Planning from the deep stash

I'm a member of the sewalongs and sewing contest group on facebook, and this quarter's theme is deep stash patterns.  As my pattern stash is getting out of control, this was an awesome theme for me.  My plan currently looks like this:

From left to right; Mia jeans, Ondee sweater, Various vintage patterns, I have plans for view 2 and 3 of Simplicity 5359, Vintage shirt dress, Anderson blouse, Brume skirt.  Most of these I've never made before and I'm looking forward to trying them out.  When I first started sewing, I didn't understand how other sewists had so many patterns that they'd never used in their stash.  Turns out the longer you sew and the more invested that you become in this hobby, the easier it is to just accumulate things!

However, since I have minimal follow through on my planned lists, I'm not convinced that my final makes will look anything like this.  The coppelia cardigan, opal shirt and multiple other patterns are also on my 'to make list' and may be subbed in.  In fact, this top pattern is currently obsessing me and I bought the perfect fabrics on a recent trip to Paris so my 'plan' really is incredibly fluid!

However, I can guarantee that the Vintage shirt dress will definitely be entered as it is finished already!  I bought a length of African wax print in December, with the main purpose of making my sister some ultimate pjs (and other bits and pieces).  However, since the fabric was awesome and I had quite a lot of the 5.5m length left, I made myself a vintage shirt dress.

This pattern was a Christmas gift last year and so far this is my third version.  It's swiftly becoming one of my favourite patterns and I love this version! As my second version was also in an African wax fabric, clearly I feel like the African wax prints and this pattern are a perfect match (watch this space for more, although since I don't currently have any in my stash so this would involve a shopping trip).  The African wax cotton is a bit similar to quilting cotton, although it's a bit drapier and is really easy to work with.  When I first started sewing, I would predominantly have bought this kind of fabric and slowly moved away from them.  Partly due to wanting to sew a greater range of garments and use different techniques.  However, I'm starting to feel a real lack of this kind of fabric in my stash and actually investing in some more.  Maybe it is time for that shopping trip.  However, just a word of warning, one of the big issues with a shopping trip for African wax print is that it is sold in 5.5m lengths and while it is not always essential to buy that much, your incoming totals can mount up quickly.

I did not have 8 suitable buttons in my stash so it did involve a trip to the haberdashery (which is always fraught with peril as there is just so much temptation to try to resist).  However, I was good and just bought these buttons which have a subtle circle design on them, to echo but not clash with the print on the fabric.

This dress makes me really happy, it's smart enough to wear for work but also bright and patterned enough to give a little boost to my day.   I hope you all have colour or sewing or something to make you happy for the rest of the week.

All the sparkliness

This dress was a combo of random events! In a post-assignment high I started searching sparkly fabrics to reward myself.  Some people buy jewellery or shoes, I bought fabric!  Specifically gold sparkly, sequin fabric from Guthrie and Ghani, its out of stock but they still have silver.  To be honest I wanted the midnight blue sparkles but they were sold out and in my post assignment frenzy I needed something.  I may need to go away and thing about any addiction like symptoms I'm showing here but maybe after I go dance in sequins at our Christmas party!

I knew I needed a simple pattern without many stitching lines, to avoid the number of points I would be feeding sequins through my sewing machine.  I settled on the Ultimate shift dress pattern from Sew Over It.  

Making up the dress was actually relatively simple.  I was prepared for my machine to baulk at sewing through the sequins but it really didn't.  However as soon as you touch this fabric, to either cut or sew it, it sheds sequins EVERYWHERE!  My flatmate and I are now resigned to finding them everywhere for the rest of our lives!  I lined the dress in black peachskin which I've had in my stash for a few years, hopefully this will prevent the sequins jabbing me too much.

This is actually the first time that I've managed to make a Christmas dress, usually things get too crazy and I run out of time but this year is a win!  Time to go dancing and sing loudly to Christmas songs!

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.