Tag: sewing

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Sewing Adventures – Jalie Clara Tights Camo edition

It’s winter which means its cold and the temptation to stay on the couch cuddled under a blanket eating biscuits, drinking tea while reading books is big.
Sadly I know I need to move more. I have to get fitter and rebuild strength in my core and back.
So in an effort to motivate myself with new clothes to workout in I purchased the PDF of the Jalie Clara tights.


These are so intriguing as they have no centre front seam and only a back seam and an inside leg seam.
I measured myself and decided to go with the size Z with the 3/4 leg option of size O.


Cutting was easy and I added in the gusset, centre back seam and inside leg. At this stage I tried them on and decided I need to size down. Instead of unpicking and recutting I basically used my overlocker to cut down a size.


Tried them on again and decided on taking a dart like wedge out of the centre back and tightening the inside leg from mid thigh down the leg.
Popped them on again and was satisfied. Added the waistband using my overlocker and then twin needle stitched it in place using my coverstitch and hemmed (also on my coverstitch) and I was done.


I’m 5 foot tall so the top waistband sits really high on me (like just under my bra high) which is fabulous as it goes well up and above my surgery scar. It also goes above the weird swelling shape and weight gain which means it’s not going to move while I exercise.


There is some wrinkling around the knee that I’m not wild about but am going to wear them for awhile and see if there are any other changes to be made before I set about fixing that.


Great pattern, really impressed at the results and loving this Lycra from Pitt Trading which has no grin through of the white base fabric and isn’t see through even when stretched!

Having worn these a little am definitely going to size down even more, I want the Lycra to work a little harder as right now it feels a bit loose particularly around the crotch and thigh. It just doesn’t have that “firm” feeling yet so am going to do some tweaks. However I feel like the changes would be less if I wasn’t using such a nice quality Lycra.

Pattern – Jalie Clara tights pattern

Fabric – from the stash but originally from Pitt Trading

Changes – go down at least one to two sizes, take an extra dart shape wedge out of the centre back, tighten up knees a bit more

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Sewing Adventures – Papercut Patterns Sway dress

I had thought I’d set myself an extra challenge this year and make all my patterns myself, so no shop bought patterns no Indies all my own…..then I realised sometimes you just need clothes and you need to get on with things and just to go for it.

Enter the Papercut Patterns Sway dress. This pattern was given to me by a friend after the fire, they thought having a loose swingy dress would be an easy make after all our dramas. They were right it, was a quick make.

I think the longest part was cutting out and making sure the rayon fabric didn’t slip and slide around. I cut on the wooden floor and it was a surprisingly stable rayon which made for a nice change.

I cut the size medium but increased the length as I’m hoping it might be a good trans seasonal piece and I’ve been liking the look of longer dresses lately so I can see how I look and feel wearing one.

Having read reviews of the pattern I should have been more cautious and checked the armholes but I didn’t. They are really big, like show about an inch of the side of my bra big. I don’t care about showing my bra but I do care about ugly armholes and the size of these is not good. Am not going to hassle with this make now but in future would be adding to the armholes to bring them up by at least 4 to 5 cm.

Becasue I wanted to keep the rayon to be nice and flowing I chose to go with the provided facings, despite my hatred of facings. They go in easily and make the insides look clean but this bit here where you can see the facing from the lower v neck is visually repugnant to me. Next time I’ll use bias binding to finish the neck and armholes and avoid this.

The waist ties are not too long, I choose to make my longer so the ends would fall down the dress more. Mostly because my middle section needs a bit of visual camouflage. I added the tassels to the end to stop a fairly plain dress (for me) be not too boring. Because the waist ties are not attached to the dress it means they won’t be going through the wash which is handy as I’m fairly sure those are ceramic beads of some kind?

Pattern: Sway Dress by Papercut Patterns cut in a size Medium

Fabric: Printed rayon from the stash but originally from Pitt Trading, cream tassels purchased from Pitt Trading

Alterations: Added 10cm length to the dress, cut waist tie twice as long, added tassels. Next time use Bias binding instead of facings, add 4 to 5cm height to underarms to bring them up.

 

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Sewing Adventures: Free Darcy Boxer Shorts Pattern

The Darcy Boxer shorts are one of my all time most downloaded patterns, am sure its 98% because it’s free and about 2% because it’s the pattern the person wanted? regardless it is a fabulous pattern that makes up in no time, takes a minimal amount of fabric and results in awesome shorts for yourself or to use as a gift.

These ones are intended for a gift. We are way behind on birthdays for the entire family this year so I’m trying to get ahead of the curve and get some Christmas sewing/whenever we see them next sewing in. When you don’t live near your family you sometimes find yourself giving and receiving presents at odd times of the year.

