed it together. My plan was just to make a dart there, but I had trouble getting it to lie flat, so I finally stitched a line down the entire front of the shirt. I may re-do that, because there's still a funny little bubble in that area, but it's much better. If I make it again, I'm just going to do a placket there - it would be much easier, and I think it would be more successful.

The sleeves are quite long, but that's mostly because I forgot how much seam allowance I put on there. And I actually kind of like them long with this anyway, so it works for me. I think this will be a great top to take along as a cover-up when we go to Hawaii in March!

And now I'm inspired to try some other patterns from my magazines. :) There's a skirt in the same issue that I think will be next, although it's probably a bad choice, because I think it's probably pretty tricky. So cute, though! Although I should really make the girls' Valentine's Day dresses first - it's coming right up! At least those go together pretty quickly, especially since I got a bunch of the good clear elastic from my co-op. In fact, maybe I'll get to work on those now, since I have a bit of time before M gets out of school....

Blankets

A while back, I saw a link to the Disney Give a Day, Get a Day program. If you haven't heard of it, Disney has set up something where you can get a free ticket to Disney if you volunteer for a day with various organizations. We've been talking for a while about going to Disney sometime this year, so I figured that it was a good opportunity for us to get a free ticket while doing something good. Win-win. And then I discovered that one of the volunteer groups in our area was a branch of Project Linus, which gives blankets to children who are ill or otherwise in need. Even better!

So, I signed up the eligible members of the family. (M is too young.) I got gray fleece for Iestyn to fringe - it's very plain, but I thought it would be good for a teenage boy. I had some super soft white fleece that A did the fringe on. (I didn't tell her about the Disney thing at all, just that we were making blankets for kids who needed them. And after she did the fringe, she said "I like making things for people who need them. It feels good." Such a sweet girl!) Then I added some appliqued hearts, since I thought the white was a little boring. I like the way it turned out, and it was a really easy way to make a plain blanket a little more fun:


And last (but definitely not least!), I made a quilt. I really love it:


Certainly there are plenty of flaws, but it's fun and colorful, and that's exactly what I was hoping for. I made disappearing nine patch blocks in the rainbow colors plus pink and brown, then I put borders on them and made the rainbow center block with all those colors as well. The backing is a black fabric with rainbow colored music notes, and the binding is a purple dot. I didn't actually do the binding the "proper" way (I machine stitched it), but honestly, the sewing by hand just wasn't going to happen.

Tomorrow I'm going to ship these off to Project Linus, and theoretically we'll end up with Disney tickets. But even if we don't (or never use them), as A said, it feels good to make things for people who need them.