Hello everybody!
It's been a while since I have last posted but I was out of town and exploring my new country again. And to be quite honest, I was totally sick of the looooong winter of upstate NY, so I escaped to California for a little bit. One of the most awesome things I did was this:
Shopping at Mood Fabrics, Los Angeles!
I love love love this store and you might remember that I went to the store in New York City for the first time, in December of last year. I knew that if I ever make it to Los Angeles I would have to go to the store there. And so I did, on April 2, to be exact!

The store is located at 645 South La Brea Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90036. It is smaller than the one in NYC but just as well organized! And to be honest, there is still so much fabric to choose from, it gets a little overwhelming. One half of the store has all the fashion fabrics and the other half all the home decor fabrics. I spent about two hours in the store and left with four fabrics.

There is also a huge collection of buttons, buckles, zippers and all other supplies you can possibly think of. I mean look at the picture with all the buttons! Isn't that amazing??

And these are the fabrics I bought:
I started off in the knit section since I love nice cotton knits with prints and they are just so hard to get. This one is definitely going to be made into another summer dress, like the one I already made a couple weeks ago, with the Rochester skyline on the back. I even found this fabric online on the Mood Fabrics website, if you want to check it out.

I also bought this knit fabric with a large scale print:

My favorite is this next one! I was looking for a fabric to make a maxidress using a Burda style pattern and I found this awesome silk fabric:

This is the pattern I want to use. I haven't tried this one before but I think it will look really gorgeous with that fabric. I just hope I won't screw up on this one because I could not forgive myself if I did :)
If you are interested in this pattern, it is in the Burda style May 2013 edition and you can also find it on their website.

This is the last fabric I bought. I am not really sure what I am going to make of this one but I kind of liked the color combo. I could make it into a skirt for instance and it will match a lot of my tops. It is a Marc Jacobs fabric for $ 18/yard, so I couldn't resist.

I hope you enjoyed looking at my new fabrics! I know I do. If you ever make it to LA or NYC you have to check out Mood Fabrics. It is seriously one of the most exciting fabric stores I have ever been to (and that includes stores in Europe). I have been to both of them within four months and couldn't be more excited about it. I hope to be able to go back some time...

It doesn't happen too often but every now and then I take a look into this big green Pfaff bag which my sewing machine came in when I bought it in 2007. This bag has had one purpose ever since: keep all my UFOs - aka unfinished (sewing-)objects - out of my sight.
I am not lying when I am telling you that the last time I checked out what's in there was years ago, maybe even before the bag left Germany... who knows?

BUT! I am even more proud of myself that I took one of those UFOs and finally finished it. Yay to myself!! This project is a skirt that I started back in the days when I was more comfortable in jeans. It took me a while to figure out which kind of skirt (short and fitted) I like and this project definitely came from another era :)

I remember that I stopped sewing because I thought it looked hideous. Actually the fabric is really nice, a soft and not too thick wool fabric in black (or more like anthracite), with a little hint of white and orange. Practically matching everything!

I looked in my stash for some lining fabric and luckily I found this dark purple one. I quickly sewed up the lining skirt and attached it to the exterior. After completing the waistband there was only a buttonhole to be made and a button to be chosen. I found this purple one and thought it was perfect with the lining. Sure, I am the only one ever seeing the lining but I get a kick out of things like that - you know, when you put on your skirt, you see the purple lining and it just looks awesome with the button? Love it!

The pattern by the way was an older (German) Burda pattern which I slightly changed:
- I decided to put the zipper to the right side and not to the back.
- I put the darts to the front part of the skirt (for some reason this is where I need them when sewing cothes. Not on my butt obviously...)

After a long break from sewing garments (ever since I caught the bag making bug!) I am now getting back into sewing clothes again. I am really enjoying this process. Especially because I find it fascinating how easily and quickly a skirt or a dress can be sewn up!

Thanks for reading! If you like my skirt please feel free to leave me a comment. I am always glad for feedback :)

Happy sewing!

When I was still living in Germany I used to buy Germany's famous "Burda style magazine" which is published monthly. The story behind that magazine is actually a really interesting part of German publishing history. I don't want to bother you with too many details but let me just tell you this:

There is this woman, Aenne Burda, who after World War II decides to publish a fashion magazine, known as "Burda Moden" (= Burda fashion). Soon after it was launched in 1950 this magazine became famous for adding sheets of paper with patterns for clothes. She had the perfect idea at the right time: the people in post-war Germany were able to create stylish and modern clothes even without having to invest a lot of money (which they didn't have to begin with). During the next 15 years, Burda Moden should become the worlds bestselling fashion magazine! Oh and did I mentioned that in 1987 it became the first western magazine to be (legally) published in the former Soviet Union? Not bad, huh?

So anyway, when I moved to the States I started to focus more on the tons of patterns I already had since I thought Burda style was not available here. By the way, yes, my Burda style magazine collection moved to the US with me, so I still have plenty of patterns to choose from, BUT: for my birthday which was in December, my lovely husband gave me a subscription of Burda Style - the English edition!
It's basically the translation of the German edition - now I like to hang on the phone with my mother and we talk about the variety of patterns of the current edition, me browsing through the English and her through the German one :-)

Right in the center of the magazine you will find two large sheets with all the sewing patterns (in this issue there is a total of 53 patterns!). I admit, it looks a little wild on the first glance. Before I copy the patterns I like to use a pen or marker and trace the lines of my pattern, so they are better visible when I put my tissue paper on top. Of course, if you copy them with wax tracing paper it should be easier. I don't even know if you can buy Burda tissue paper in the US?

