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Author: Susan Goodwin
Since I was three, I wanted to be a fashion designer. I filled sketchbooks with drawings and ideas and picked all my school subjects based on what I needed to get into fashion college. After three years of college, I got my start in the industry and have been working ever since. Full time, freelance, part time or a combination of them all. I have had dream jobs, terrible jobs and jobs you do to pay the bills.
Through it all I have continued to sew. I make most of my own clothes, am partial to a bit of hand stitching in the form of embroidery.
Here I share my tales of my sewing.
Skirts
I’ve been thinking about skirts a bit lately.
1. elastic waist skirt 2. Green Pattern 3. Pattern knee length skirt 4. Gorman skirt
I’ve never been good with a skirt, as I kid I spent more time climbing fences and riding my bike that I just wore shorts all the time, a box pleated skirt for high school while a flattering uniform did little to endear me to them.
A few years back I fell in love with a denim skirt that I adored and spent most of the summer and part of the winter wearing. But apart from that, my forays into skirts seem to well, not work.
I’m short and have the legs of a cyclist so mini skirts are pretty much out and while knee length dresses look great when its a knee length skirt, I look well frumpy. All too short and wide and just odd proportions.
And yet I keep seeing them on girls in the street and photographs on the net and well, they just look so cool.
Can anyone suggest a pattern that might turn my relationship with skirts around?
Sewing Adventures
I have been trying hard to not show any of of my handmade Christmas presents pre Christmas but this one is too cute not to share.
Last week on Twitter I saw a link to the new release of Figgy’s Heavenly Collection. The Ethereal dress and blouse just stood out for me so I snapped it up and thought it would make a brilliant present for one of my nieces. Plus isn’t that red headed little model just the cutest?
Of course this meant finding the perfect piece of fabric. I couldn’t find anything in the stash that seemed right so I headed to Spotlight. I found a sweet stripe with little cherries all over it, a pretty floral, a stripe basically a whole bunch of stuff and none of it felt right, I even called my brother to see what he suggested (that’s a first right there). I had seen this pale lemon printed with large metallic yellow dots early during my search but it felt a bit stiff. However I just kept coming back to it, so I decided it was the one. The photos don’t really capture the metallicness of the dots but they have a real shimmer to them.
After some quick phonecalls to my mum and my brother to determine my nieces current size I assembled the pattern and went for it. The construction itself was quite straight forward but I made a number of changes to the Figgy’s construction method.
– added the gathers to the lower skirts and then attached them to their respective tops using french seams
– double turned the frill outer edge eliminating the overlocking/serging as I thought that the extra stitching would show through when pressed
– machine basted the frill onto the front neckline and armhole
– added the button loop using some patterned bias binding and bused the same bias to finish the back slit
– french seamed the shoulders
– bound the armholes using the patterned bias
– french seamed the side seams
– double turned the lower hem
– bound the neckline using the patterned bias
I did all the binding as the top is meant to be lined but this niece is in Queensland, and summer in Queensland is all high temperatures and humidity. The thought of extra layers was all just too much, so I just took them out. The added bonus of being able to use a patterned bias binding on the inside was also a factor as I totally love bias!
The french seams was mostly because I could but also because the printing is a little stiff. It will totally soften with a few washes but if I had just overlocked/serged the edges I was worried a small person might find them scratchy (and seriously who wants to be the person who gave the kid “that scratchy top”). Plus they look all pretty and professional.
Overall I am pretty happy with it and I hope my niece likes it too!
Prepping patterns
Patterned bias @Daiso
Mini obsession – necklaces
As part of my determination to bust my enormous stash of fabrics down to a mere molehill instead of a mountain. It sometimes means I am making up garments in less than flattering colours and patterns.
Some of the colour risks have paid off, some of them need a bit of a pick me up.
Then I discovered the power of a good necklace.
The transformation is sometimes amazing and sometimes it’s just enough to take an ok garment up to acceptable.
Here are some of my favourites
1 – Fable and Lore 2 – Homako 3 – I made this one! 4 – Memi the Rainbow
Sewing Adventures
Huge weekend of sewing, helping friends organise weddings, cooking and finishing off Christmas presents.
These little pots are all bound for Christmas presents. Filled with Ale Chutney we made back in August it has been slowly aging and this week I swapped them out of our canning jars and into sterile recycled jars. To cover up the less than attractive lids, I cut some pretty scraps into covers for them. It makes them look so cute and festive.
Plenty of sewing was happening as well but everything is still firmly in the Work in Progress box. Hopefully more headway can be made on these during the week and I will have something fun to share next week.
Hope everyone had fabulous weekends and got plenty of sewing time in.
Garment Factories in China
I’ve been lucky that traveling has been a perk of many of my jobs. Sometimes the travel is not glamorous and you are not always going to high tourist destinations but a chance to see how other people live and work is always fascinating.
One of the places I work with gets their production done in China. The factories are huge, fairly modern and the staff are treated well. When I get to go on the production floor it never ceases to amaze me just how highly skilled they are.
They fly through garments in moments with each machinist doing a small portion of the garment, sometimes it’s a large seam, sometimes it’s nothing more than sewing on one single trim.
Big counter boards are at the end of each production line with the amount finished that day and the target to get to. At first I was astonished by how huge the numbers were but as I came to realise just how good the machinists were the numbers made sense. I like when the machinists have decorated their machines it always seems like something I would do!
It’s huge and fascinating and a part of my job as a designer that I’m grateful to be able to see.
Discount Ending Soon
Just a friendly reminder if you wanted to get an extra discount on some Vintage Patterns the discount code runs out soon.
Just be sure to add HAPPYsewing to the checkout to enjoy an extra 10% off but it only lasts till Wednesday the 20th of November, you can browse the whole range in the shop.
Sewing Adventures
What a wet and wild weekend here in Sydney. Wet weather is perfect for sewing….then again what weather isn’t perfect for sewing?
Finished up this Simplicity style which is yet another Cynthia Rowley design (I do like her style). The fabric is from Cabramatta (a suburb of Sydney well known for it’s bargain fabric shopping) and I think the entire dress cost like .50 cents?
Now this one may yet end up a disaster. I have made the exact same pattern before and it fits well. So bouyed by the success of the last time I made this style I went ahead and finished the whole dress without trying it on. It was only when trying it on that I realised the fabric has zero give in it. I actually got stuck in the dress when trying to get out of it. Minor panic attack time.
I’ve now gone back and reduced all the seams, let out the darts a bit and even moved the front opening. It’s still a bit tough to get in and out of but it looks good. Am hoping that with time it will relax a bit? Sadly that wasn’t the only downfall with this make.
Now I love my sewing machine, it is simple and a super hard worker and I treasure it as it was a present for my birthday/doing well in fashion college from my parents. But I don’t love it’s buttonholes. They are a bit wimpy. Just not enough stitches to create a nice polished look. I generally end up doing 2 buttonholes one on top of the other to make the buttonholes stronger. With the buttonholes being quite literally front and centre on this dress it just makes me go hmmm a bit and wish for a more professional finish.
Despite setbacks of not quite enough give and not quite professional looking buttonholes, it looks good and will be a welcome addition to the work wardrobe.
I hope you all had productive weekend’s too?
