Author: Anne

As the other ladies, it’s my first time on the Sofilantjes blog and I’m so honored with it! Every quarter I’ll try to inspire you with ideas around a Sofilantjes ladies pattern. Today I’m showing you my hack with the Otium. And I think it became a stylish but tough hack.

The Otium can be a shirt or a sweater with quite some options and it’s suitable for every season of the year. Just adjust your fabric or sleeve length. Besides the low back with a bow, you can sew the diagonal pocket. Actually, you can choose if you want to make the pocket functional or not by doubling the front pocket or not.

What did I do? I sewed my Otium as per the pattern and topstitched my pocket closed. I color-blocked my khaki jersey with the black jersey. And then it became exciting, because placing eyelets requires some concentration, phew! I chose not to provide the entire length of the bag with eyelets. Only the top side, otherwise it became too much!

As you see in the photo I didn’t close the side seams yet. This way it was easier to install the eyelets. I’m so glad I recently bought a plier for press fasteners. It’s a great and essential tool! It speaks for itself that you have to interface the place where you want to put the eyelets on the back. I provided a long strip of 1″ wide on both sides.

It’s always exciting to make holes in your garment. You never know if it will go wrong and then you have to start all over again.

After installing I could close the side seams and add my cuffs, waistband, and neckband.

At the local store, I bought a lace ribbon to thread through the eyelets from bottom to top. I actually found a lot of possibilities on the internet to thread a ribbon. I definitely love my Otium how it looks now! Do you also have an idea what to do with the ribbon?

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed reading my post.

The highlighted #affiliate link brings you to the pattern.

Greetings, Ilse from @sewsewilse 

Here it is! The first official blogpost from the blog team! I’m the first one to start with a cute Nivalis hack! Want to know more about my fellow bloggers? Check them out here.

The Nivalis was my first Sofilantjes pattern and I’ve already made quite a few dresses with it. I’ve changed up the color block-option, but also the collar. The original pattern is already so versatile. But, let me tell you, there is more!

At the end of November we are expecting our first baby, and what is a better reason than that to sew up some new clothes? I was looking for shirts that were comfortable, but also fit nicely. So I choose the Nivalis as a starting point because I like the way the neckband sits as well as the fit of the sleeves.

I’ve chosen two make two versions, one with and one without sleeves. The one with sleeves is inspired by a peplum-style top I saw on Pinterest.

For that first model I’ve used the top part of the pattern, drawing it just below the waist. I chose to make it short-sleeved, as it was in the middle of summer at that time. The top part was sewn as described in the pattern.

For the peplum part I took 1.5 times my waist measurement and gathered it using clear elastic (framilon). The peplum was then pinned to the top, with right sides together, and sewn with a stretch stitch.

For the second top, again I used the top part of the pattern but now drawing until hip-height. Then I extended the front panel with 5 cm around the belly area, but in hindsight I would advise at least 10 cm.

The extended part was then gathered, again with clear elastic (framilon), making sure the side seam would match the back panel again.
The top was assembled as was written in the pattern. As this version didn’t have sleeves, I’ve hemmed it with a stretch stitch.

And now I have two tops I wore a lot during the summer. The autumn is almost here, so maybe a version with long sleeves isn’t a bad idea, who knows!

Love,
Milou

There have been a lot of questions about which patterns can Mix and Match.  So we made you a chart, so you can quickly check.  Look at all of the different combinations you can make! We hope this helps!

Last month this pattern was released. My 10 year old is just over the moon with her Optimum dresses. It is a lined dress, but it can be very easily hacked into a single layer dress, or as many of the testers of the dress called it: the Optimum Racerback Light.

In this blogpost you can read how easy it is to make this unlined version.

Start by taking off the seam allowance on the neck and arms, both front and back. These are the places where you will put binding later on.

Now sew the back together and the shoulders. Then fold open the bodice.