This is a lovely dense Japanese woven cotton I got at Pitt Trading. The tiny diamond pattern is perfect for an understated pair of boxers. I’ve gone with French seams throughout because a) I felt like being fancy and b) I currently only own white or black overlocking thread and well that’s not close enough for my colour matching loving heart. So French seams it was.

It’s been a little while since I made a pair with a fly so I had to go back and check my own notes. Apart from a slightly tricky fly/French seam junction point it was a straight forward sew.

For the elastic I jumped at the chance to delve into my Prym box of goodies and use this ultra plush yet firm elastic. It’s so lush and perfect for these boxers. Because I wanted to practice more with my coverstitch I used it to apply the elastic. It was a little finicky but now that I’ve done it once am sure I’ll be good for next time. Plus the stitching looks invisible!

All in all a pretty lovely make and a great example of “Everyone deserves pretty Lingerie”

Pattern: The Darcy Boxers Shorts by Measure Twice Cut Once

Fabric: made by Sevenberry sold at Pitt Trading waist elastic from Prym

Changes: French seams throughout, nice change but am unsure I would do that again?

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New Sewing Classes announced, Sydney and Melbourne

Want to learn to sew? brush up on some skills, learn some new techniques? Then I’ll be teaching classes to suit you!

First up Swimwear at Bobbin and Ink here in Sydney. It starts this Friday so get in quick to book your place

You can bring any swimsuit pattern you like but may I suggest Henrietta

or Anne

If you are in Melbourne and looking to skill up on your lingerie I am coming down to teach in February.

Book via Shop Sew Squirrel (and check out their divine lingerie supplies while you are there). You can choose to do either knickers or bralet workshops on a single day or combine them both and come for 2 days. It’s going to be lots of fun.

And lastly if you are wanting to start sewing or returning to sewing after a long hiatus I’m teaching a beginners class at Bobbin and Ink. It will be a fantastic way to fall in love with making your own clothes and having a lifelong skill and passion.

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Sewing Adventures: Kitty Pillowcase of glitter

During August I set myself the task of reducing my To Do pile. Did I succeed? well a little. The pile is still enormous but I managed to get some things done.

One of the things I did get done was to turn this impulse buy of glitter cat fabric from Spotlight into a pillow case. Super simple. Just measured the width of a current pillow case. Did a snip and tore the fabric, fold in half right sides together, folded back the selvedge edges to create the envelope style end fold and went up the sides using my overlocker.

Simple, easy effective. Would be perfect for presents and using up fabric leftovers.

So basically a speedy make full of WIN. Except it isn’t.

It’s like the pillow equivalent of a magnet for cat hair. It seems to pull all the cat hair from all over the apartment and is routinely covered with really big tumble weed style balls of fur. It’s terrible. It’s so gritty and awful. Definitely in the wrong fabric for it’s purpose category. Learn from my mistakes and don’t use this one for pillows, it may look cute but soon it will be as fuzzy as the cat!

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Sewing Adventures: Peak To Do

I’ve reached peak “to do”. As a lover of lists and eternally trying to be organized, when I’m working on a project I pack up all the relevant details and pop them into a zip lock bag. Then they go into the “to do” box.

In theory this works fine. In a year of stress, lack of time and an apartment tiny in space it actually leads to not one, not two but three to do boxes.

This is quite a lot of projects that are partially started and never finished. Not only is this terribly wasteful it takes up way too much space.

So I’m declaring August as my personal project month. My aim is to get as many of my partially projects finished as I can. Just grab a zip lock bag of goodies and go!

Additionally I’m going to try and not start anything new. Hopefully by the end of the month I have lots of finished projects and my sewing area looks less like the aftermath of a horrendous wind storm than it currently does.

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Working with Prym Products

A few weeks ago I was introduced to the team at Prym Consumer who were interested in getting more sewers using their products. I’d seen some of their products being used online and was impressed at how clever they were.

After some back and forth discussing ideas they decided the best thing was to send me a bunch of products and essentially let me play.

Cue  2 enormous boxes of products turning up just after The Englishman broke his shoulder. I had to unpack straight away as the boxes were too big to stay inside our tiny apartment (though the cat was thrilled with having more boxes to sit in). I had a quick look and my jaw dropped at how fabulous a quality the products were. Due to all that we have had going on I packed them all up and popped them to one side.

Fast forward to this week and it’s been my first time to sit down and go through everything properly and figure out how I’m going to use it all. Seriously it was like Christmas, so much good stuff and my brain kind of exploded on all the ideas I kept coming up with.

As always I’m going to be honest about the products. If I love them I’m going to say so, if I’m impressed I’ll say so, if it’s too fiddly or tricky or just plain doesn’t work then I’ll be telling you that too. While I got the products for free and intend on using them all, I’m going to be upfront about the whole thing and it will be utterly transparent.

