Last Tuesday I had the extreme pleasure of meeting fellow sewer Sigrid as she was visiting London with her family and had a short break in their sightseeing to come and stop by the moorings! It’s so funny, within minutes it was like we’d known each other for years, even though we’d never met in real life before, only observing each other from our respective sewing blogs…
Besides the great opportunity to blather on about sewing with someone whose eyes don’t glaze over within 5 minutes, she also brought me some really nice gifts! Oh Sigrid, you can definitely come visit again, you didn’t have to bribe me!!
First up was a gorgeous silver and black Kantje Boord lingerie kit for my birthday!
Already I’m jealous! I love the elingeria.de lingerie kits, but this is even better – it’s got even more elastics and stretch lace, plus the little bow, and the straps are those split kinds you often see on RTW, and it even has diamante sliders! Seriously, these are so nice! I think I need to book a trip to Amsterdam ASAP!
And on top of that, Sigrid also brought me the latest issue of KnipMode – May 09, which comes with a special skirt supplement, on top of the regular magazine patterns. I’ve been on a big KnipMode kick recently, and this one continues to up the game. I think I may have to save up my pennies and spring for an international subscription afterall…
Here’s a few of my picks from this issue!
Dress #11 with this cool foldover neck detail is from their “origami” pattern feature. This pattern has a special set of illustrated instructions to show you how to do the collar, which should help if you don’t speak Dutch like me!
Next up is the plus dress #16. I’m not so sure about the tech drawing, but I love the look of this photo – the cornflower blue jersey plus the mustard yellow shoes and the freckly model and the rustic fish restaurant – all just divine! Bravo, KnipMode!
Shirtdress #2b is my favourite out of a bunch of really wearable shirtdresses in this issue:
And then there’s wrap shirt #20b, with great wide sleeves that can roll up and be tied back, and a nice, big, cargo pocket:
I’d also show you the magazine photo for trousers #12, but you couldn’t see anything whatsoever of them as she was sitting down with a long top, so have a look at the tech drawing instead:
You can probably tell from the extended scans, but I’ve already traced off the last two to make in ocean blue stretch shirting, and stretch khaki twill, respectively!
I don’t know whether I’ll get to these in May or not, but as long as I cut out the fabric before 2 June, I should hopefully be able to make them in hospital on my tiny red machine if I change the buttons for open snaps on the shirt and jeans snaps on the trousers…
I also saw a blurb in this issue that there’s a newly redesigned KnipMode website, too. It’s nice that they’re now posting up colour versions of the big, illustrated directions that are already published in the magazines, but it’d be a thousand times better if they actually just posted the tech drawings or even full photos of what’s in the current issue like Burda do, instead of the awful, truncated, and un-zoom-able Flash preview they’ve used for years!
But the biggest addition (with the most potential to be awesome) is that KnipMode are now selling paper versions of some of their past patterns that have already been in the magazines! So far there’s only a tantalising few, but if that twist top pattern ever goes up, it’s going to make them an awful lot of money!!