A pretty addition to my wardrobe

I made a garment bag for my wool skirts!

I suffer from quite a plague of moths in my room and have been able to decimate their population by using the diamond traps with the glue strips.  In my experience lavender and cedar wood do not help.  The traps cut down on the male moths but can't catch the female ones.

I made this bag out of polycotton, a cut up bed sheet if I remember correctly, that I wanted to use for toile material.  So far the moths had not gone for polycotton so I hope that this will continue.

I measured the fabric by laying the wool skirts on their hangers on top of the fabric. I found that I didn't have quite enough width of the pink polycotton fabric so I had to use strips of this lovely patterned quilting cotton.  I am really happy that this gives the whole project a great look.

Plus: I've again made a feature out of a bug - that pleases me very much!

I could sew the invisible zip to the cotton strips first which made handling the whole thing easier.  I overcast the raw edges after sewing this together.  Luckily it was really easy to turn inside out through the zip opening.

I left the sewing threads long and pulled these ends onto the right side with the help of a hand sewing needle.  You get great sharp corner with very little effort when you just pull on those threads to pop out the corners.  No poking or pushing required!

I re-inforced the central seam above the zip and then only poked a little bit of it open so that the hanger fits through.  I am fairly certain that no cheeky moth can crawl through.

To make the garment bag that little bit safer I also included a piece of anti-moth paper - though I am not at all sure that these work.  Still, I had some left so why not.

That's two wool skirts that are at least zipped into a bag that moths would have to eat through. I hope they don't.

Saw a fabric, couldn't resist it, bought it, and ended up disappointed because it doesn't at all look like I imagined.

The colours are much paler in real life, more washed out

I knew that this is a stretch fabric, but I didn't think it was as thick as it is. It is basically sweatshirt material.

The colours are nice: I like them a lot, but they are printed on top of the white fabric - very much like digital print fabric.  Which this must be as well, it's just that the pattern doesn't look as sharp as motifs I associate with digital prints.

If only this fabric was something like a thin viscose, I would love that fabric!

Well...

I have quite a bulky bunch of fabric because the material is so thick. I don't want to shove into my stash because I don't have the space. So I made myself start the project - I am making a top that looks much more like a tunic on me.

It is rather loose and not fitted enough and I'm not sure what to do with it...  What a disappointment.

To be updated!

I sewed a little more

[Oh darn: this draft is from some time earlier in the year. Oops, forgot]

I have made a bit more progress on a couple of things. But nothing seems to get done easily, let alone quickly.

Issues with two skirts:

My black and white wool skirt still needs the inside corner of the vent sorted out, I'm not happy that I haven't done that yet. And I thought I was done with my second self-drafted wool skirt, the one in the heathery pinkish-red.  It isn't!  Sneef!

I had blind hemmed the bottom of the wool fabric hem to make sure it would lie flat. Then I hand sewed the lining to it. Well guess what: now the lining pulls at the skirt in plenty of places and I basically have to re-do that.

Or pull the blind hemming back out and I'd have to un-do and re-do at least some of the sewing on the lining for that too. It's not exactly a win-win situation - I'll have to do quite a bit of work either way. I do have the feeling that the blind hemming could continue to be a problem. Bother!

Update: I finally got started on this and it didn't even take long. Does it ever? You just build up this problem in your head and it seems insurmountable!  I put lots of pins into place and released the lining - sewing it back was the work of a half hour at most.

Here is the problem of the black and white skirt:

Folding the hem the wrong way at the back vent looks terrible!  Really amateurish.

Here is the inside:

I did plumb up the open bit a little so it's easier to see in a photo. But the fabric might have done that by inside when wearing so this definitely couldn't stay the way it was.

Another update: I finally got over the "but I've already hand-sewn it on!" feeling and re-did it. Again, it didn't take nearly as long as anticipated.


I don't like the asymetric jersey top in the Brushstrokes pattern, I can't see myself wear it because it doesn't look very nice on me. I am losing weight at the moment because I'm counting calories but it doesn't seem to affect my waist line in the slightest so the problem with this top will continue. Plus I'm bound to put weight back on at some point.

I need to get a photo taken of me wearing this to illustrate the issue:

 

Also: it doesn't help that the lining now turns towards the outside which you can see in the badly fuzzy photo on the left. Grumble.

- - -

I long wanted to make a dress with a waist seam in the shape of an inverted V or chevron. This shape might be called 'swallow wings'.  I didn't have the right sort of pattern and thought I could draw this myself, but I never did.

