The first linocut is the deepest

I have been doing a lot of linocutting recently, and I recently remembered I even used the medium to illustrate a book, but never posted about it! SO here are some pictures from that project. It was the third time working with Kapitein Winokio, a pretty awesome children's musician. (You can see previous projects here and here!). It was a book about animals with very different characters, and we decided lino prints could really work to make simple and strong images with lots of texture. I'm still really happy with how this turned out, even if my technique has improved a lot since then!

This might easily be my favourite picture of all, simply because it's a hawk making a phonecall:

I've recently been printing a lot of fabric patches to sew onto your favourite jean jacket or hoodie, and I'm hoping to offer them up for sale really soon! Here are a few sneaky progress shots:

Public service announcement!

Hi everyone,

One year ago I bought two domain names. One with my own name that I'd use for my drawing blog, and one for this sewing blog. As I got a renewal notice I started thinking. I haven't used my drawing blog in ages and I thought it would be silly to keep paying for two domain names, but losing the one with my own name felt a bit weird. So I decided to merge the two blogs and use my own name, Anneke Caramin, for this blog.

What does this mean? Practically, www.annettetirette.com WON'T WORK ANYMORE. You can still use annettetirette.blogspot.com and it will redirect to annekecaramin.com. If you use bloglovin' you won't notice anything, since bloglovin' still uses the old blogspot link.

As for content, expect some more variation! For those who didn't know, I studied and graduated as an illustrator. After graduating I honestly felt a bit uninspired and sick of drawing for a while, but now the urge has definitely returned... You can see some of my older work here and in the future I hope to post drawings along with sewing projects on this blog.

There will be some changes to the header and other things soon, and I hope you will enjoy these drawings posts as much as the sewing ones!

This is one of my more recent drawings: a portrait of St. Vincent, who is awesome.

Turns out it can be over before the fat lady sings

A few weeks ago I went to the opera with a few friends. We went to see Händels Alcina at de Munt, and it was freaking amazing! Even the Belgian Queen made an appearance. I think we both enjoyed the costumes, although her seat was far superior to mine.

Of course we decided to really go for it with our outfits and take this outing as a great excuse to get all dressed up. So the boys donned suits and the girls were in fancy dresses and heels. What better excuse to make a party dress?

I have used this fabric before for a Sew it Up entry (it became a jacket you can see here). I loved the fabric (a loosely woven viscose/poly blend with metallic accents) and made sure to find some extra so I could definitely make a dress. I wanted something simple that would showcase the stripes without distorting them too much, and without too many seamlines (this fabric frays like crazy and I was worried a dress with too much piecing would just fall apart).

In the end I modified my bodice block to have a separate yoke with a curve in the front and a dip in the back. I used the same stretch lace for the yoke as on the Oonapalooza dress and finished it in exactly the same way (trimmed down regular bias tape to make it more narrow). I still have enough of this lace to make at least two more transparent yoke dresses, so I hope you're not tired of it yet!

I tried to match the stripes as closely as possible, which was more successful in some areas than others. I cut everything on a single layer, something my cat really loved. The skirt is just two rectangles sewed at the sides and pleated into the waist. I hemmed it with bias tape as well and managed a very invisible finish thanks to the loose weave of the fabric.

I'm not entirely convinced about how the top part looks on me, I think the curve could benefit from being a bit lower and straighter... Maybe I'll make a slightly tweaked version of this someday. For now I really loved wearing it though! Especially with the tiny velvet gold embroidered purse I found at a vintage shop that makes me feel Oh So Fancy even though it means storing all my stuff in my coat pockets.

I still have enough of the fabric left to make a few decorative pillows for the living room, but I fear my cat would rip them apart. He likes kneading blankets, pillows or humans before settling down on them and keeping any pillow away from this lovable old fart would feel criminal. Decisions decisions!

The epic Scarf Saga (or why I suck at making gifts)

I'll be the first to admit it: I'm a really selfish sewer/knitter. As soon as I have to make something for someone else there's a combination of pressure to do well and the item in question not being for me, which usually results in delays. Embarrassing delays. One Christmas I made my father a scarf, and decided to make a matching hat the next year. By Christmas I had managed to make the pompom, and the actual hat took another year. So since this set has taken me three years (!!) to make I thought it deserved its own post:

Meet my dad everyone! He's more comfortable in front of the camera than me, so I'm thinking about asking him to model all the other things I make as well. It should be interesting.

This photoshoot was his idea actually, since he got complimented on his snazzy hat and scarf set and gave this nice person my blog. The next time they met he was told that my blog was really nice, but that it was a shame the scarf wasn't on there. So here you go, nice compliment-giving person!

Both scarf and hat are knitted in the exact same yarn. The scarf is entirely in moss stitch (I didn't use a pattern, just cast on a number of stitches that looked right and continued until the thing was long enough) and the hat in stockinette (to make for a more subtle set, definitely not because it was three years later and I'd forgotten what the scarf looked like, cough!). I used this free hat pattern from the Purl Bee and added a massive pompom.

My dad likes his scarf and hat so I think all is forgiven... But I think the moral of the story is that I should only knit or sew gifts for very VERY patient people.