Totally Sew Over It

So today I have a sew over it double act to show you. I loved my first pair of ultimate trousers (although they were too big and met a sad failed refashioning fate) and have wanted another pair. Also last pay day I treated myself to their ultimate shift dress pattern and figured they would make a good combo. 

The are made from black twill which I bought from Minerva crafts at the same time as the fabric for my previous pair. I had planned to make a skirt with it so I only had a metre which created some interesting sewing challenges. 

With only a metre I knew these were going to be cropped (maybe not the most practical as temperatures drop in the UK but never mind). These had been cut and I'd started sewing when I spotted a colleague wearing a pair of trousers with zips at the ankles and I knew I wanted to add them to my ultimate trousers. I followed this post from Megan Nielsen on inserting exposed zippers and I'm really proud of them. I'd never used them before and while they're far from perfect I can now see how the process works and improved from one to the next. So now bring on all the exposed zippers! I cut a size 12 with the other adjustments I had done in the class. The only thing I don't like about these trousers is that the fabric stretches out with each wear which is annoying. However, I'm going to make another pair in wool for winter. 

I cut out the ultimate shift top in cutting spree I had a couple of weeks ago. It's a liberty print fabric that I had left over from a sew over it tea dress that I made a one of their classes about 4 years ago. It seemed like fate for it to become another sew over it pattern. I needed to make quite a lot of alterations to the top which as I didn't make a muslin were a bit convoluted in the fashion fabric. I cut a size 12 (grading to 14 at hips) however, there were lots of fitting issues and I wanted it to be less loose at the waist. The upper arms needed more room plus I needed more room across the back, I will need to do a broad back adjustment in future but this time I dealt with it by sewing the top with 1 cm seam allowances. 

We took these photos in our super beautiful local park.  I always read about how other bloggers boyfriends/children/husbands/pets take such wonderful pictures without a single word of complaint.  My boyfriend rations me to the number of photos he will take of me in the cold.  When I told him I was going to out this lack of generosity to the blogosphere, he told me that I should as he should really be featuring more prominently on the blog, so to make him happy, here's a photo of him, not wearing handmade clothes.  

Isn't he cute?  (I need to keep him sweet because when looking at these photos, I realised that my next mission should be to get him down on the ground to take photos of me.  He is tall and his photo taking angle is not working for me.) 

As Sew Over it have such lovely sewing cafes I thought it was appropriate to include a photo of me curled up with a cup of tea.

Happy weekend all.