Am hoping it will introduce you and me to some great new products.For anyone who is keen on giving some a try? The awesome team at Minerva Crafts is offering you a discount on any Prym products. Just enter SUSAN at the checkout

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Sewing Adventures- Boxy pouch with pandas!

I rarely indulge in ordering from Miss Matatabi because well let’s face it. I could ship the entire store to my house and still want more? I adore the prints, the quality and the entire Japanese aesthetic.

So last year after a particularly crappy time of it, I made up an order and eagerly awaited my parcel. As suspected it was all amazing.

I knew I wanted to make a boxy style pouch to carry some of my sewing bits and pieces with me to classes that I teach. I tried to make up a pattern and got distracted, I tried searching for a pattern and could never find exactly what I needed. Then I spotted it, the perfect boxy pouch.

The Thrifty Stitcher is Claire Lousie (or CL) is a good friend and I sent her an email asking her about it? She kindly sent me the link to the handouts she uses for class and they are genius! seriously if you want to learn how to sew in London go and see her. Not lucky enough to live in London? Then take her online class she is brilliant and her way of explaining things is spot on. You truly are “learning to sew with a pro”

Following her expert guidance I made my pouch and I added a lining too (that bit I did on my own, it wasn’t in the notes). Super happy with the result too. I’d actually like another one that is bigger, I might add some kind of stabilization to that one to help maintain it’s shape.

Pattern: Boxy pouch from The Thrifty Stitcher
Fabric: pandas (not currently available but here are other awesome Panda fabrics) from Miss Matatabi
Changes for next time: brilliant as is, perhaps do a second bigger size with stabilization just to carry a few more things?

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Sewing Adventures – Shibori Dress

This one has been sitting waiting to be posted for oh forever. I’ve never been happy with the photos I get of this dress and well today I decided it doesn’t matter just go with it.

Sometimes it’s just ALL ABOUT THE FABRIC and this is certainly one of those cases. When we attended the Shibori workshop I knew I wanted to create a piece of fabric that I could turn into a garment. With that in mind I found some nice quality 100% cotton, pre washed it and took it with me to the workshop. It dyed fantastically well but it’s a super solid fabric so it has zero give in it, sometimes while wearing the finished dress it feels somewhat restrictive. You can see here how it pulls at the waist and the strain on the invisible zipper.

After learning about the techniques and having a bit of an experiment (the results of those I used here) I decided to go with an Itajme resist, where wooden shapes are used alongside the folding and pleating to create the design. It’s wonderfully effective and I loved the end result. What I really loved those was the pieces where the folds weren’t perfect and you go these cool spiderweb style designs.

In order to show it off I went with my basic bodice that I’ve been trying to perfect and a pleated skirt. The skirt is just 2 rectangles pleated. At the centre back I even had to cut down the centre of the rectangle to get an invisible zipper in. Not wanting to waste a single millimeter of this fabric I’ve used all the way to the selvedges, have tiny seam allowances and just let the fabric do all the work. The entire dress is lined in cotton voile to help make it more opaque.

I love it! It is beautiful to wear and the inky lines are so pretty. I think I can safely say this is not the last time I will be experimenting with creating my own fabric designs using Shibori techniques.

Pattern: my own bodice block, pleated rectangles for skirt
Fabric: 100% cotton shibori dyed
Changes for next time: increase size of bodice to allow for zero give in fabric as the bodice gets too tight.

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Calling for Pattern Testers

**EDIT** Thank you all for a wonderful response, I now have a huge pool of testers and won’t be taking on any more for awhile. I’ll be sending out emails to everyone who applied very soon.***

I’ve got some exciting plans coming up and I’ll be needing some pattern testers. So I’m asking for your help, if you are able to be a pattern tester that would be fabulous.

Here is a brief run down of what I need
– competent home sewers with an eye for detail
– ability to provide good feedback on fit and notes on pattern instructions
– patterns range from basic to intermediate/difficult and cover a range of skills. Fabrics will include wovens and knits. Skills will include (but are not limited to) application of lace, fold over elastic, swimwear elastic, collars and plackets.
– sewers of womenswear and children’s wear
– turnaround times will vary but a due date will be given so you have a time frame for testing.
– photos of the finished garments on a person. These do not have to be “modelled” shots.They are purely for help with the fitting process. Should you wish to share the images/pattern on your own blog or social media you are welcome to do so after the release date but it is not a requirement of you being asked to be a tester.

As compensation for your time and efforts you will receive the final version of the pattern and a discount code for your personal use on other patterns in the range.

To be a tester please comment below with
– your blog or social media handle so I can see what you like to sew and match you to the appropriate pattern
– your preference for wovens or knits
– your preference for womens or kids
– level of sewing experience