You need a long piece of ribbing. This ribbing needs to be 4cm wide.
The length of the binding is 80% of the total length. This means you first need to measure the total length of the raw edges of the bodice.

You might need to sew together 2 pieces of ribbing.

In the example I made, I sewed 2 pieces of 61 cm together.
The total length of the sides of the bodice was 150 cm.
To calculate 80% of this length, you multiply by 0.8; 150 x 0.8 = 120.
My ribbing was not 120 cm wide, so I cut 2x 60cm + 1 cm on each piece for the seam.
My binding was 120 cm long and 4 cm wide.

Then the binding needs to be folded over the whole length; press it so the fold will stay better when you are sewing it onto the bodice.

The next thing to do is pin and sew the binding to the bodice.

In this example I sewed the side band first. Since there was a seam in the middle, it was easy to pin the middle of the binding to the back seam of the bodice. I also marked the quarter point; the middle between the middle and the beginning, on both bodice and binding. This way it’s easier to attach the binding evenly over the whole bodice.

Like with regular binding: stretch the band to fit the bodice, but do not stretch the main fabric.

Repeat for the neckband.

Give the bodice a good and steamy press and it should look something like this:

To make sure you have a nice clean look: topstitch the bands.

You’re all set to attach the skirt!

Your girl will be so happy with this Optimum Racerback Light!

One of the easiest hacks ever!

See, my girls love any twirling dress, or just any dress really. At the same time, twirling often shows their underwear, and they’re just not so good at sitting down very ladylike. Most of the time I will just leave it like that, but my 10 year old is getting more conscious about it. So she wears short leggings underneath or this Domi Sweatpants hack: the Domi play pants!

Wondering how to make it? Here is how:

The only thing you need to do, is cut the pattern pieces of the legs (very) short and measure the leg cuff. It’s as simple as that!

You can decide whatever length you want on this one. In this example I cut it 5 cm (2 inches) under the crotch. You draw a straight line on the length you desire, on both leg pattern pieces.
Note: in the picture below the pattern pieces are shifted to the side; so no extra seam allowance added! All seam allowances are included in the pattern.

Then sew the Domi as the instructions tell you. Up to the point where you need to attach the leg cuffs.
Now measure the width of the legs. Then multiply this by 0,8 and add 2 cm (3/4 inch). This is the length of your cuffs. You can either use the pattern piece of the cuffs and adjust the length, or you can cut a shorter cuff.

For this example I cut the cuffs 3 inches long (8 cm). Folded in half and then sewn with a 3/8” seam allowance, this makes the cuff about 1 inch long.

I also adjusted the height of the buttocks area. Since my girl prefers to wear her pants (and skirts) on the hips, the crotch of the Domi would be too low. So I took off about 2 inches (4 cm) at the top and for a more fitted look, I downsized. Oh, and since the legs are short and my intention was for these pants to be worn underneath a dress, I left out the pockets.

So, in short:

• downsize for a fitted look
• use pattern pieces: front leg, back leg, waistband and leg cuffs
• cut legs about 2 inches from the crotch
• re-measure leg cuffs
• sew as stated in the instructions

This sew is so quick, I challenge you to tell me how many of these you can sew in one day!

Long overdue, but finally the blogpost about the Nivalis cap sleeves.

It is one of the Frequently Asked Questions in our Facebook group.
Last year Nathalie posted a Dutch tutorial on her blog. Now it is time to have an English tutorial as well.
This will (finally) conclude the series on how to sew different parts of the Nivalis Dress. You can find parts 1, 2 and 3 through these links:

• This blogpost tells you how to hem the Nivalis girls pattern (that strange corner in the side seam)
• This blogpost explains how to sew the colorblock of the Nivalis pattern
• This blogpost talks about the collar of the girls Nivalis pattern

We have made it to week 4!!!! Hopefully over the past three weeks, you have had a chance to mess around with some new settings on your camera, practiced taking photos in various lighting and backgrounds, and then tried some new poses.

