So I’m really trying to keep on top of the box of socks situbar, because I’m worried that I’m just not going to get made the twelve I promised myself I’d make.  I’ve just been so… oh dear, I find it very tiresome when people whine about how busy they’ve been lately, but well, I have! during the last month Cassie announced her engagement to her one-term boyf Daniel, and then fulfilled my dream ever since basically the day I gave birth to her by asking me to make her wedding dress.  I’m so very thrilled for this!  Of course the whole family is over the moon and excited for another family wedding so soon!  Our days are becoming very very full.  And this will be my second wedding dress within a year!

I’ve even got started on the dress already… Cassie and I went shopping together at Fabulous Fabrics for a pattern and fabric, and bought a gorgeous pile of laces and the most beautiful heavy silk taffeta.  I’m so excited to cut into it!  And this is muslin number one.  It’s ok, however the fit is not quite right and there will definitely be a second before cutting into the precious taffeta.

Vogue 8470…

Aaaad anyway, just quickly getting back to just about the biggest anticlimax possible, my new pair of socks.  Pretty, huh?  I bought the ball of yarn in Japan.  Of course.  Everything in Japan is cool.

This is Opal yarn, colour KFS 128 “Ice cream”.  I absolutely love the soft pretty pinks and the frozen iceberg blues, however there was a short section in there of a sort of dirty white, with purple and green splotches; which I did not like.  So I removed these parts of the yarn while knitting, and I think the colour way is just so much the better for it.

The box of socks is looking pretty stuffed but mahty fahn all the same!

The post box of socks; the September edition appeared first on Handmade by Carolyn.

Ok, hopping straight to the crux of things; I absolutely J’FREAKINADORE this jacket!!  This is the new Sienna maker jacket pattern from Closet Case patterns, and I was lucky enough to be chosen to test the pattern.  This is view B, made using a deep bottle green cotton twill bought at Potters Textiles.  I actually found this in the remnant bin, believe it or not… yeah, Potters often does really BIG remnants.

We’re not supposed to reveal our tester versions of a pattern until it has been released, but I simply just could not resist sneakily wearing it! and have been (im)patiently waiting until I could chat openly about it… in fact, I took it on holiday with me recently when I visited the USA with Yoshimi on our sort of sewing-tour, because I really really wanted to include it in my travel wardrobe.  Also, I knew that Heather, with a bit of luck, was actually going to release it right about the timing of our trip.  And she did! yay!  so I was able to indulge my love of it in full.

photo taken in San Francisco by Yoshimi

And I wore it, literally Every Single Day.  This thing could most probably walk itself around San Francisco and New York by now!

The design is fabulously comfy; loose and stylishly slouchy, just slightly oversized in a good way, with two piece sleeves, notched collar, and a veritable tonne of pocket real estate.  A small but nice detail is a handy hanging loop included in the pattern pieces and instructions.

The belt from views A and B is pretty cool, snaking through a neatly faced slit opening, before wrapping around your waist and attaching itself to a little tab on the side.

Above can be seen the paler olive green poplin I used to finish the raw edges inside in a bias bound finish.  I kinda wish I’d hunted out  deeper bottle green that would match more closely the colour of the jacket, but both Yoshimi and Cassie reckoned the paler colour looked really good, so I guess it’s ok then.  I bow down to better, more stylish opinions than my own.

I flat-felled the side seams, centre back seams and both sleeve seams; I chose to do both sleeve seams because I knew I’d be wearing the sleeves rolled up most of the time, and wanted it all to look nice on the outside.

In fact, the only spot where I used the overlocker was the armscye; I figured these would remain pretty much totally hidden, most of the time, so meh…

I love how neat and almost … ?military? the jacket appears when firmly belted…

… and I enjoy wearing it open too, with the belt tucked into a side pocket.

OR, you can wrap the belt around your back only, just to pull in the back pouffiness a little, and tie it to the tab.  I often find with a jacket that I develop a strong preference for either open or closed, however with this one I tried wearing it all different ways on different days, and really liked it equally worn any which way.

As mentioned, the pocket situation is pretty fabulous.  There are enough pockets in this thing to satisfy the most fanatical and ardent of pocket-lovers, honestly.  View B has two ginormous patch pockets on the hips, a small breast pocket pictured above, and a large inner breast pocket picture below too, nicely big enough for your passport, phone, bus/train pass; well just lots and lots of stuff really.

But wait! there’s more!!  The jacket also has two quirky little pockets on your sleeves!!   ok, so you’re probably not going to use these ones super frequently, but they are there!  I guess you could store an electronic pass in there, for one thing, so you only have to brush your arm up against the detector without getting it out.  And they look pretty cute!

For my buttons, well, I was on a use-up-the-stash mission in the lead-up to my holiday, since I knew I was going to blow that one right out of the water during our holiday! anyway, I had some old wool-covered buttons in my stash, long ago cut off an old cardigan, and I coloured them in with a felt-tip pen to blend in nicely with my green drill.

To be honest, I had actually wanted to make the long version of the jacket, however my piece only allowed me to cut this shorter version.  I was initially a little sad about that, however I’m so in love with the finished version I couldn’t possibly remain sad for long.  And I am still keen to make the longer version!  I don’t very often want make the two views of things straight away like that, so if that’s not true love, I don’t know what is!

Interesting factoid, well to me anyway; my Stylebook app tells me I’ve worn it 17 times already and I’ve only just blogged about it.  Unbelievable!!!

    Details:

in holiday photos, I am wearing my cockatoo top and skirt, details here
White sandshoes by Trenery,
Black booties by nylon, bought at Zomp boutique
Prada gold hand bag

other photos:

Mustard tee; the Nettie pattern by Closet Case patterns, mustard merino, details here
Skirt; Vogue 1247, in outback wife barkcloth, details here
Tights; self drafted from my custom-fit pattern details on how to make your own here
Boots; Roberto del Carlo, bought at Zomp boutique

photo taken in New York by Yoshimi

The post Sienna maker jacket appeared first on Handmade by Carolyn.

Something I really wanted to do before my trip to the United States was to make a new outfit for meeting with other seamsters… with two days to go; I did!  I made a skirt and a little white top ensemble… each piece was actually pretty simple and the whole process from go to whoa took about half a day each.  Bam! I really  love sewing projects that just whizz together super quick like that.

I used Vogue 1486; a Nicola Finetti design.  Nicola Finetti is an Australian designer, and when have I ever seen an Australian designer collaborate with Vogue??  I’m pretty sure, never.  I decided this was a collab I absolute needed to support by buying the pattern…

For the skirt; I’d ordered 3m of cotton from Minerva.  I thought the print looked quite divine on the website, when it turned up it was actually a bit of a surprise, to be honest!  The print was divine; however it was also far far smaller, I mean, on a smaller scale, than I had imagined.  I’d sort of pictured the squares being each about 10cm, sorta like real Moroccan tiles, actually they’re more like 1cm.  Hey ho though; I still had hopes it would work out ok…  The colours are quite luscious, and very very me!  Mustard, terracotta, burnt orange, turquoise, green, a tiny dash of coral pink… honestly could this possibly get any more my sort of palette!

The fabric is beautiful quality, as good as I could have hoped for; soft, and still crisp enough, densely woven and yet still with a very nice drape.  It was also very generous width, however I still didn’t manage to cut the skirt pattern pieces out from my 3m length!! I know, right?!  You’d hardly believe it to look at it, but it’s a HUGE fabric hog!!  I had to piece a smaller section onto the end in order to cutout the back lower skirt piece.  The join is not perfect, but pretty good; plus it’s positioned so it’s hidden inside a side pleat, so it’s really quite invisible.

For the little crop top I used some slubby white cotton I bought years ago, from Fabulous Fabrics, and a navy blue chunky metal zip from Spotlight.  The top was super easy and fun to make.  You had to shorten the zip; and the instructions showed how to do this with a pair of pliers.. however I just could not pry the metal teeth off of the zip tape.  I struggled and struggled with this, but eventually gave up, and in the end simply cut the zip off at the right point and stitched a good solid bar tack in the gap between teeth to keep the zip pull firmly trapped where it needed to stay.  And I lOVE how the zip looks at the back of the little top!

innards…for some reason this sight is enormously pleasing to me….

