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Showing posts from 2015

Birkin Flares! Pattern test :)

I was recently very lucky to be chosen to be one of the testers for Baste and Gather’s Birkin Flares !  I was very excited to be chosen, as I have been waiting (as many have) for the reign of the skinny jean to end, so I could re-embrace the boot cut and the flare J The Birkin Flares were released this week, and I can safely say that so far, I haven’t seen an unflattering version.  The tester group had all sorts of body types accounted for and everyone looks smoking in these!  Here are my version: I made these in a fairly firm denim from Lincraft, with some stretch.  I used orange top stitching thread and went the whole hog with rivets, proper jeans hardware, and leather tag (these are all part of the pattern detailing). For my version I lengthened them considerably – both for additional leg length (I am 6 foot tall), but also to create a deeper hem at the bottom, which feels more retro.  I actually wish I had made it even deeper.  I also did a large waist ad

Scirocco Dress by Figgy's for Issy

Before we went away for our trip my daughter asked if I could make her a new dress.  She came to the fabric store in Surrey Hills with me, and chose some wildly inappropriate (light and difficult to wash) fabrics, after I steered her away from the Collette Dinnigan silk. I made the Scirocco Dress from Figgy' s, which she chose because of the flouncy tiers and open twist back. She is pretty happy with it.  We layered the fabrics she chose and included some optional details, like the trim either side of the central pleat. Pretty neat, if I do say so myself... She is right on the upper end of the size range for these patterns, so am glad I got to make this for her this year.  The fit is fairly good, though I wouldn't want it to be much smaller. The twist back is interesting.  We added a contrast fabric to line it with - so there are peaks of pale green at the twist and when she moves.  The construction was fairly straightforward, but if you do want to line with a

Sallie Jumpsuit (or Secret Pyjamas)

When Closet Case Patterns released the Sallie Jumpsuit a while ago I bought it straight away.  I don't have a jumpsuit and have never been sure if they would suit my figure, but this one looked flattering and comfortable.  I also love Sallie Oh's blog and her style , which was an influencing factor! While I love Heather's black, long and wide legged pant version ( here ), I was staring down the barrel of a trip to Greece in mid-summer, so I modified the pattern to make a shorty version. I used a black and white print I have had in the stash for ages (result!  stash busting!), with a contrast red version (same print) for the lining and the tie. To make the shorts from the pants I made two changes - first was to shorten them to the length I wanted (plus hem allowance).  The second was to modify the shape to make them essentially straight leg shorts - a little wider than they would be if they were the top of pants.  I did this by drawing a straight line from the top

Sloan Travel Bag from Sew Sweetness

This is one I made some time ago as a pattern tester, but never blogged as I wasn't sure when it was released.  It's the Sloan Travel Bag from Sew Sweetness . This is definitely the biggest bag I have ever made!  I used a blue and white kind of weird fabric from the dreaded Spotlight: The reason I say this fabric is weird is that it is kind of like an ikat, in that it has the opposite colours on the reverse side, but it's actually two fabrics glued together.  I have no idea what that's called (aside from kind of weird). As usual with Sara's patterns, this is an easy to follow pattern, even for more complicated construction elements.  There is lots of cutting out which always feels like it takes forever (I just want to start sewing dammit!) but lots of cutting it out is how you end up with lots of pockets, so it's totally worth it. This bag doesn't look so big just sitting there in a picture does it?  Here it is with me for scale: So -

Book Week Outfit - Darcy from the Magic Ballerina (and I'M BACK!!!)

So I haven't posted SINCE MAY.  As my six year old son would say:  "what the...?" I did go away to Greece and the UK for a while but tbh, that was only 3.5 weeks of this time! Anyway - no apologies, straight back into it with some catch up posts. When we got back from our trip, I realised that the dreaded book week was nearly upon us.  I really loathe book week, mostly because I usually don't remember about it until it's upon us, but also because as a parent who can sew I feel a totally ridiculous (and largely self-imposed) pressure to sew something for it! This time I was fairly organised and this is the result - Darcy from the Magic Ballerina books: Sorry it's blurred...I didn't realise until now! I made the dress and we had some fun painting the shoes to be the special red, magic ballerina shoes. We used fabric paint from Spotlight and then I sewed some red elastic for the "ribbons".  I didn't want to use actual ribbons,

A dress win! McCalls 6884

I recently did an audit of my patterns (see here ) and was disturbed by how many of them were dresses.  The upshot is, I own about 20% dress patterns when I would probably wear them less than 5% of the time.  I also discovered I make more dresses than other things, despite them not ever really making me feel comfortable. So, of course my most recent finish is a dress (argh!).  This is McCalls 6884 in Robert Kaufman Laguna Knit Jersey and was a kit from Craftsy. Sorry for the terrible lighting - it was a rush job on a cloudy day before work..Also - what am I looking at?? I have to say I like this dress.  I believe it to be more flattering than it looks here (though perhaps I have made the crossover a little too high, given I am likely to wear a cami underneath anyway). Overall the dress is pretty comfortable and I like the length of the sleeves. The pattern was pretty straightforward to make up, though I didn't like the way the wrap at the front was handled.  I came

Onyx Shirt from Paprika Patterns (Pattern Test)

I put my hand up to test for Paprika Patterns a while back.  I had a great experience with making the Jasper sweater and it's getting a lot of use now the weather her in Sydney has chilled down a bit. Their newest pattern is the Onyx Shirt , which is designed for lightweight to medium wovens.  There are a number of variations between sleeves, necklines and cuffs, as you can see from the line drawings below: I made two versions, both with the scoped neckline shown on view B and both with sleeves.  They both have a hi-lo hem, which is more exaggerated on the crop version than the longer version.  While a crop top isn't usually my thing, I thought I might try this out: I used a thinish woven of unknown composition acquired from Spotlight some years back.   I think it actually has a small amount of stretch but not much.    I lengthened this top by about 2 inches and think it was 0.5 inches (or maybe a full inch) too much. Excuse the terrible pressing job on thi

Patterns I Own - a disturbing exercise...

A couple of weeks ago I got a new little file drawer thing to keep sewing patterns in (not all of them, because it's little, more the "working set" or queue).  It was a bit of an impulse buy but it's soooo pretty: Anyway, the purchase led to some sewing room reorganisation.  That sounds very grand, but "sewing room" is actually part of our bedroom, and "reorganisation" means I swapped one shelving unit and the chest of drawers around :) The "reorg" led to me deciding on a whim to catalogue all the patterns I have.  Because that wouldn't take long right?  I figured I would use Pinterest, as it's visual, and when Sara Lawson (Sew Sweetness) starting doing this a while back I was jealous. Many hours passed... WHAT???  I own 93 patterns for women alone  (note - this is now 94 as I realised when writing this I had missed one).  You can see them all here .  This doesn't even really capture it because several of thos