You've got mail

Does anyone else feel like they're getting a present when you get a parcel in the post, even when it's something you've ordered for yourself? I didn't quite blow my budget at the knitting and stitching show so I ordered these from sewbox:

Which arrived today. I'm very excited! The buttons underneath the patterns were a free gift with the order, how nice is that?

Knitting and stitching weekend

This weekend was very craft orientated.  Saturday I went to the knitting and stitching show at Alexandra palace.  This amazing show hosts all kinds of producers and retailers of knitting and stitching materials from around the UK.  Its lovely to discover all kinds of products that you've never heard of before, also I loved the ability to touch and properly examine products before buying.  I bought some amazing fabrics, like this fabulous tweed from Fabric Affair

These tweeds are just gorgeous and on their stall they have some lovely finished products made from their fabrics.  They also had a gorgeous range of linens as well.  Check out their website, it's a really great resource as they have some great free and available to purchase patterns as well as the fabrics.

Another tweed stall was Magee fabrics from Donegal, they had some lovely stuff but all I allowed myself to buy was this offcut of a blue herrigbone tweed.

Yay for the Irish producers, I knew there was a reason we had so many sheep!  I will definitely make a fabulous quilt from these fabrics at some point.

I also purchased some fabulous moss green, polyester jersey.

This stuff is so soft and wonderful and I have big plans for it, watch this space.  The photo totally does not do its fabulous colour or texture justice.

My final purchase was this amazing Paris to London postcard fabric:

How great is it?  So many plans, I need to get sewing (I feel this is a phrase I use a lot but there are always more projects to do.)

How brilliant is this knitted/crocheted taxi cab cover?  So fun, it was advertising the launch of childrens book but I just thought it was fun for me to look at too, and as a bonus in the background there is a view of London!

There were also so many fabulous wools and yarns at this show, which I wanted to wrap myself up in but I resisted buying because a) I can show self restraint, and b) I don't currently knit.  However, Sunday was spent at a knitting class!!!  Where I used these lovely yarns:

to produce these:

These do not look like much but I am proud of them, despite the mistakes (which happily you can't see in my lousy photos).  The course is going to last 3 weeks and at the end I should be able to do a variety of stitches and follow a pattern and various other amazing things which means that I can start knitting myself some fabulous if basic things and next year I can go crazy in the knitting section of the Knitting and stitching show!

Just to balance out all the crafting, Friday night cocktails came with this view:

I love London!

Sorry about the awful quality of these photos, my iphone photography skills are even worse than my regular photography skills.

Nicola, Alexa and Letty have tea in the park!

I can tick one thing off my stash busting list!  I have finished my Nicola blouse, yay!

I love this pattern, it's flattering and really not difficult to put together.  It's my first Victory pattern and I found the instructions really easy and clear to follow (right up until the bit where they told me to 'sausage the waistband' at which point I just had to go my own way).  It all came together really easily and I'm really pleased with it.  I made a couple of adjustments, I added 5cm in length.  I've come to the conclusion that I need to do this for pretty much all patterns.  The pattern says it is made for someone 5'7"-5'9" which should make it exactly right for me but clearly my long body issue strikes again, even with the 5cm, this is just sitting at my waist.  I also had to add some press studs along the cross over as otherwise my bra would have been on show to the whole world, which kind of defeats the purpose of clothes really!  Even with the press studs, I need to wear a vest top under this blouse.  I know a couple of other bloggers said that they had had this issue too but I'm now a little concerned about how it will sit as a dress.  Wearing 2 tops is not a problem but I like to be able to wear my dresses without tops underneath.

It was such a lovely sunny day yesterday that I went to show off my Nicola blouse in the park! Thanks to Letty for the photos!

 

And some general silliness because it was such a lovely day!

Letty is super clever and has just passed some important doctor exams so we had prosecco and cake to round off the photography session. Well done Letty!

This blouse is lovely and although I'm not sure its a winter essential, it should see me through autumn with a cardigan:

This photo is arty, its not that we couldn't work out how to sort out the camera!

I'm in love, a Nicola dress is certainly on the cards soon!

The accidental muslin

In setting up my blog I wanted to challenge myself to make more items and document my progression.  However, my natural impatience means that I want results now.  In impatient mode I have not been taking the care that I should over garments and this has resulted in some temper tantrums on my part and some makes that I can't wear. 

I found this polyester/viscose blend on a recent trip to Paris.

I snapped up 6 metres of it for an absolute steal.  I was planning to make the Collette Hawthorne dress out of it.  However, when I pulled out the pattern I thought that a whole tartan full-skirted Hawthorne might be a bit much, but a peplum blouse seemed like a good idea and so off I went.  I have never made a proper muslin, I always feel that its going to be a waste of my precious sewing time, so I matched my measurements to the pattern and measured my body length against the pattern and away I went.  Mistake!  The first time I tried it on it was too tight round the waist.  I had to let out the side seams, once that was achieved and the blouse finished, I tried it on again only to realise it is also too short, the waist seam sits a lot higher than I would like and there is something about the pattern that appears to be exacerbating this problem.  Very sad face.

However, this is not a badly made item, its just badly made for me.  Enter my lovely sister who loves getting clothes donated to her and as she is stunning and can pull off pretty much anything, this blouse is being modelled by her.

I do really like this and am planning another version for me, just a touch better thought through this time.  The version I made for my sister has these fabulous vintage, swirly, gold buttons on it:

I don't remember where I got them and am truely in love with them but there is no way I'm going to cut them all off and sew others on so she gets to keep them.  We're going to pretend that this is because I'm a lovely sister and not because I'm lazy!

