Around the world

It's Indie pattern month over on the monthly stitch, which is one of my favourite sewing events of the year as I always discover new patterns and designers and see great adaptations of patterns.  This year one of the themes was 'around the world' which meant that you had to sew a pattern by an Indie company outside your own country.  I thought this was a great challenge and really pushed me out of my comfort zone.  I'd assumed I sew lots of patterns from different pattern companies around the world and while this is true to an extent, there is a big slant towards UK pattern companies, the patterns I've made over the last few months have been from Cocowawa, By Hand London and A LOT of Sew Over It.

Anyway I consulted my pattern stash and pulled out the Waffle patterns Vanilla top.  I discovered this pattern company through a previous years indie pattern month, see an interview with the designer here. I think I bought this on black Friday last year so it's nice to finally get round to using it.

I used some jersey that I bought in Japan last year.  It's a nice symmetry to use a Japanese fabric for a pattern from a Japanese designer.  While Japanese designs always look so cool, the lack of fitting and defined waist line means that they're not usually my style so this was also my first venture into Japanese style patterns.

The front and back pattern pieces look crazy when they are laid out on the fabric, which was kind of exciting because it wasn't like anything I'd ever sewn before!  The instructions were good and I thought the design of the neckline binding was really good and gave a nice finish for a V-necked top in jersey.

However, I do think the sizing is bit off.  I made the jumper true to my measurements and I do think it's a bit too slouchy and oversized and because of the unusual shape, I'm not entirely sure how to fix it!  I have worn it loads since I finished it though so it clearly can't be bothering me that much!

Jumper refashion

I love this refashioned skirt that I made from a jumper last year and find it really practical to wear for work as I can cycle in it and its a decent length. However, as the weather got colder I was struggling to pair it with any of my cardigans or jumpers. I really needed a cropped jumper to pair with it. I started looking at different patterns, the coppelia cardigan and Bonnie sweater were both contenders. The problem was that I also had no appropriate fabric in my stash. I suppose to be stash busting and I've fallen off the wagon a bit lately so I was reluctant to do this. Then I remembered this jumper that I had in my stash. I had 'rescued' it from my boyfriends charity shop pile at one point. Potentially the same rescue mission that I had acquired the jumper for the skirt.

I loved the pattern and the colour was a perfect match for the trim on the skirt. However it was too big and too long for what I wanted so it was time to get altering. I started by putting it inside out on Rosie. I cut off the bottom ribbing and pinned the sides to get the shape I wanted. Then I (carefully) put it on and pinned the arms to slim them down as well. Then I ran all the pinned seams through my overlocker. Sorry I should have taken some photos of this process but I was on a roll. 

The next step was to try the jumper on with the skirt and adjust the length and then reattach the ribbing.  And ta-da one new cropped jumper.

I mentioned in my last post that I wanted to get my boyfriend crouching down to take some photos of me from a better angle and while I did mange it for this photo, it was so cold outside that we took a very limited number of snaps and headed back into the warm.

Most of the photos had me looking like this:

Shivering and with my eyes shut!

Sadly the eyes shut look is one I sport a lot, honestly we sometimes have to take about 50 photos just to get a couple of decent ones with my eyes open!  Just as well I never had aspirations to be a model!

What about you? Do you end up with lots of ridiculous reject photos?  Have a lovely weekend all.