I found New Look 6183 which has this waist seam but it also has some rouching along the top of the front side panels where they meet the centre front panel. I wasn't keen on those but I tried the original side panel piece when I tried out my toile, and then folded the side panel piece to suppress some of the excessive length so I could sew this other side with less gathering.

I liked the lesser amount better because I feel that it won't show up my big tummy as much as the original rouching would.  Not sure if that's wishful thinking.

 

There are no bust darts: the top pieces are gathered under each bust. This is a style I have not tried before so it'll be interesting to evaluate.

I had set aside a cheap viscose fabric that I got in a closing down sale. This is a fabric that irons wonderfully well and drapes quite well too.  It is a fabric that's quite light though and the flimsiness means that this is slightly difficult to sew: both my overlocking and the straight stitches wrinkle up and make the seams pull.

A good press makes this a bit better but doesn't fix it altogether.  Rough skin on my hands also gets stuck on this fabric and I find that I have to drag it over my ironing board because it clings to it as well. I've never encountered this problem before!

These problems mean that I got rather disenchanted with carrying on with this dress and feel that I need to try the pattern in another fabric. It would be interesting to see if which gathering I prefer in a less light fabric.


So glad I managed to sort out the vent on the black and white skirt, hopefully I'm making progress with other things too. Fingers crossed.

Onwards and upwards!

A quick project: one shoe bag assembled!

I can't believe how quick this came together, I am really pleased.

I read a Facebook post by a friend on a bag with drawstring top she made recently, and bemoaned the fact that I intended to make a bag for a pair of suede shoes I don't wear often (to prevent them getting dusty) and that I just hadn't "gotten around to it" yet, which set off alarm bells: I do that all the time, plan something so that I can firmly see it in front of my inner eye, and that seems to satisfy my creative urges: imagining things.

That's not good enough. So I thought I'd have a quick look in my mahooassive stash, and promptly found this pretty crafts fabric that I bought to make a knitting needle container (one day). So I'd rather use this now and look for another fabric that I like better for all my knitting needles. The thing is that I really love all those cute square motifs but I so beyond not fond of the green of the background colour, that I just couldn't face using this. Which was the problem.

I now realise that the fabric motifs would be great cut out and then sewn onto other fabrics so I am sure that the remainder of this fabric will serve me well. There is nothing better then getting stuck into a project because it will tell you something you didn't know before. And no amount of imagining can replace the actual doing and achieving. I ought to hang that on the wall! As a motto.

Back to the project at hand before I get even more excited about the potential of this fabric:

I put the pair of shoes onto the fabric in a position that I thought they would naturally fall into when in the finished bag. Then I measured across and up and down to make sure the piece would be large enough.

Then I sewed this into a tube, flatted that so the seam would sit at the back centre and sewed across the bottom. Then I overlocked those exposed seams. I folded the top raw edge under twice, pressed and then made the one error of the project (mistakes are great for learning, I can recommend that) - I sewed a buttonhole through all the layers of the tunnel - which of course means that I can't feed a string through the button hole opening into the tunnel: the buttonhole edges are keeping it closed. Duh.

I helped myself by threading a needle with the length of embroidery thread (for the string) and poked that through the button hole sides. Which makes the button hole completely redundant, but hey. Let's not be pernickety.

One shoe bag done and dusted. So to speak.

I might make more for other shoes, but just using a motif or two on different colour fabrics. It'll make a nice set without being too samey. I'm happy!

Vogue 1324 Donna Karan skirt

I did this in a heavy-ish jersey fabric I picked up from Ridley Road market, a couple of years ago.
I was surprised that this sewed quite well - and that's saying something because I've got a total hate-hate-hate relationship with jersey fabrics. I don't like them, and they certainly don't like me, and I usually make a completely mess out of jersey projects.

Oh well.

I love the Donna Karan skirt design. It is really interesting in so far as there is no vertical side seam: the panels that cover the side wrap round from the front towards the back for a bit. Not quite parabolic arches, but part of that shape.

Here's a photo to try and show the side "seam" area:

It's a bit difficult to see the seams, here is another photo of not quite the same area:

The front of the skirt is on the right-hand side of the above photo, and the back at the left-hand side (obviously).

I had huge problems with the waistband: the part that starts to one side of the front centre panel where there is no waist band, and wraps all around the back, - it gets folded over and forms the inner facing that I stitched down.

Where the centre panel was stitched to the sides of the waistband, the waistband extended way beyond this seam - I had so much left over that I laid it down towards the front centre: they didn't reach right to the middle so I just stitched them down. I had ironed some stretch interfacing to the top of the central panel to reinforce because it is a single layer right in the middle. Where I stitched those too long sides down I got three layers.

