kcwc spring 2012: wrap up
May 1st, 2012
1. Fiyel Levent 2. Made by Rae 3. Clever Charlotte 4. Tea Collection 5. Babushka Girl 6. Figgy’s 7. Magpie Patterns 8. My Poppet 9. Wink Handmade 10. Ida Pearle 11. Threadbias 12. The Wildwood Flower 13. Vistaprint 14. Not So Mellow Designs 15. Re-New 16. shiny happy world
First the sponsors of KCWC need a round of applause! There are so many wonderful shops, artists, and bloggers up there who helped make kids clothes week a success. Often when I am looking around online shops–for fabric or patterns or just nice things–I instinctively say, “Oh, that costs too much, I’m not going to buy it,” but then I stop and remind myself that most of these are women like me, working hard to make and promote handmade goods. Rather than thinking of it as just buying something, I think of it as, in part, donating to the handmade movement: creating beautiful things with thoughtfulness and intention. You are also helping out a young entrepreneur. Everybody wins!
1. color theory top 2. rabbit pajamas 3. train flashback tee 4. urban duck hoodie 5. obscure animals alphabet t-shirt 6. alligator pants 7. sandbox pants, flashback tee 8. dino flashback tee 9. peek-a-boo stripes 10. quiet cats lazy days skirt 11. t-shirt to dress refashion 12. I’m on a boat 13. sunki dress 14. gray boy shorts 15. cloud hopping tee 16. sleepover pajamas
Everybody won this kcwc with all the fantastic handmade clothes that got made this week. With 600 participants, the flickr pool was overflowing with beautiful garments everyday. I could almost feel the creative energy of all of us sewing together, even though we are scattered across the globe! Even if nothing turned out the way you wanted, or everything didn’t get finished, or the pants are a leeeetle too tight, I hope you are inspired to make more clothes for your children.
I would love it if you told me what you thought of this kcwc: what could be better? what you liked the most? what more you do want out of kcwc? what is the worst bit? Anything, I want to hear it all!
I love it you do such a good job! One you did one year (I can’t remember which year) is that you shared a page with a bunch of tutorials for boys and girls you had found for KCWC I really, really loved that, it gave me a place to start.
I couldn’t participate in the sewing this year, but I absolutely loved seeing all the creations. So many new ideas for my summer sewing! And I found some great new blogs to read. Absolutely no complaints from me.
Thanks again for hosting! The two KCWC weeks are always my most productive of the year. I love seeing everyone’s things in the Flickr group, so inspirational. My only complaint is with myself — I never do enough prep work ahead of time.
This was my first KCWC and it was great! I really liked getting to interact with other sewers through the Flickr pool. So many great ideas now floating through my head. I definitely didn’t prep enough and somehow ended up trying to sew mostly garments from ideas in my head or patterns I’d drafted for the first time. Stressful! But also fun. Next time I think I’ll focus more on patterns I’m already familiar with or have tested first;)
I wrote a post about how truly inspiring kcwc was for me: http://www.rowanandoak.com/rowan-oak/2012/04/kids-clothing-week-challenge-wrap-up.html.
Thanks so much for hosting it! Great job!!
loved it – this was my first year – i kept my expectations low (for myself). i love knowing i learn every time i sew – this was no exception. i loved this years head’s up – i find i need everything gathered (and traced and prewashed) before getting started.
This was my first KCWC and it was awesome–I’m entirely motivated to make more clothes for my kids. I appreciated how you showcased some other bloggers the week before and what they all came up with from the same pattern. But, I think the biggest thing this rally is lacking is support. We should have some sort of forum or chat for discussing our problems and solutions. That’s the power of getting us all together, not just to motivate each other, but that we’re all working towards the same goal and we should be able to help each other. Not sure how to set it up, but some sort of discussion board?
Thanks again for organizing the event!
Flickr has decent discussion boards built right into the groups that would be perfect for troubleshooting and getting advice, I think lots of people just don’t take advantage of that or don’t know how. Meg was good at starting discussions about how each day was going, but anyone on the group can post topics. I’m in a lot of quilting groups on Flickr, and I’ve found that the quilters really know how to take advantage of discussions, while the kids clothing makers aren’t so good at that.