You were supposed to put an exposed zip into the skirt too; however I decided this might all be a bit too much; overpowering the delicate print.  I just used a dark green invisible zip here instead.

And just saying; the skirt has fabulous pockets.  Fab -U -Lous…!

So I’d mentioned I whacked this outfit together in a matter of days… of course I haven’t made this pattern previously and didn’t really bother to do a careful fitting on myself either.  I’d picked a size 12; my correct size according to the size chart.  Usually I pick a 10 for Vogue patterns.  And I don’t know why I decided upon a 12 because, of course, turns out I should have picked a 10 for this one too… I knew I usually go a 10 for a reason!  the waistband is a little bit baggy on me, and – is it my imagination? – but I feel the top looks quite big on me too.  Not that this is going to stop me from wearing it, but just; you know.  For next time.

The day we’d planned to meet with sewing girls in San Francisco was a lovely warm day of 28C… so I felt so lucky I could wear my new outfit!!  however we only had the one warm day during out entire visit and that was it!  I was happy that I could wear it for one sewing meet-up, but just a wee bit disappointed it didn’t get another outing.  Like, the days we met other sewing peeps in New York city it was just too cold for it (sob)  so I had to make do with other things I’d packed…

from left: Yoshimi is wearing Vogue 2900, Beth is wearing one of her favourite dresses, a Butterick pattern, and Shams is wearing her Style Arc Stevie jean jacket

Later on we headed over to a cafe where Shams had organised an afternoon tea..

from left: and I apologise I did not catch what everyone was wearing this time … I think Rose is wearing a Cashmerette top and Jilly is wearing a tessuti patterns Lily dress??

Wendy, Shams, Yoshimi, me, Rose, Jilly, and Catherine is taking the picture… I knew I should have taken over the camera so she could be in the photo!

And that brown paper bag, clutched in my  pawsies??  Yup, you guessed it… it has a nice little stash of fabric tucked away…;)

Yoshimi took this picture on the train platform, after fabric shopping in the Bay Area with Shams and Beth.  I thought it was such a nice picture!  In fact the whole day was such a fun day!!  I wish I could hang out and gossip and chat and go fabric shopping with all these ladies more often!

The post “Moroccan tile” skirt and a little white top appeared first on Handmade by Carolyn.

above; this is me, shopping in Mood… eeeek!!! #dreamcometrue

So, during our April holiday in Japan, my lovely friend Yoshimi suggested an idea; that she and I meet in the US for a short holiday together; to go fabric shopping and to meet with sewing friends who we have both known for years but not actually “met” yet… I didn’t have to think for very long because I thought it sounded like lots of fun!

Time away:

14 days

Where to:

San Francisco and New York City, USA

Season:

early autumn, with expected daily temperatures of around mostly 21-24C  to one glorious day of 28C

Expected activities:

mostly visiting and hanging out with fellow sewing enthusiasts in the US! we  planned for exploring the city, fabric shopping, museum and art gallery visits, and also for one day of bike riding along the shoreline of San Francisco and across the Golden Gate bridge.

Colour scheme:

no particular colour scheme, just my regular palette of neutral/autumnal shades.  I picked things that I thought went nicely with my  new deep green canvas jacket, which turned out to be a good plan because I ended up wearing it every day.

What I packed:

(from left to right, top to bottom, the number in brackets after each item is the number of times it got worn… all items are linked to their original construction post. I made everything here except for the shoes, the ivory scarf and my gold handbag)

bottle green canvas jacket (14)
white cropped top and “autumnal” skirt  (1)
cockatoo print top and skirt (3)
floral dress (3)
mustard merino tee (2)
forest green twist top (2)
white shirt & purple top with leather sleeves (3) pictured together just because I always wore them together
ivory scarf (5)
blue-grey cardigan (3)
bookshelf skirt (3)
striped tee (1)
blue 3/4 trousers (4)
pink raincoat (0)
white sandshoes (8)
black booties (6)
green thongs (0)
black tights x2 (6)
a selection of sockettes (8)
gold handbag
white sunhat (0)
yellow bathers (0)

not pictured; my underwear, pyjamas, toiletries bag, knitting bag

My daily outfits:

or; more messy-looking but definitely more “authentically”…

Thoughts:

Overall I was very happy with the clothing I took, I think I took just the right amount of stuff actually, and wore things pretty evenly.  I’ve already waxed poetic about my new Sienna jacket so will not repeat myself by raving afresh here… but, it was for sure the MVP!

The only time I miscalculated my outfit was the day we rode over the Golden Gate bridge… everyone warned us it would be cold and we’d need to rug up.  Well, it was actually pretty hot and I sweltered in my merino tee and trousers!  I had to go hide behind a tourist bus and sneakily strip my merino tee off from under my, thankfully rather loose and baggy striped tee because I thought I was going to legit DIE of heat exhaustion.  Overly dramatic?  MOI?!

I loved wearing my cockatoo outfit… it got quite a few compliments, and not just from sewing friends who “knew” it from my blog!  I always feel good wearing it anyway, it’s quite unique and interesting; and especially being overseas it felt like a little bit of Australiana too, which made me happy.

I’d made my new Nicola Finetti outfit too, and this was absolutely perfect for that one very warm day in San Francisco.  Oh! I was so glad of that one warm day!  It would have been perfect if we’d had another warm day for when I met with the New York sewing peeps too, but oh well, c’est la vie.  It was ok because I wore one of my favourite dresses that day, the floaty floral number pictured at top, so that was fine.  btw, I took that sneaky selfie in Mood fabrics… propped my phone up on a handy roll of fabric and set the timer.  It’s not a good photo at all; grainy, badly lit, off kilter and blurry, and I totally love it for all those reasons!

Was there anything I packed that was not the slightest bit useful?  Well, my bathers, hat, pair of thongs, and my raincoat; lay completely undisturbed in the suitcase and did not get worn, even once!  Four things!!  Now, normally I hate packing and taking things for nothing, because of the waste of suitcase space; however I’m not too devastated this time.  For one; it’s always a good idea to take bathers I reckon, just in case; they don’t take up much room.  There was no need for them but hey, no biggie.  And thongs, for the same reason.  My hat; well, I dunno, just being in a sophisticated city environment kinda disinclines me to wear something as touristy as a hat.  Yes of course I AM a tourist, true, but still I didn’t want to wear it.  And not needing my raincoat was a good thing!  We were so lucky with lovely fine weather the entire time!! …

Yoshimi, Claudine, Peter, moi , Carolyn ….. btw Claudine’s jumper is one she knitted herself, using wool she spun herself, from the raw fleece if you don’t mind! and then dyed herself too…  WHAT A WORK OF ART I ASK YOU!!!

So, I’ve already posted pictures of the ladies we met in California, and it gives me so much pleasure to post these pictures of the New York sewing peeps we met too!  As with the California girls, so many of these people I have admired and followed for about a decade and it was so amazing and fantastic fun to meet for real!  I’m so grateful to Carolyn, of Diary of a Sewing Fanatic for organising a fabulous fabric shopping day out together with Claudine, Peter, Caroline and Carol, and to Sonja and Yvette for coming out to meet us for dinner later at Carolyn’s favourite restaurant Brendan’s.  It was such a wonderful day!

with Carol and Yoshimi in Mood… hehe, that thing behind us made me laugh when I noticed it creepily photobombing our picture!

below: Caroline, Claudine, Yoshimi, Carolyn

Earlier in our NY sojourn, we met up with the fabulous and very funny Marcy in the beautiful Grand Central Terminal!  I wish we could have gone fabric shopping with her at her favourite wax print store too!

and we had the most delightful breakfast and visit to Lucy’s Grocery Store with Kyle and Tomasa.  It was such a joy to chat at length with these two lovely ladies!