So if I consider this shirt a muslin, what changes do I need to make for my real version?
I need to add a few cm round the waist.
I need to add a lot cm length to the bodice.
Green Tartan in this blouse may not be ideal for me, I should probably pick a better fabric

My increasing wish list

 

There are so many great patterns out there and little time/money to buy and make them all.  The patterns currently heading my wish list are:
The Dakota shall collar dress from named clothing,
The Aubepine dress, the newest pattern from deer and doe,
Tania Culottes by Megan Nielsen,
and last but not least, the Mccalls misses shirt M6035,

Four patterns, that's not unreasonable right?  Until I think about the stack of patterns that I have sitting at home waiting to be made, some I even have the fabrics for!  Just look at all of these:



I have no idea what this pattern is or where it came from but its so cute.

 

 

Victory pattern's Nicola in this fabric:

 

 

 

Simplicity 5862 in a wool fabric.  Its kind of like this one by Miche from Buttons and birdcages.

 

Simplicity 5424.  I love this whole outfit, with the exception of the trim on the shirt collar.  I need this look in my life.

 

Style 4280 in this awesome cotton jersey

 

Butterick 5373.  This is a really recent acquisition and has jumped straight to the top of my to make list.  I just need to find the right fabric.

 

 

 I haven't tried making any pants yet but these look like they would be great and I could use up some of my scraps.

 



I would need to be really brave to try this coat.  I'm not convinced my skills are anywhere near good enough to cut into this beautiful cashmere and wool fabric

 

This basic A line skirt in this fabric:

 

 

The lady skater dress in this fabric:

  

Gosh that's a lot.  I really need to get sewing!

My first Indie Pattern

Reading so many amazing sewing blogs has meant that I've been introduced to all these great indie patterns, which has been wonderful but also really, really bad for my bank balance.  However, despite buying a number of patterns that I've been really excited about I haven't actually got round to making any of them yet.  So last week I bit the bullet and just got on with it.  The one I started with was the Maria Denmark Edith blouse.  I love this style of shirt and as it only requires a metre of fabric I had (almost) the perfect fabric for it.  The fabric is a metre of this beautiful pink quilting cotton that I picked up a couple of years ago in Paris, it was so lovely that I couldn't resist but as I wasn't doing much sewing at the time, it has sat in my stash ever since.  I took it out a couple of months ago as I needed 25cm for a quilt that I'm making (anyone see the problem appearing).  The more I looked at the fabric, the more I knew I wanted an item of clothing made from it, enter the Edith blouse patten.  I laid out my pattern pieces and was just able to squeeze them into the 75cm that I had left, (with a little piecing for the collar facing), yay!

The pattern came together quite easily, although the instructions do assume a bit more knowledge than I was comfortable with.  It was fine but I did definitely need to go and consult the sewing books/google a little more than I would have liked.  However, I'm really pleased with my end result, especially as this is certainly one of the most structured things (particularly most structured collar) that I've made.  See what you think:

Sorry about the creases, I had been wearing it all day.

I extended the waist a little on this as clearly my waist is not as narrow as others with my bust size and I needed an extra couple of cm so that I was able to breathe, however, this came off without a hitch. The shirt is a bit shorter than I would usually choose but a) I totally forgot to add any length when playing around with the pattern and b) I would not have had enough fabric left to add it anyway.  This is what was left of my fabric once I was done cutting:

The pattern is a pdf, I love the instant gratification that this provides but I did not love having to add seam allowances to this one.  I have not invested in a tracing wheel and carbon paper as yet and so was laboriously adding them with my ruler and french curve.  Maria is really clear everywhere on the pattern publicity that you have to do this and I bought the pattern anyway, I loved it that much, however, I still want to know what is the point on not including a seam allowance on a pattern?


This is definitely a pattern I will try again, however as we appear to have jumped into a super cold autumn, I need some winter appropriate clothes so maybe the Edith dress in a wool crepe?

Parasols in the park

I found this amazing fabric in a shop on Goldhawk Road, I took one look at the umbrellas and I had to have it.  I knew I wanted to have a dress made from this fabric, but which one?  I had this pattern in my stash:

One super short 1970s (I think) tennis dress, Style 4588.  I decided to make version 1.  I love this dress, but it needed some serious length to be added.  This dress pattern is short, which is why it comes with a pattern for matching knickers! I was hoping to add enough length so that the general public didn't get to see my knickers, matching or otherwise.  I added a good 15cm but even so this the dress is still not the most modest in my collection.  I never play tennis but I do cycle a lot and usually like my dresses to at least vaguely cover me while I'm cycling, this one doesn't!

The pattern came together without too many hitches but as the fabric was so thin, I had to line it.  However, I got lazy and decided that I was just going to double the pieces rather than create a proper lining, the inside definitely does not have that lovely sleek look of a properly lined garment.

I had only purchased 2m of this fabric and it's directional so I didn't have quite enough for the whole dress.  There is a little patch where I've had to add a bit to one of the front pieces.  I don't think it's really obvious unless I show it off though.

Can you spot the piecing?

The sleeves and the belt are made from an old shirt of my Dad's, I'm impressed by how perfectly this old shirt in my stash matched the main fabric.

I was desperate to finish it quickly as I wanted to wear it during a trip to visit my sister in Paris.  I got most of it done, except for the hem which I ended up finishing it in the sun in the Butte de Chaumont (Parisian park). 

This is what my sister got on with while I was completing my sewing:

Some photo's in a friends garden:

Things to change for next time:
I'm not sure I love the neckline, I think a v or scoop neckline would be better on me next time
Finish some bits better, especially in the sleeves where my pinked and folded hems are obvious
Add some more to the length
Maybe pinch some excess fabric out of the back (although I don't currently know how to do this)