Maybe I’m crazy, but I think a whole month would be awesome…like this:
Week 1 – Picking patterns, buying supplies
Week 2 – Cutting
Week 3 – Sewing
Week 4 – Taking photos/Blogging
Obviously we all couldn’t do an hour for a month, but maybe 3 hours a week, and then obviously you couldn’t post everyday either, but you could line up guest post peeps and post tutorial ideas like someone else suggested. And then the last week is when you would post everyday like you do now! I think that would be AWESOME!
This is my first year actually participating, I didn’t last year b/c I was pregnant and very sick and just followed along. I spent most of my week and time gathering supplies and cutting stuff out. Only finished one repair job I had, but the week was great, and now I’m on a roll! Thank you!
yeah, the sewing is good, but blogging at the same time makes the week totally crazy. Hmmmm, a month…
I loved the guest posts the week before: got me inspired!
I loved the tutorial links from the past — bring that back, please!
I love the flickr pool and all it’s randam-as-postedness as you bump into great creations and ideas.
I love, most of all, that our kids (usually) are excited about wearing what we make and helping up make it.
The worst bit? Not being prepared enough! :)
What more to want? 1) Again in the fall! 2) Some more upcycling tutorials and ideas.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Your hard work is much, much, much appreciated. This really gets me inspired.
Awesome! I did my KCWC under the radar since I wasn’t sure if my 6 month old and 3 year old would cooperate, but I’m happy to say it was a success!
http://myrainasunshine.blogspot.com/2012/05/kids-clothing-week-challenge-my-secret.html
Also, I have really LOVED checking the Flickr pool… so many great ideas, so many talented people! I’m looking forward to the next one already!
Meg, I looooved participating in KCWC this year! Ideally, I would have finished one new outfit every single day. But that would have been… impossible. Especially since I did NO prep work ahead of time. Next time I’ll spend the week before KCWC getting my patterns and fabric together. I cannot wait for the next one! My favorite part of KCWC was looking through the flickr pool. What an amazing and talented group of people participated!
Thanks again, Meg. And thanks for putting my gray boy shorts up there! :)
I think you did wonderfully!! You kept the content going and inspired us all to sew for our kiddies!! I got a lot done, one outside wear item (!!!) for each kid and a pretty good start on PJ bottoms for each (my thread tension went wacko or I would have finished) as well. I also loved looking through the board at the other participants creations. Thanks for hosting us all again, Meg!
i loved it! It was so fun to look thru the Flickr pool each day to see what others had made. I think a lot of the participants who have blogs are pretty good about linking their blogs on their Flickr page and i saw a lot of links to blogs when tutorials were used. I can’t think of any way to improve it unless you can magically increase sewing hours in a day. Thank you so much for doing this; I love sewing but it is even more fun to sew along with others and share what we make!
It was my first one and I absolutely loved it. I can’t believe how much I managed to get finished. I ended up being a bit too ambitious on day 7 so had a day 8 too. I think it’s so much fun and so inspiring to see what everyone else is making. I don’t want to wait 6 months for another one. I’m not sure I could make any suggestions to improve it. I love it – thank you so much for organising it. I am so excited to see my duck hoodie featured too – thank you!
thanks for hosting, meg! this was my first kcwc and i thought it was so awesome. it really pushed me creatively in ways that i wouldn’t have pushed myself had i been sewing at my own leisurely pace. it was super energizing and i stand amazed at all of the incredible talent out there! wow!