So something isn't right with this but it is probably me. I can't remember when I even started this so I may just have cut this strip too long. Or not long enough as the case may be. Who knows.

I decided to try this Vogue pattern in a jersey as a wearable toile. I could eliminate the back seam and the zip. I only stitched down the bottom of the inner facing in a few places so the fabric stretches enough for me to put it on. That works okay.

Not a great photo, but here's the whole thing. The front darts are interesting too, sat at an angle (as are the back darts):

The whole skirt is not fantastic (I mean my execution of it) but I may wear this around the house. Or if I am having a scruffy day then maybe to the pub, maybe one that isn't terribly well lit, if you know what I mean...

I like the fabric so I may try to sew with a heavier stretch fabric again. Maybe. I just have that difficult relationship with jerseys: I hate them and they hate me right back. They completely misbehave for me and I usually have a huge struggle on my hands with them. I am not a fan.

I like the design enough to want to make this in a woven fabric (as intended) but I am worried that I might run into fitting issues because of those side "seams". I don't know how a woven fabric would behave in the hip area.

It took me ages to get this finished but I am very pleased that I didn't abandon this. This is huge progress for me!

A pattern for knit or woven fabric?

Is a pattern described as 'for knit/stretch fabrics' correctly marked, or is this a mistake?

This Lekala design is marked as "Fabrics: Knit. Is stretchy: yes":

Design 5081 is a long-sleeved blouse with bust darts, plackets and a button band.  I have never seen a knit/jersey/stretch fabric pattern with all these features.  Patterns for knit fabrics usually take advantage of the fabric being stretchy whereas patterns for woven fabric cannot: woven styles need openings along the front as well as in the sleeves, they need shaping in the bust area - knit patterns also don't feature completely flat pieces (the front and back of this blouse) but often include some kind of draping which woven fabric does not do well.

I must say that when I first saw this pattern I just assumed it was for woven fabrics. Assuming is always a big mistake, in dressmaking as much as in other contexts!  I cut out a polycotton fabric and started sewing.  It was by chance that I looked at the pattern again and finally saw the 'knit' reference. Oops. But really?

The website lists this pattern 5081 when you filter on 'woven' - so that seems to point to the knit description being wrong.

For these reasons I think that this pattern was marked incorrectly but I can't be sure.  What do you think?

~ ~ ~

I would perhaps not have noticed the 'knit' claim if it hadn't been for the sleeves:

When I sewed the sleeveheads in I just couldn't make them lie flat - the curved seam around the top of the shoulder is all puckered and distorted even though I applied the normal technique: two rows of gathering and distributing the fullness of the sleeve material very carefully by pinning every centimeter.  No joy.

I also found an issue with the shoulder width that is down to me.  I used some of the Advanced features that allow you to customise your pattern beyond the standard measurements of height, bust, waist, hips etc - unfortunately I didn't realise that my shoulders are a bit narrower compared to their measure.

You can just about see how the shoulders dip down at the seam to the sleeves in these two photos:

   

So I will rip the sleeves back out and cut the shoulders a bit narrower. Only by 5-12mm or so.  That should take care of the sleeveheads being slightly too big and make sewing them back in a lot easier.

At least I hope so. Fingers crossed.

I am also wondering if I marked the correct centre front because these pieces barely overlap - or do I need to do a FBA?  That would be weird seeing as this is a personalised pattern.

The advantage to turning the sleeves into flat pieces again is that I can correct something I forgot to do:  I didn't sew the plackets on when I should have (what a mental lapse) - it'll be good to do that first!  Silver lining...

I seem to have bought a pattern

I went to this charity shop for a men’s shirt.  I wanted a shirt to upcycle (I just fancied it as a sewing challenge) and not having any men’s shirts to hand, I gave this charity shop a go.  They did have quite a few shirts, but none in a fabric that I liked.

Instead I found this:

Excuse the badly lit photo

Also a cardigan which I got rid off as soon as I got it home because there was a stain I didn't see in the shop, plus the fabric wasn’t all that nice.  So off it went to another charity shop.  Oh well.

This blouse looks lovely: I had not worn any ruffles placed like this before and now I think this works really well with my shape ('apple' as they say. Or 'barrel' shape: wide in the middle, tapering off on either side  - my waist is my problem area).  As a bit of a coincidence, I had decided a short while ago that I do need to add interest to the neckline area and the ruffles here do an admirable job.  I want to explore that element further in future in terms of clothes that I would buy or sew.

Unfortunately I don’t love the linen fabric and its thin weight.  The wrinkled linen look just doesn't look all that great in this particular linen.  Not utterly besotted by the colour either.  I don't hate it but I’m not in love with it either.  A chalky looking pale blue.  It is a bit insipid and puts me off from wearing this blouse.