This week, since it’s our final week, I figured the best completion of our photography month would be to talk about editing our photos. I normally try to shoot for minimal editing but alas I have learned over the past year, that even a little editing can improve your photos immensely. I know there are many various programs for editing. GIMP is free software that mimics Photoshop and Pixlr is also free. There are many YouTube videos that talk about how to use GIMP and Pixlr. Also, if you own a Mac, the photo editing software that comes with your computer is pretty decent. There is also Lightroom and Photoshop. I will let you know in advance that I only own Lightroom, and that is where I do all my editing. I will walk through some basic tools that I use to edit my photos in Lightroom.

After importing my photos into Lightroom, the first thing I will do is crop my photo if it needs it. Remember, try to crop so that the focal point will follow the rule of thirds that we talked about previously. You will find the cropping tool on the right side, a box that is made with dashed lines. I typically choose a preset format, which makes it easier if you want to go and print your images.

After cropping I will then check that the exposure is correct, then I will increase the contrast just a little bit. Next I move the slider for the highlights all the way to -100 and the shadows to +100. Then right below this you will see sliders called ‘whites’ and ‘blacks,’ on my PC I hold down the Alt key, and use the mouse to slide the ‘whites’ to the right slowly, your image will turn pure black and you want to move the ‘whites’ slider until you see one or two white dots appear on your image (this will be the brightest part of your image). Now do the same with the ‘blacks’ slider, again, holding down the Alt key but this time moving the ‘blacks’ slider to the left, your image will temporarily turn white, slide the slider to the left until you see some black dots, you can have more black areas than with the whites slider. Before moving on to the next section I typically increase a point or two the vibrance, saturation, and clarity. Be careful to not increase these too much as it will alter the WHOLE photo, not just certain areas.

The next thing I typically do to all my photos is alter the colors individually. Above I mentioned to only increase a tiny bit of the saturation bar because that affects the saturation of EVERY color in your photo, not just specific ones you want. But you can see here, with the before and after, that I boosted just certain colors in my sunset photo to make them stand out more. You can use individual color sliders and move to the left or right. I do this for the tab in this section for Saturation and Luminance. Saturation is the amount of color seen, -100 is black and white. Luminance is how bright or dark a certain color will be, moving the slider to the left will make that specific color deeper in shade.

One of the last steps I do to almost all my photos is to use the sharpening too. For a portrait, you want to slide the sharpening tool to roughly between 60-70 on the slider. I also zoom in on the subject’s eyes, since you want that to be in focus! The downfall to sharpening an image is that it can make it grainy or have ‘noise’ in your image. To counteract that, use the slider under noise reduction call Luminance. If you increase this too much, your image will become too ‘soft’ looking. The key I follow is that you want your sharpening number and your luminance number to add up to around 100. If you sharpened your image to 70, then do the noise reduction luminance to 30.

Okay, we are now at the last step in editing that I typically do to all my photos. You want your subject to be where your eye is drawn first, to do this under the effect tab on the left side you will see a section called ‘post-crop vignetting’. I move the slider to the left between -5 to -20 depending on the photo and that just darkens the corners a bit causing our eye to be drawn to the brighter area, typically your subject! This is not a drastic step, but I think adds a nice touch to photos, but not a necessity.

Of course this is only the very surface of what Lightroom can do, but there are many videos and tutorials out that will show you how to alter your photos to exactly how you want them. I feel that photography is an art, and the editing process is also an art. So many artistic opportunities when it comes to editing. Below are two photos that show before and after with drastic alterations, to show you what Lightroom can do, and if you have Photoshop, you are able to do even more!! I hope that you have enjoyed this month and learned something new about photography. If you have an editing program and you would like to share some before and after pictures with your edits, I would love to see them. I will have a folder labeled Photography Week 4 in the Sofilantjes Sew and Show group.