This was my first KCWC and it was such a valuable experience. Seeing other people’s creations, as well as their photos, and reading their blogs was truly inspirational. As far as suggestions, I think it would be great to put together a couple of posts similar to this one that summarize some of the trends, and techniques that emerged during the week. I noticed some fabrics and design elements were popular, as well as details like gathered pockets. I think it’s also really valuable to encourage process and the mistakes that we learn from as we master a skill/art like sewing. There is such a range of sewing skills participating in KCWC, as well as people who are semi pro designers that I think it would be a shame for people to be scared into sticking with safe and popular fabrics and patterns instead of approaching the challenge as a learning experience. Maybe you could encourage everyone to post a picture of at least one failure or learning moment? I think you did a great job of doing this in the posts yourself Meg, and maybe others will be more confident in following suit for the next challenge.
failures are hard: the ones who made them want to shove them in a corner, but everyone else wants to see (and learn) from them. I know I should post about my mistakes, but my ego often convinces me that is a bad idea.
Ohhh I totally need to post my failures! There are many littering my sewing room floor.
It was awesome my friend! Thanks again for hosting!
This was my third KCWC, I learned last time to try to cut ahead of time which definitely helps. This time felt like it had SO much energy behind it – EVERYONE was sewing for KCWC! My one request is to maybe start your daily recaps on Tuesday, because otherwise it starts me off feeling like I’m behind! My posts always felt “late” (unless I started sewing on Sunday, but that isn’t really in the spirit of it, right?). Maybe your first post can be just a kickoff/general inspiration on Monday, and then you have “Day 1 recap” which is posted Tuesday, and so on? Also hard to say whether I’d want more of a forum/discussion board, since I was trying to stay off the internet and on the sewing machine! Really no complaints, though, just suggestions. You’re so awesome for organizing this. It’s a “drop everything and sew!’ type of week, and it’s super fun!
Maybe I’ll just save all the blogging for the week after. I always figured I would post during the week (as the coordinator) and everyone else would just sew, but people think they need to blog and sew at the same time. It gets too frantic!
It’s definitely frantic, but kind of a fun frantic! Also fun to have posts to read through the week and see what people are working on and keep people motivated…I DON’T KNOW! I guess it’s something to think about before next time…
This was my first KCWC and it was awesome. Although I was pretty much all sewed out on Sunday, today I want to sew again. I am already plotting out my projects for the fall! I agree with the previous commenter about starting recaps on Tuesday. Maybe on Monday you could do more of a generic “why we sew” or something like that post to kick off the week. I also like another commenter’s idea about a wrap-up talking about trends or other things that emerged during the week. These are just little nits to pick, though – it’s such an awesome concept and I’m so glad to have participated finally!
i think you do a bang-up job and this week, of all the past ones, was by far my most productive. i think it’s because i knew far enough in advance and kind of cleared the calendar so i could sew. i did go way beyond the 1 hour a day, so maybe a planning week and then a sewing week would work better for some folks? i dunno.
i also would love to delve into the sewing for tweens topic…i learned a lot from what i did, but i know that there have to be some good patterns and tutorials out there that cover the age gap between little kid sizes and adults. i definitely plan on researching it more – i’ll let you know what i find out.
thanks for all your hard work, meg!
This is my second time and I loved it. I did more prep before and it totally helped even though I couldn’t sew every day unfortunately. I love how you had the guest bloggers all use the same pattern.
You do a great job! Love it! Do it more often is my suggestion ;)
thanks so much, it was only my 2nd time but i really appreciate the motivation and inspiration of others. i do notice toward the end there are fewer views of clothes in general than toward the beginning…maybe sew a week/post a week/sew a week? or not. i thank you again for your blog and hosting. i get so much inspiration from you especially-i’m a big fan!
cheers
So much adorable stuff! Not to mention really good inspiration for adult clothes. I think we could all stand to be a little more playful in our wardrobes.
I don’t think anything could be better! This is the first time I’ve participated and I had a heap of fun and got so much accomplished! The flickr pool was a great way to see what everyone else was doing and keep inspired. I loved the features you posted during the week.
The worst bit is it made me think I need to do a MCWC (Me CWC)…more work for this little lady!
To keep the stress levels down, I didn’t post everyday, just a couple of times during the week.
Thanks Meg!!
Arrrrgh, I can’t believe I missed it entirely this time around! I love KCWC — it always energizes me and inspires me to sew more. I miss recreational sewing so much and have been thinking about taking a day off to just sew for myself and the kiddos. Hopefully next time. Please keep doing these!