More sections in the magazine:

If you're thinking about subscribing to the magazine, here's where you can find more information about Burda style and the current rates. You can subscribe for three months, six months ore a whole year (the rates per issue get cheaper the longer you subscribe of course). The magazine is published monthly.
All prices are subject to change!

Only a few more days until St. Patty's Day, the second one I'm going to be celebrating here in the US. We got invited to a party and of course my first thought was: "OMG, what am I gonna wear??" followed by "I don't have anything". (These are probably the two most common thoughts of women after they got invited to... well, pretty much anything) Since I haven't made any clothing in months this turned out to be a really good opportunity for me to finally sew something that is not a bag or a wallet.

I found a really nice green and black striped jersey fabric, a rayon/polyester mix, at a local fabric store. The idea for my outfit was to make a simple short sleeved shirt with the jersey fabric, wear some of my short pants with it as well as some green leggings. That should be enough green to not get pinched ;)

I looked through my sewing magazine collection for a nice pattern and found one in Burda Style 3/2010 which didn't look to complicated. Well turns out I had not quite enough fabric (I bought like 6 inches too little…urgh!) but so the shirt would have to be a bit shorter.

The first step was to make the very decorative pleats at the front part. Therefore I had to baste along the marked lines first, to be able to gather the fabric. After gathering I folded and stitched the darts.
Then the instructions tell you to stitch both the shoulder and the side seams. The front piece looked really wide from the beginning and after stitching it together with the back part, I tried it on and didn't like it at all. Yes, this shirt is supposed to be loose-fit but this way it just looked weird on me. I decided to make it a bit tighter by cutting off approximately 5 cm (2") from the front part. Since I used my serger machine I simply cut the seam open again. There is no use in trying to open a serger seam with a seam ripper. A lot of work with poor results ;-) After reducing the width and sewing both parts together again the shirt already fit much better!

The next step was stitching the sleeves. Those had to be gathered as well and then trimmed with a cuff. This part was a little annoying because jersey fabric is not the easiest one to make sleeve cuffs with. The fabric has to be folded in half with the wrong sides together and ironed, so that you have a crease at the middle. This has never happened to me before but I seriously managed to iron a hole into my cuff fabric!! Unbelievable.. I quickly decided that ironing is for losers and I would manage to get the cuff straight onto the sleeve without all that, which luckily worked out pretty well.

Next I folded down the seam allowance around the neck area and stitched it with a twin needle. I did the same with the hem and now my shirt was actually done.. at least according to my Burda pattern, but… the neckline was just way too wide for me ;-) I had to change that as well and used a piece of elastic ribbon which I slid into the seam allowance of the front part. This way the fabric gathers and the neckline gets a little tighter which is totally the better way to go! I finally folded another pleat at the right side and handstitched a leaf button onto it.
Yesterday I finally managed to drag myself to the mall and buy some green tights. Since their only purpose is to be worn on St. Patty's day I couldn't care less about the rather bad quality :) The shirt however is really comfortable and I'm sure I'm going to wear it a lot during the summer!

So my last post was all about printing my business cards with my friend Amy. That was kind of one part of the deal we had worked out. In return for this generous favor I promised to make a dress for her. Somewhere on Pinterest she had spotted this gorgeous maxidress and asked me to make something similar for her.

Finding the perfect fabric for a project can be a really annoying task and it took quite a while but eventually she found a really beautiful and soft mediumweight cotton fabric online. The geometric pattern is perfect for this kind of dress and the colors are just beautiful! The top part has short cut sleeves which are gathered at the shoulders, and a v-neck with a neckband.
The skirt part flows nicely even though it consists of only two slightly flared panels.. that's all thanks to the length of almost 50".

I am absolutely happy with the result. I finished it the day before yesterday, so just right in time for Friday October 5 when Amy is going to have a birthday party/artist showcase at the print studio…"the artist is wearing charmed Liebling", that sounds pretty damn good ;-P

Well alright, I might be a little premature with the title since it's another two days until summer officially begins but the recent temperatures already made it perfectly clear that HE is one his way: during the last four days we had a maximum of 86°F/30°C and temperature is supposed to hit 90°F on Friday, awesome! I've been making some nice clothes lately that are perfect for this kind of weather. One of them is a knee-length dress.
It's made of a nice light-weight cotton knit fabric that I found in Berlin. Actually I was planning on making a top that only reaches down to my hips but since I had enough fabric left (why is it that I always buy too much??) I decided to make it a dress! It's a really simple pattern with only a front and a back part (both cut on fold), and facing on neckline and sleeves. I also tied a ribbon on each shoulder strap. So the result first looked like this:

When I was done I was a bit confused because with no darts or pleats combined with the colors it looked a littttle bit like a nightgown.






Not good enough, so I put on a belt and look at that: I got myself a nice summerdress! Sometimes a tiny little detail can make a huge difference to a pattern.