Yoshimi, Kyle, Tomasa,

Honestly, meeting sewing friends was the purpose and happily also the highlight of my trip; and dare I say it? even eclipsed the fabric shopping at such a worldwide sewing mecca as Mood, if that is possible.  And the fabric shopping in the Garment District is indeed an amazing experience.  I have no words actually.  It’s truly overwhelming, and everything you’ve ever read about the stores, the size of places like Britex and Stonemountain and Daughters in San Francisco, and the spandex shop and Mood in NYC, the stuffed-full-ness; the sheer ungodly number of bolts of fabric which must surely number up in the tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands… Pacific Trimming alone, oh my god.  What wouldn’t I give to have THAT haberdashery heaven in easy reach?!

OK, I said I had no words, and yet there ended up to be quite a few words after all…  Ha!

Finally, Yoshimi was the most delightful travel companion and I’m so happy and grateful that she suggested we take this lovely trip together.  I had so much fun and I sure hope she did too.  Thank you so much Yoshimi! for your friendship, and I hope we can take another trip together, some day!

randomly; another favourite ootd selfie … I sneakily took this one in the NewYork Met by propping my phone against my bag, on a handy seat… Sneaky!!

Now, seeking a random opinion…usually when photographing my travel wardrobe I lay everything out on the floor, as in the kind of “floor-drobe” that I used to have to steel myself to confront when entering my teenagers’ bedrooms… and this time I tried draping everything neatly over Jane, so it all looks nice and neat and clean and clear.  What do you think? Is this preferable to the usual floor-drobe? Or is it not as “real?

versus

yes, I did both…

Likewise, my daily outfit pictures… I think putting the outfits on Jane gives a clear and clean and well-detailed overview of the items and how they go together, and definitely looks quite “nice” compared to my real life pictures where you might not even be able to see details very well.  On the other hand, the “real” pictures are, well, REAL.

versus

It’s ok, there’s no “right answer, but still; which do you prefer?

The post San Francisco and New York, USA; a travel wardrobe appeared first on Handmade by Carolyn.

I meant to post this yesterday, however I’m … ok I’m NOT going to complain about being busy.  The dreaded B word.  It’s annoying.  Sorry!

However, ta da!  I finished these socks during my holiday away in the US with Yoshimi.  Here is the incriminating evidence of me in the act of conversational knitting while in San Francisco with Shams and Yoshimi…  and I can assure you we’re actually sitting in our air bnb here and I’m NOT actually humiliating us all while out in public..

I took my bamboo needles away with me, because I knew airlines are ok with skinny little bamboo needles.  However I did not knit one single stitch while on the plane!!  Nope, upon getting on the plane I proceeded to watch movies, eat dinner, sip champagne, and sleep.  I did absolutely nothing constructive whatsoever.  Ha!

it’s a tough life but somebody’s gotta do it

meanwhile, at home ahem…  #thePerilsofBeingaPetOwningKnittingBlogger

I bought the sock yarn while I was in Japan in April… it’s Opal yarn in the Van Vincent Gogh “Vase of Sunflowers” colour way 5432; and the pattern is kinda my own, heavily adapted basic sockette pattern in a Patons pamphlet from the 60’s, no C11.  I completely adore the warm swampy mossy yellowy, browny greens.  So very moi.

Before I drag out ye olde updated box of socks picture, I just want to put up this picture Tim sent through.. I’m rather thrilled he’s still wearing that outfit for Hallowe’en!!

Also I thought I’d share here my own Hallowe’en post for this year although you could not call this a costume, it’s just an outfit that I would wear on any other day.  Sophie makes the whole thing, imo… that darling little powder puff.

And now… finally.  Le box of socks is looking rather gorgeous, I reckon!!

The post box of socks; the October edition appeared first on Handmade by Carolyn.

I’ve just finished making this dress… it’s rather gorgeous, isn’t it?

Just before going away, I was contacted by the lovely Sophie, who asked me if I’d like to make something from the autumn issue of the Fibre Mood magazine… would I?!!  Fibre Mood is a newish Belgian sewing magazine, with a nice variety of designs suitable for different sewing skills, some quite simple, and some more funky and cool with interesting details.  I chose the Faye dress – I have to admit partially influenced by the totally divine sample! printed it out before going away, but got no further until the day I got home again …

and literally as soon as I got home, like the very same day… I got onto it and finished it.  Again, maybe influenced by the sample; I dug out from my stash this silk crepe in just about exactly the same colour.  Copycat?  Moi?  Well, I may have also been influenced by the fact that it was literally the only piece in my stash large enough for the pattern layout too!  I’d originally bought it from Tessuti’s in Melbourne, during one of my girls’ weekends over there with my Mum and Cassie.

It’s so autumnal!!  I’m incredibly into autumnal tones right now, I think probably influenced by all the beautiful fall foliage images we’re getting from the northern hemisphere right now, but also of course because I am an “autumn” myself.  I do think these tones suit me pretty well  

“pockets!!”…  in a hoarse drug-dealer-on-the-street-corner voice…

The design is slightly 80’s, in a really good way in my opinion! reminding me of the comfortably loose-fitting midi shirt-dresses with gorgeous wide and swishy pleated skirts from ralph lauren 80’s collections…  the Faye design IS a true shirt dress too actually; with a long concealed button band, and with both the bodice and skirt pleated into the waistline.  And, of course, and at the risk of sounding fanatical; HUGE pockets in the side seams, above  

The bodice has what look like pocket flaps on the front, but which are actually faux flaps, and are more of a design feature.  The back bodice has a matching horizontal seam, and a rather cute hanging loop as a purely visual feature.  I love small interesting details like this!

well, hello gorgeous!  Sophie likes the dress too…  

I didn’t have matching golden buttons in my stash, and am trying to use my stash rather than always buying new – holiday souvenir shopping notwithstanding!! – so I dug out some black buttons from my stash.  It may sound counterproductive to stitch very visible buttons underneath a button band constructed specifically to conceal them! however I actually like this look of them peeping out a a lot.

The sleeves are stitched with a very wide hem, which is then turned up to for a self-cuff.  I really love the almost “safari” shirt vibes of the bodice.  This photo also shows the nice pleats in the bodice and skirt fronts.

The only part of the design I found a little too scantily explained was the hemline… there were basically no instructions as to how to finish the hemline with that concealed button band as well as the button band itself either.  I know from past experience this is something you do have to address a lot earlier than the very last step! this sort of thing requires stitching the corners right sides together and turning out, and at least a little bit of hand-stitching things down.  The instructions for Faye pretty much leave all of that entirely up to you.  I also decided to hand stitch the concealed button band pieces together at the lower edge too, to make it all look a bit neater and seamlessly finished off.

Also, in my  opinion, the nature of the button/buttonhole band construction makes for a very thick area at the front of the waistline… because the button band and concealed buttonhole band are cut-on with the bodice and skirt, and then seamed together at the waistline… when you create all those multiples folds that are inherent in a button band, not to mention that of the concealed buttonhole band, well let’s just say there’s a heck of a lot of layers in there.  If I was going to make this again, I would probably cut the button/buttonhole bands separately and in one long piece, no waistline seam, and attach them to the centre front edges of bodice and skirt after they’re joined together.  The way it’s done in Faye is not actually terribly terrible, because this is the kind of dress you wear a belt with it, and a belt hides the waistline anyway; however I think this approach would make for a less bulky and cleaner waistline.

The hem, I made as a super skinny rolled hem, finished with tiny fell-stitches.  My crepe is the kind of fabric that when you press your very narrow finished hem, thus flattening it out from 3D to 2D, it morphs out to a much wider hem, seemingly by magic.

Summary; I love my autumnal new dress! and may even dare to wear it as a spring-time dress… I think it will work equally well!

Details:

dress; Fibre Mood “Faye” dress in a golden silk crepe from Tessuti’s in Melbourne
Tights; self-drafted using my own custom fit pattern and black polyester stretch from Spotlight
Belt; super old one from Country Road
Boots;  Officine Creative from Zomp boutique, a birthday gift from Craig

the swish is amaaaazing!  I’m so into the swish right now!