Then I discovered that the bust dart is in the wrong place: it sits too high, points in the wrong direction and it is too short.  All of this is something that cannot be fixed in an existing garment.

But!

But I can easily adapt a pattern to use the design elements of this blouse and position the dart in the right place.

Now that I discovered the dart issue I am more than happy to get rid of the blouse.  As in: get it out of my wardrobe to never be worn again (I did wear it once, today, so that's fine: I got some use out of it).

I am thinking of taking this blouse apart: this will give me the shape of the ruffles (I suspect that they are circular, with the lower ones cut out of a slightly bigger circle than the upper ruffle) and the main proportions of the blouse: length, width, neckline shape – and also the sleeve pattern.

The sleeves are definitely something that I have to take apart to see what pattern they are based on.

With all that information I should be able to draft a blouse pattern that’s very close to this one. I know that I’ll want to take the side seams in a touch at the top and make a slight change to the neckline: I would prefer a simple V-shape instead of this neckband type facing which doesn't contribute anything particularly clever to the design.  I do like the yoke across the shoulder, I want to keep that.

So its seems that I haven’t so much bought a second-hand blouse as a pattern to use to sew something that I know will fit!   It turns out that this purchase was not a waste but a clever way of getting a wearable muslin – it is exceedingly useful in that function too!

Do you shop in charity shops and what kinds of clothes do you look for?  Something to upcycle or to wear as it is?  Do you ever frankenpattern several old clothes into one new design?  I would love to hear and see ideas!

Green/blue scroll top

Here is another version of my simple top that I knocked up in a couple of days (Version 2 was my black and white linen tunic here and Version 1 my grey damask top here).

Nice to get one item done pretty quickly.

The idea was that I must make inroads into my stash.  It certainly seems to have worked with this fabric.

I bought it together with a pink and also a grey version of the same pattern, and a different pattern but same fibre in blue, from Atlantic Silks in Electric Avenue, Brixton shortly before they closed up shop.  I only paid a total £10 for five metres if I remember correctly.  Another reason why my stash is out of control: I keep finding such great fabrics, great bargains or great patterns and colours.  Or all combined.  I just can't resist any of it.

This fabric irons a lot better than I thought.  I am not wildly in love with the pattern but I hope it'll fill that gap in my wardrobe where a bright and highly patterned item goes.  If there is such a gap...

These colours are truer to life

I'm curious to see how it washes and how often I'll wear it.

The grey fabric might become a summer dress, I got more of it. Let's see how quickly I'll get round to it.  Then I "only" have to get through the pink and the blue fabric for more tops to get back to the stage I was at before the Brixton shopping trip.

Oh actually, I got a lovely white fabric too... Oops, I'd forgotten.  But this one is reserved for a special project because it's beautiful fabric that needs to be used for something like a generously cut big over-blouse that can be worn over trousers or open instead of a light summer jacket... Something like that.  I'd rather use up other fabrics than that one first.

Good thing I already sewed up the petrol fabric from the Market Row stall (I forgot to blog about this top, it's the same cut as the simple black top here), and have used the white calico from the same place on the Dress pattern drawing workshop in Brighton in January that I bought it for. Phew!

A small dent in my stash

This really was a great project to do - not just in terms of how quickly I was able to put it together but also with regards to how much of the fabric I could use up.

Just look at how very little there is left over!

I might be able to get a very small unit (block) of a scrappy quilt out of this.  I like the fabric so much that I will keep these bits for that purpose.  What can I say, I am a terrible hoarder.  Hopefully only of things that are still beautiful and useful.  Thankfully I am able to chuck stuff away that has seen its best or was never that great to begin with. You need to know when to cut your losses: there is nothing worse than keeping something around with the vague hope of a future use - only to find that when you eventually try to use it (as the only item out of goodness only knows how many) - that finally shows up that it is no longer fit for purpose.  Some of the time I just kept stuff because I own in, for no other reason.  Fed up with that.

My main reason for posting this photo is actually not so much the blog post itself.  I want to post this photo on the website My Sewing Circle but it won't allow posts in comments by uploading directly from your computer, you need a URL.  Well, I can give it a URL, no problem.

I like My Sewing Circle: it is an online sewing community.  Like Ravelry (the online community for people who knit or crochet) but obviously for people who sew instead.

They just added new functionality to allow users to put up or download free digital patterns on the pattern pages. Cool.

So here goes: a successful project in how much fabric I could use, how quickly I made it and that I was able to complete it in the first place!

Where the completion of sewing projects is concerned, I wonder if I'm over the mental block... (let's not jinx it)