The post deep golden Faye dress appeared first on Handmade by Carolyn.

… so, I mentioned Cassie’s engagement? and of course I’m completely thrilled to be asked to make her wedding dress!  Thrilled, maybe tempered with a little nervousness, shall we say? but still nonetheless thrilled.  I might even have been anticipating this very thing every since she was born!

Anyway, I’ve made a start… with a coupla petticoats.   Yes, petticoats, plural.  I shall now proceed to explain…

First of all; a stiff, tulle petticoat, to give plenty of volume and oomph to her bridal ensemble.

I’d read a blog post YEARS ago about making a petticoat but couldn’t find it, and so I just plowed ahead and made the above petticoat with what I could remember.  But I do hate not giving credit, so after hunting and following links for what seemed like ages I finally found it!! this post here by Sugardale.  I remember being very impressed with Sugardale’s post when I first read it, but I still somehow neglected to bookmark it or save any useful details that would enable me to find it again upon the occasion that I would need to use it.  But eventually I did find it.  And straight away realised that I had failed dismally to follow any of her instructions when making my own petticoat, so hmmm, there’s that! For example; Sugardale recommended an odd number of tiers, I made mine with an even number; Sugardale recommended working from the bottom up, I, in fact, worked from the top down.  Honestly? I don’t think these issues are a big deal, I think either, or even any way is probably going to work out just fine…

After making a muslin for Cassie’s dress – two actually – we determined the length of the skirt would be 87 cm.  I decided upon 4 tiers, with the following finished heights:  from top down; 20cm, 21cm, 22cm, 24cm… staggered heights just because I believe it looks better and more balanced to have the lower tiers wider than the upper tiers.

I did remember enough of Sugardale’s instructions to know that the tiers started at 2yds from and top and needed to double in circumference with with each tier down; and the tulle I scoped out in Spotlight had a width of 126cm (49.6inches)  So I calculated the following dimensions for my pieces:

Please note:  tier 4 only has 1 single 1cm seam allowance added to the height, since the bottom edge is the lower edge of the petticoat and doesn’t need a seam allowance.

You can see by my calculations and measurements of the tulle I bought, that one and a half cut lengths measures 189cm which I decided didn’t need trimming down.  Yes, my tiers were going to end up with a wider circumference overall than recommended, but I decided that a bit of extra volume was definitely not a bad thing.  It is in fact a very good thing!

How much tulle to buy?

So, according to my calculations; I was going to need:

(2 x 22cm) + (3 x 23cm) + (6 x 24cm) + (12 x 25cm) = 6.6m of tulle  Allowing for errors, I bought 8m of ivory tulle.

I used my rotary cutter and mat to cut the pieces as cleanly and as neatly as possible, and I cut and finished all gathering and stitching of each tier completely at a time before proceeding to the next tier, so as to not mix up the pieces.  I can tell you, by the time  you get to the bottom tier of 12 pieces, you do NOT want to get them mixed up!!

For the top tier, (circumference 189cm); I stitched it not fully closed, but leaving an opening of about 15cm from the top edge, so that Cassie can step into the petticoat.   The seam allowance either side of the split opening I simply folded down and topstitched it down on either side of the split.  I then ran a gathering stitch around the entire top edge and pulled it up to roughly fit Cassie’s waist measurement.  I cut a bias-cut strip of white cotton poplin, measured off Cassie’s waist measurement of 63cm and pinned to mark, and gathered the top tier (189cm) into this length.

After stitching each tier, I topstitched the upper seam allowance of each tier to the skirt above, approx 7mm from the stitching line.  I think this gives it a bit of strength, and lends a bit of pretty visual structure to this ethereal thing too.  Not that it’s meant to be seen, but well, you know…

Sophie checks out a weird THING

To finish the waist tie, I pressed the raw edges of the waistband strip into the centreline, then pressed the strip in half, and topstitched in place, about 2mm from the opening edge.

When putting the petticoat on, Cassie steps into the skirt, then the long ends of the waistband are pulled across from each other, wrapped around her waist and tied in a simple knot or bow.

It stands up by itself!

I stuck it up on the kitchen bench for a while, while I had to do something else, and I dunno, the sight of it gave me such a laugh!  Like a little tulle volcano, or something.  Mt Petticoat!!

Because bare legs against a scratchy tulle petticoat will probably become very uncomfortable very quickly, I also made a simple full circle petticoat to be worn underneath, using ivory cotton voile from Spotlight.

This is also 87cm in length, and for this I bought 4m and used every single bit!  I cut this length in half, and then cut the half circles for the two halves the skirt by the “fold into halves, then quarters, then eighths, then again” and cut across the lower edge to get a rough, but good enough curve; method.

The waist opening is made by cutting off the top, just 8cm from the tip.  When stitching together the two half circles of the skirt, I again made sure to leave an opening of at least 15cm so she can step into the skirt!!  and same as for the tulle petticoat, to finish the slit edges I simply pressed down the seam allowances either side of this slit and topstitched them into place.

To finish the waistband and for closure, I again made a bias cut strip of the same fabric, and stitched it to the waistline, leaving long tails either side, pressed the raw edges to the middle of the strip and stitched it closed, same as for the tulle petticoat.  By the way; I usually stitch this; right side of strip, to wrong side of skirt; this means when you fold the raw edges of the strip over you’re actually topstitching from the right side of the skirt, which of course ends up looking much neater from the right side. Which is just what you want.

For the lower edge of the fabric petticoat, I overlocked the raw edge to provide a stable and even width guide for hemming; then folded the overlocked edge under twice and topstitched it down.

The two petticoats!  I think they look so pretty together!

The post how to make a tulle petticoat appeared first on Handmade by Carolyn.

O haiiiiii!!  As per the title of this post I have indeed made a cool white dress.  Noice, huh?

IN other news, in an attempt to be more time efficient I am now aiming to write this blog post in the swiftest time possible, and with minimal to-ing and fro-ing and correcting and proof-reading.  Since normally I’m about as slow as a wet week.  Let’s see how I go… it is now 16:17…

So this is Burda 08/2017; 119; also known as the “miscellaneous dress” on the Burda style website.  I was idly browsing on the website and spotted it, and instantly fell in love.  I almost almost clicked buy now for the pdf, when I thought to do a last minute check on the Burda magazines I have in my collection.  Bingo.  Of course I already have it.  WIN!!

I had a length of white cotton sateen sent to me by Minerva; it’s very thin and a little crisp, and perfect for a highly detailed little summer dress like this design, I think, with some twists and folds and pleats and things that are perfectly highlighted in a plain colour.  Or,should I say, non colour?  with black and white, I never know whether it’s technically correct to call them colours actually, but my personal feeling is that both ARE colours and should be awarded that title.  Why should the most commonly used shades in apparel not be considered official colours anyway?  Weird.  But I digress.  I’m never going to write a nice swift blog post at this rate!

So, my dress.

I love designs with a twist and/or something unusual/asymmetric/weird about them, which is the reason I chose this design since; it’s chocka with stuff like that; obviously it has that belt/cummerbund thingy at the waist, and there is also an apparently full length asymmetric fold running all the way from the left shoulder right down to the hemline.  it’s not really a full length fold, that’s just an optical illusion since it’s chopped off and restarts in the waistline, but I love how it does look like it runs all the way through.

This Burda pattern is quite a challenge actually, and I scratched my head several times as to what I was supposed to be doing.   My advice is to mark the seam NUMBERS carefully and accurately; yes, those corners on a Burda pattern where there is a 1, 2 etc; those are the seam numbers which are often used in the instructions.  In my view, having them marked in this pattern is imperative to success.  Attaching the front bodice and skirt to the ride side middle piece and the right front middle piece, and the tab piece is pretty darn tricky to get your head around.  I’m not even sure if I got it exactly right in the end, but it “looks” pretty good and that’s all that matters really.

And truthfully I love a challenge though, something you can really get your teeth into  

Clara asks; does my bum look big in this?

I also have a little feeling I should have done some sort of small bust adjustment, but am probably just splitting hairs here; I’m actually very happy with the final result and am positive I’m going to wear it a lot.  You know one of those dresses that it’s almost impossible to take a bad picture of it?  It felt a bit like this when I was reviewing the pictures of this one.

The fabric had just a little bit of stretch, just enough that I risked sewing  up most of the centre back seam, and only put in a short, 15cm zip at the top end near the neckline, enough that I could fit my head through it.  This worked out great, I can pull the dress over my head and it stretches just enough that I can wriggle into it just fine!

The back is really pretty plain; kinda blah with nothing special going on at all.  I think in a perfect world I would have chosen for this design to have something equally visually interesting at the back too, but well, you can’t have everything.

The first day I wore it, I paired it with my handmade slides/sandal things that I made at my first shoe camaraderie workshop… I love how they look together!

So that’s it!  It is now 16:45; not too terrible… oh but I haven’ t counted the time it took to take and upload pictures. Damm!

I am actually in this picture here, posing like a boss somewhere back there.  There just happens to be a subtle, unobtrusive bit of photobombing going on at the same time…

Details:

Dress; Burda 08/2017;119, in thin cotton sateen
Shoes: white slides made by me! details here 

The post I made a cool white dress appeared first on Handmade by Carolyn.

Should that be “Carolyn” in blue velvet??  well I think it should!  Because this thing is so very very me!  LOOOOOOVE!

Actually, this is the Carole pattern, from the new issue of Fibre Mood magazine, available for purchase here.

The fabric is a totally GORGEOUS deep blue velvet that I bought at the Morrison fabric sale from.. ooh, maybe a few years ago?  I forget.  This also happens to be the only piece of fabric I had big enough for this pattern.  Lol!  Same as for the Faye dress, this pattern is a HUGE fabric hog!  It doesn’t show up too much, but there is a centre back seam on every back piece; the bodice, the middle piece, and the skirt piece.  This is not ideal, but was completely unavoidable.  The skirt piece alone is ginormous!  Even trickier; the pattern is designed for fabric 150cm wide, which my fabric was NOT ahem; it’s important to comply with this simply because the skirt piece is too big to cut out with fabric any narrower.  I only managed it by flipping the skirt pattern piece by 90 degrees and having a centre back seam.

Even one of the front middle pieces is also pieced down the centre, but I sneakily arranged for it to be the left front, the one that is covered up once the dress is all wrapped up closed.  You could never tell! except that I’ve now told the whole internet, right here, woops…

Technical deets:  I omitted applying iron on interfacing to the skirt opening edges.  Well, I did actually apply it, but thought it looked too stiff and did not allow the skirt to flow and undulate elegantly in the way I desired it too… so I peeled it off.  I think the skirt turned out so much better without it!

I had precisely zero velvet left after cutting out the main dress pieces, so cut the bodice and neckline facing from an old pair of Sam’s work trousers, which was the perfect shade of inky navy blue.  I’ve previously used these same trousers for the piping and buttons on this dress here.  Waste not want not!

For the ribbon tie closure, I bought a length of navy blue cotton twill tape, and zig-zagged the raw ends so it won’t fray.  The hem is hand-slip-stitched in place.

I absolutely LOVE this dress!  I almost, almost wish the weather was colder, so I could start wearing it in earnest… but well, I could never truly wish for colder weather, really.  Not with a straight face.  However, I shall very much look forward to wearing it next year.  Truthfully, I actually finished making this quite a while ago… like a few weeks ago #oops but have been completely unable to take a picture of it.  Partly that’s me being lazy.  It’s been so hot!  unseasonably so, and I just didn’t want to put it on.  I did try to take pictures indoors, at my now usual photo spot; but they were terrible.  I LOVE velvet but obviously it’s like a black hole when you photograph it, soaking up all light and basically looks just dark and completely featureless.  This is an example of what I’m talking about…

hehe, only including the picture because it’s got my beautiful Sophie in it, really…

Another thing is .. well, you guessed.  The wedding dress.  As well as the wedding consults and planning.  We helped a lot with advice and as a sounding board for Tim and Kelly when they were planning theirs; and now of course, Cassie being our daughter, and the lion’s share of planning a wedding generally falling to the girl; fair or not that’s just how it is! well of course we’re fully into the details of this one too.  I’m just getting more and more behind on everything! and my sewing/blogging schedule is all over the shop.  I’m not complaining, far from it! but just explaining I suppose.  Life is currently quite FULL, for us.

Hmmm, got carried away and off the subject just a little bit there…  I should just delete all that, but I’m currently in the mood for stream of consciousness blogging, so I guess it should stay.  Ha!  That’ll teach me!

Details:

Dress; the Fibre Mood Carole dress, in deep blue velvet
Tights; made by me, details here
Boots; Sempre di, from Zomp boutique

The post Carole in blue velvet appeared first on Handmade by Carolyn.

I finished my November pair of socks; yay! And actually within the month of November too.. double yay!

So I bought this Utterly Divine Yarn #capitalswarranted in San Francisco during mine and Yoshimi’s holiday there… we visited this fantastic little yarn store called Imagiknit in the Castro area and of course I had to buy a souvenir!  Yoshimi did too, and finished hers super quick… see here!

This is actually my very first wearable souvenir of my US trip to be made up and realised, just a little more than a month after coming home but given my current workload I consider that to be not too bad, not too bad at all!

The yarn is Urth merino sock yarn, col 2002, made in Turkey; I did look out for some US made/grown yarn but simply could not walk away from this colourway once I’d spotted it.. isn’t it just the most glorious set of colours?!!  I couldn’t resist winding it up during my stopover in Auckland on the way home, hehehe; yes; it’s weird to wind yarn in public BUT; killing time, and doing something constructive towards my next pair of socks, well seems like a good idea to me!  Two ladies separately came up to me in the lounge and we had little chats about knitting and yarn, which was really nice!  Aaah, knitting…. the great equaliser.

contemplating winding in public

it’s kinda rare to get a view like this while you’re winding yarn

and… done!  I thought it fitted right in with the decor of the Air New Zealand business lounge

I so enjoyed knitting this up; as each little section of colour came up I drooled anew every single time.  That dusky plum-pink! that rich chocolate-y purple! that sharp acidic safety-vest yellow!!  SO GORGEOUS!!  REOUUUWW! – that’s me ripping into the ball of yarn with my teeth and gobbling it all up; it’s just that yummy….  metaphorically speaking, obviously!

It’s a wondrous thing to not tire of the yarn before finishing the socks; usually you do get just a wee bit over the colour before the end but in this case I was just as fully in love with it at the last grafting-off as I was when I first spotted it on the shelf.

le Box of Socks…

Now just one final question comes to mind … is it possible to squeeze that one last, 12th pair of socks into the box, mmm??  This remains to be seen… stay tuned!

The post box of socks; the November edition appeared first on Handmade by Carolyn.

Oh hey.  I made a dress. Wot a surprise!  No seriously, how cute is this dress?  Like, I think it’s rather cute, eh.

did I make my shoes too? why yes I did!  thanks for noticing!

 But of course what am I here for? but to provide the exact deets on how you can procure such hacked cuteness for yourself too.  AND; be happy about how you not only made it yourself but that if you do so, you’re also raising funds towards an excellent good cause too… and did I mention there is a competition? with prizes?!  No? well you could be in the running for a sewing machine, or an overlocker machine!  Check out all the deets here!!

So, a few months ago I was contacted by Rachel of the Foldline re taking part in this thing, the third annual sewing blogger “hacker” tour with Simplicity/McCalls.  Hacker?  yes, I can tell you’re immediately interested, since all of us who sew also LOVE to hack; butcher; ham-fistedly riff upon  add our own little “something” to a design, yeah? well, the tour is an initiative where proceeds raised from the sale of a small range of Eminently Hackable (TM) patterns nominated in the tour will go towards the Eve appeal charity… In all seriousness the Eve Appeal is a truly excellent resource to raise awareness of gynaecological cancers, and to provide a port of call for those wishing to seek information about the condition and the community.  The site helps people with where to go and what to do, who to call for medical and non-medical cancer advice and support, should that situation arise in their lives.  Like everyone else, I have very close friends and relatives who have gone through this dreadful experience, so I know sites like these can be a very soothing thing to turn to, when your closest loved ones just don’t know what it’s like or what to do…

I’m like, well GOOD ON Simplicity for being a part of this!   here is the list of Simplicity sewing patterns that are part of the hackathon for the appeal…

S8378 XXS-XXL
S8658 XXS-XXL
S8700 XS-XL
S8701 H5 (6-14) U5(16-24)
S8888 XXSl-XXL
S8929 XXS-XXL
S8930 XXS-XXL
S8991 XXS-XXL 
S8992 XXS-XXL

btw, the patterns I’ve listed above are all directly linked to the Simplicity website, but are NOT affiliate links,  I would always disclose an affiliate link and in any case have so far had a super impressive, grand total of ONE affiliate link in all my decade of blogging – my goodness, how time flies! – but anyway,  rest assured I am not making a single cent out of this!  it’s all going to the Eve appeal!

Anyway, I chose Simplicity 8658… which is a pretty nice, loose, basic raglan sleeved tunic top, with some optional ruffle action going on… and I made a dress.  Of course, one doesn’t have to “hack” the pattern, if you just want to make it up just as it, that’s fine!  However, I couldn’t resist a few tweaks, here and there, just because not only do I love a good hack-attack but also I do love a cute little summer frock and could see how this pattern could so easily become the CUTEST summer frock imaginable! and I think it turned out ok too!  … and I have thusly, and dutifully, documented any and all such tweaks in excruciating detail, right here because well, I am a blogger after all…  Bloggers, must blog.  It’s what we do  (shrug)

I used  this beautiful navy blue floral, cotton and linen single gauze from Minerva    to make my dress.  I’ve always waxed lyrical about how much I love navy blue and pink as a colour combo, so no need to bang on further,  it’s just… CUTE, that’s all.  Navy blue, and pink; am I right?  And the texture of this stuff is just as lovely as it sounds; almost exactly like nani Iro double gauze, except it’s a single gauze, so not quite as “cosy” which is a very good thing in our very hot summers! and still with the same, super soft and exceptionally lovely light-as-a-feather touch to it.  I love this fabric so much!

When I opened the pattern I was pleasantly surprised to find included a large sheet of grid paper, printed with 1″ x 1″ squares all over.  Obviously to make your pattern-hacking plans just that much easier!

After some thought, I decided to make the following hacks:

• cut the back on the fold, as one piece
• cut the front as two separate pieces, with an overlapping V-neck opening.  This would have little self-fabric loops and self-covered buttons to “close”.  Inverted commas around that “close”, because actually the V-neckline is wide enough that I can just pop it on over my head, no need to undo any buttons at all  #cleverNON?!
• use the lower ruffle but lengthen it considerably so it actually transformed the tunic into a full-blown dress  #DOUBLEclever…NON?!!
• put in pockets.  Because, obviously, pockets.

So above are my cut-out pieces.  Additional pieces to the pattern are the two front facings, which have exactly the same profiles as the front opening edges, at 5.5cm wide not including seam allowances.  I added a 1cm seam allowance to both the front opening edges, and the facing front opening edges too.  I applied lightweight iron-on interfacing to the facing pieces.  And, the pocket; which is basically self-drafted, though I can barely even write that with a straight face.  I laid my hand down and drew around it for heaven’s sakes.  It’s pretty big, because I have big ungainly hands.  This is seriously my most used pattern piece, of all time.  I use it in every single thing that I possibly can!

First step: stitch together the sleeve pieces, as directed.  I opted to overlock all seam allowances to finish, using my overlocker and navy blue thread.

Stitch the back sleeve pieces to the back piece.

Belatedly stay-stitch the back neckline (woops!)

Interface the front facing pieces and finish the raw edge on the overlocker (or HongKong seam, or bind, or turn under and hem, whatever)

Make a skinny rouleau or “spaghetti strip” for the button loops; by cutting a 3cm (1 1/4″) wide strip on the bias, folding right sides together and stitching to give a 6mm (1/4″) tube, turn right sides out  (a more detailed description on how to make rouleau strips here)

Cut into 5cm (2″) lengths for the button loops, and spacing them evenly; stitch them into place along the opening edge of the right front.

Lay facing pieces over the bodice front opening edges, and stitch.

Trim, and clip into the point.  Press open, under stitch.

Cut a 2.5cm (1″) bias strip, and apply to the entire back neckline to finish, including both sleeves as well as the back piece  (this technique described in more detail in this post here).

Pin the front bodice pieces to the front sleeve armscye, abutting the neckline edge of the sleeve hard up against the front/front facing seamline.  Fold the front facing back over the front, right sides together, and enclosing the front sleeve between the two.  Pin, and stitch.  (apologies for the photobombing camera strap)

Trim corners, grade seam allowances, and turn out.

Attach buttons to the left front bodice piece, corresponding with the button loops.  I used self-covering buttons, purchased at this etsy store here; and covered them with the same floral fabric as I used for the dress.

Measure where you prefer your pocket pieces to lie – this is a personal preference determined by your own arm length – and attach the pocket pieces to both  ruffle/skirt pieces, front and back.  Stitch side seams of ruffles, going around pockets  (inseam pocket insertion described more fully in this post)

Apply gathering stitch to top edge of ruffle/skirt, draw it up to fit the measurement of the bodice.  Stitch, over gathering stitches.  Hem sleeves and ruffle, and yay! it’s finished!!

I’m so happy with this dress! and really enjoyed brainstorming how I could transform the basic pattern to get the look I wanted.  Let’s be honest; hacking IS fun, and is always something to consider as part of the creative process for those of us who make our own clothes.  I would absolutely love if my dress here inspired anyone reading this post to perhaps join in with the hack-along… it’s open to everyone throughout the world! and what’s more runs all the way through January so there’s still plenty of time to get involved.  You can share your creation on social media and use the hashtags #hackalongday #hackalongparty #hackalongvintage in order to be in the running to win one of the pretty generous prize pool  … see all the deets here.

Please let me know if you do join in!

Here’s some more inspiration from the other bloggers taking part, using other patterns from the list, please do visit and check out the very creative and interesting hacks from these very creative and interesting ladies!

1. Thursday 26th September
Juliet, from Sew So Natural
https://sewsonatural.com

2. Thursday 3rd October
Abi, from Crafty Pinup
https://www.whatabimakes.co.uk

3. Thursday 10th October
Rachel, from The Fold Line
https://thefoldline.com/blog/

4. Thursday 17th October
Susan, from Susan Young Sewing
https://susanyoungsewing.wordpress.com

5. Thursday 24th October
Brittany, from Brittany Jones
https://www.brittanyjjones.com

6. Thursday 31st October
Bianca, from Sleepless in Bavaria
https://sleeplessinbavaria.com

7. Thursday 7th November
Amy, from Almond Rock
http://almondrock.co.uk

8. Thursday 14th November
Victoria, from Victoria Lucille Anne
https://www.victorialucilleanne.com

9. Thursday 21st November
Sara, from The Sara Project
https://thesaraproject.com

10. Thursday 28th November
ooo, that would be ME! haha

11. Thursday 5th December
Rumana, from The Little Pomegranate
http://www.thelittlepomegranate.co.uk/

12. Thursday 12th December
Emily, from Self Assembly Required
http://selfassemblyrequired.co.uk/

13. Thursday 9th January
Marie, from A Stitching Odyssey
http://www.astitchingodyssey.com

14. Thursday 16th January
Portia, from Makery
https://makery.co.uk

15. Thursday 23rd January
Barbara, Lisa and Louise, from The Pattern Pals
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChdhdeKB7n39vstdMNGgX3w

16. Thursday 30th January
Jen, from The Gingerthread Girl
https://gingerthreadgirl.co.uk

Details:

Dress; Simplicity 8658 modified, single cotton/linen gauze
Shoes, my own design and made by me, details here

The post a cute little hackysack of a dress appeared first on Handmade by Carolyn.

In spite of being a Forget-me-not pattern I almost forgot to post this!! Except I didn’t, because here I am posting it.  But I had forgotten? for a little while anyway; that forgetful state of being ending as soon as I remembered.  I guess it’s technically not possible to “almost” forget something.  You’ve either forgotten something, or you haven’t; either one, or the other.  Like, maybe you DID forget something, but then all of a sudden, you DID NOT forget that something.  Ahem.  Yes, my brain does indeed love to devolve into such ridiculous semantics, arguing to and fro with myself.  Ultimately I did not forget, which is the main thing…

So, the skirt!  I made it a few months ago, as a tester for the pattern; it’s the Sabrina skirt pattern by Johanna of Forget-Me-Not patterns.  This is a really nice pencil skirt design of a deceptively simple appearance, I say “deceptively” because it has so many options for custom-shaping it to hug your own individual curves exactly, you really have no choice but to find that perfect fit… To start with, it has shaped gores; three in the front and four in the back; plus waist darts as well.  Additionally;  this very comprehensive pattern also contains separate pattern pieces for three different fit versions;  a straight fit, a mid fit, and a curvy fit.  You select which version you’re going to make based upon your own personal hip-to-waist body measurements.  It’s an amazingly detail-driven pattern!

The pattern also includes separate pattern pieces for the optional lining, and instructions for installing it in two different ways; the easy way or the more advanced way.  No prizes for guessing which one I chose to try out!

The advanced way results in a beautifully installed lining, with all seams and edges neatly and perfectly enclosed inside..  I’m over the moon with how my lining turned out! all steps are meticulously and carefully explained, and I found it very easy and straightforward to follow along.  In fact, the instructions are absolutely excellent; and I can highly recommend!

Fabricwise; I used a piece of rather lovely rusty-orange wool tweed, a leftover scrap inherited from my paternal grandmother, and a not quite matching deep raspberry lining fabric from my stash.  I had just enough of each to cut out the skirt, with zero leftovers.  It always makes me feel like celebrating when this happens!  It didn’t even feel like too much of a risk; entrusting my precious fabric to an untested pattern, because I knew with all those fitting seams and darts I’d be able to fudge fine-tune a really good fit.  I’d chosen my size based mostly upon my child-bearing hip measurements, and didn’t have to do much in the way of special fitting alterations, just nipped it in just a little towards the waist.

So, I finished this just as the winter was ending, and I’ve had to tuck it away to wait for next winter. I am really looking forward to wearing it though.  Not only is the fabric kinda special to me, knowing it was from Marnie, but a sleek, perfectly fitting pencil skirt is a no-brainer, yeah?  very much my style.

I’m happy!

Details:

Cowl; hand knitted by me, details and my pattern here
Merino tee; Nettie tee pattern by Closet Case patterns, details here
Skirt; Forget-me-not Patterns Sabrina skirt
Tights; made by me using my own custom-fit pattern, details here
Boots; Roberto del Carlo, from Zomp boutique

The post Forget-me-not Sabrina skirt appeared first on Handmade by Carolyn.

I’ve made a new dress, and how gorgeous is this splashy, scribbly, fireworks-y print!  And the way this divine rayon challis ripples breezily against my legs was actually quite quite delicious… it was extremely hot when I took these pictures, like 39C, so soft whisper-y cool, featherlight stuff felt like exactly the right thing to wear.

While we were in San Francisco, Shams took us to Britex.  According to basically everyone who knows; Britex is a “must-visit” for the fabric enthusiast… like, every single, San Francisco shopping recommendation to me included in some form or another ” …and Britex, of course”

And I most heartily concur.  This place is insanely fabulous and I could’ve happily spent all day there..  The walls are stacked floor to ceiling with, well it felt like thousands of bolts of strong solid colours, arranged by colour to make a rainbow mural of fabric itself.  What a sight to behold!  I was crossing the rainbow bridge!  Is this heaven?!!!

I die…

can you even…??  #sigh  And this was only ONE floor, there was another one too!

Shams introduced us to the lovely owner, Sharman Spector; who was so kind and welcoming to us foreigners.  I learned that Britex is a Legacy Business, which means it is one of a “longstanding community-serving business that is recognised as valuable cultural asset to San Francisco by the Office of Small Business. Preserving Legacy Businesses is critical to maintaining what makes San Francisco a unique and special place.”  … and thank you, Professor Google for that succinct explanation…

Obviously, this is a wonderful idea, one that I wish we would adopt over here.  Imagine a world populated by lots of small businesses offering unique and special services?! This, and many other utopian customs are just part of the enormous appeal of San Francisco, and I should add, New York City too.  I think they are very innovative and future-thinking over there, while still keeping firmly in mind what is important to the happiness of human beings.

Anyway… my dress!

Sharman kindly gave me a length of this lovely “scribbled flowers” rayon challis; it’s delightfully whisper thin and feels coolly divine against the skin.  So I envisioned a floaty, nothing-y little wisp of a dress.  The print is quite oversized, so I could’ve got away with a longer dress, I think, but I’m very happy with this length; I think it’s both cute and chic, and the higher neckline balances nicely with the higher hemline.

Pattern; is my own design.  It’s very simple because I really wanted this lovely eye-catching print to shine…   so I’d made a similar dress for my friend L at the beginning of the year, a clone of a favourite dress of hers, and I couldn’t get the design out of my head.  Mine has a few key differences which I wanted to implement; namely it’s quite a lot more A-line… MORE float!! … and has pockets.  I altered the width of the top bits too, and the armscye.  Actually, the armscye turned out to be a bit of a boo-boo…  once it was hemmed it was just a leeetle bit low-cut.

You could definitely see bra-action… and I decided that if the bra was going to be seen, at least it could be a bra designed to be seen, and that went beautifully with the dress, complementing it.  I toyed briefly with the idea of a hot pink thing, – sawww tempting!! – but in the end decided the perfect bra to match this was in fact a plain black, strapless bra.  Strapless, well obviously, and plain black in order to not fight with the amaaaaaazing print, and to offset the black fabric I used for the tie.

For the bra; I used my old faithful McCalls 2772 swimsuit pattern pieces for a strapless bandeau bra; the only mods I made were to make boning channels using the side seam allowances, and inserting a short strip of boning.  This keeps the bra structured and upright and not fold in on itself while I’m wearing it.

I also gathered the centre front onto a 7cm length of black elastic, just because I think it looks nice! and I also shortened the back straps by several inches, to make it nice and tight.  Strapless bras have a tendency to migrate south, if they are not quite tight!  I like my underwear to be in sets, so I also whipped up a matching pair of undies, using the bikini bottom pieces from the same pattern.

Oh, the dress neck-tie, I cut from a black satin remnant, leftovers I think from this black Forsythe dress I made for Cassie, three years ago.

The front and back of the dress are actually different from each other, even if they LOOK identical! so in order to identify the back I used this little Kylie and the Machine label I got in the Perth Frocktails goodie bag.  It’s pretty cute, isn’t it? even if I kinda had a fleeting wish it was one of the “the is the back” labels; well I can swap that out if I ever buy a set.

But for now; it’s finished, and ready to keep me chic-ly cool in this extreme heatwave!

Details:

Dress; my own design, in this beautiful printed rayon challis from Britex 
Bra and knickers; McCalls 2772, black poly
Shoes; Zomp, from Zomp boutique

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I’m now desperately trying to blog everything I’ve made this year, within this year… so fair warning: brace yourself for an onslaught of making-spam…

First of all; this little dress!

I actually made this back in September! but cold weather and general lack of… shall we say? love? for the dress prevented me from wearing it for a while, or obviously blogging about it before.  However all is now well, because the dress has easily reached its 30 wears, and is probably going to go on to at least 300 wears before I say sayonara to it… how is this so? you may ask… since devoted followers (ha!) of my daily ootd blog will have no doubt noticed it has made not one single appearance over there.  I shall now explain… yes, I had not much love for it once I’d finished making it, which is strange because it actually ticked a number of very good boxes; it feels very nice to wear, very comfortable, and it is well made if I say so myself.  I think it was the colour; yellow should suit my Autumnal self; but I decided this particular yellow was too close to my skin tone to really look good on me.  I thought I might dye it, sometime.  But before that happened, the weather warmed up a bit, I took out my old summer nightie to wear to bed and was saddened to see that a hole, that I had fixed up twice before, quickly reappeared in such a ghastly, final manner I had no choice but to ditch it.  Yes, very sad, and I was too busy to make another nightie straight away … what to wear?  then I noticed this dress perched on top of a pile of summer dresses, waiting to be noticed.  I was like, well that will do for now, as a stop-gap.  But you know what?  I’m really enjoying wearing it!

Fabric; a pale yellow quilting cotton from Minerva, printed with gold snowflakes.   I think it’s part of their Christmas range.  My previous nightie was made of quilting cotton too, and so I’m accustomed to the feel of it.  It’s very comfortable! soft and lovely against the skin.  I’ve discovered that quilting cotton makes GREAT nighties!  Since I’d intended it to be a proper dress, I have to admit it did turn out a leetle bit over-engineered for a nightie; it’s got facings, pockets, inset strips to define the seams.  A bias bound hemline, for heaven’s sake.

Some deets:

Pattern; I used the Collins top pattern by In The Folds; I’ve previously made this once before, to make this palm leaf lace top here.  This time, I lengthened the appropriate pieces to make it dress-length.  In doing so, I extended the front and back diagonal lines right down to meet at the hemline in a nice neat V.  I decided to highlight this feature, by insering an inset strip into the seamlines, just like I did with this dress.  The bias cut contrast strip is mustard silk crepe; same stuff I used for my Fibre Mood Faye dress.

I’m rather thrilled with the sharpness of that point!

Cutting my “outer” pieces had used basically every last scrap of the snowflake fabric, so I unearthed a short length of soft yellow silk dupion from my stash; a remnant in merited from my grandmother.

From this; I cut my neckline/armscye facings, the voluminous pockets, and the bias cut strip I used to hem the dress,

For the button at the back of the neck; well I didn’t even really need to make an opening, since I’ve always found I can slip this dress on and off without un-doing the button! but I’d made provision for it, so needed to finish it off…

I took out one of the leftover buttons I’d covered in ivory crepe for Kelly’s wedding dress (self-covering button kit purchased here) and painted it with some gold paint.  This itself is leftover from when I made my Queen Rutela costume; I used it to paint my “jewellery” and my “hair”

So that’s it!  I have a wonderful nightie and have enjoyed wearing it a lot, since it’s basically like a proper dress.  Actually, it’s kinda half nightie, half dress… I think of it as loungewear.  I can take out the bin without worrying what the neighbours might think, haha.  Maybe I’ll even eventually dye it like I originally planned, and wear it out one day!

Details:

Dress/nightie; the Collins top by In The Folds, in printed quilting cotton
Lilac shoes; made by me at a Shoe Camraderie workshop, details here

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Finally!  This is my 12th pair of socks for the year and my box of socks is finished!!  I decided to end up on a festive Christmas note with some celebratory scarlet socks… they are quite plain, but… LOOK AT THAT COLOUR!!  YUMMM!!

I bought this magnificently coloured yarn in Purl Soho in New York City during my recent holiday over there…it is a Koigu KPM 100% merino, hand painted sock yarn, dye lot 2227, but just says “solid red” on the label.

Actually, the thing I’m most proud of with these socks is that I finally managed to work out something I’ve been thinking of for some time… and that is to reverse engineer my sock pattern to be a toe-up design.  So happy with this!  I did it because the Koigu skein was a smaller one, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to knit two full-length socks, and wanted to make the best use of my yarn.  I divided the skein into as close to half as I could gauge (haha, knitting pun), and knitted each until I ran out of yarn.  You can’t do this with a cuff down design!  As I got close to doing the rib section at the top end, I unrolled the remainder of each ball and measured and was really pleased to see I’d managed to get the two balls within 3m of each other!  I cut the difference and joined it to the smaller ball to finish both socks off with an equal amount.

Even with all my careful and clever planning (ha!) … look at this!!  I couldn’t believe I ran out right near the very very end of one of the socks like that!  In case the picture isn’t clear, that’s about 8 stitches short!  DOH!!

It’s funny; I finished these in the middle of a massive heatwave, the worst we’ve had in years! Literally a whole week of temperatures of 39C or 40C.  It’s been almost unbearable…  Anyway, posing for these photos with the socks on was not comfortable.  One of the most common questions I used to get about the things I made was “but is it comfortable?”  And in this case, for once I have to admit the answer was a hard NO!

Later on I was sitting in the pool and took the following photo, and had to laugh… now THIS is comfortable!  basically the only kind of “sock” I can bear right now!!

And so finally… finally! here is my completed, and very squished up, box of socks… full to brim and spilling over just a little with woolly lusciousness… whooppeeee!

The post box of socks; the December edition appeared first on Handmade by Carolyn.

Oh hey! I made a new dress!  And I have writer’s block!

Obviously the second thing is not the least bit interesting to anyone who just wants to read – or in my case; write! about sewing… however the silliest thing about it is that it is not only hindering my efforts to document the things I’m making; the very purpose of this blog in the first place! but even sillier, it is preventing me from wearing it! Since I have this crazy self-imposed rule that when I wear something I really should have blogged it first.

So I bit the bull by the horns, or whatever I even mean by that accidental mangling of metaphors which I just decided to leave there after tapping it out without thinking… oh man… and decided the only thing to do was to wear it.. TODAY.  Thus forcing myself to sit down and attempt a blog post, and hopefully loosening up that pesky little brain block… and letting it soften and dissolve and become ethereal enough so it floats up and away and out of my head, like a puffy little cloud.  Bye bye writer’s block!!

What am I even writing about??  OH! My dress!  Of course!

yes, it’s a bit windy today…

So, a few months ago, I was contacted by Sarah, of Super Cheap Fabrics, who offered me a length of fabric.. I chose this lovely, light-coffee coloured,  jumbo plaid-ed linen.  It’s absolutely divine, really.  I’d been inspired by a dress I’d seen irl on a lady; a very chic friend of a friend.  It was too long, too wide, the check too large; and I became completely inspired by the overall oversized-ness of the scale of this dress!  Like a child wearing her sister’s hand-me-downs with the thought she was going to grow into it, eventually.  I subsequently found out she’d had her dress custom-made up on a holiday in south-east Asia.

I used Vogue 1312; a Lynn Mizono  pattern that I’d bought years ago… it has a “tablecloth” skirt, very similar to the one Shams posted on her blog, many moons ago.

could not resist the inevitable twirl!!!

I went to some effort to incorporate a few things – well, ONE thing –  I really really wanted for my dress; namely, pockets.  I know, I know, we seamsters are so weird about pockets… the difficulty about pockets with this particular design was the invisible zip in the left side seam.  While of course it’s easy to put an inseam pocket into a regular side seam, it’s actually extraordinarly difficult to finagle a pocket in a side seam that has a zip in it…

in the end I settled upon the aforementioned in-seam pocket in the right side seam, and on the left side, I put in a single welt pocket, about an inch away from the seam with the invisible zip.  Sounds simple, yes?  NO!!!  Because the pocket is only on one side not both, and I’m a pattern-matching lunatic, I wanted both the pocket and the invisible zip insertion to be as seamless and invisible as possible.  I know.  I don’t know why I do these things to myself…. anyway, careful pinning and even more careful and slow sewing, and I think I did it…

Here is the front, all zipped and pocket closed and (hopefully) reeeeasonably, sorta, invisible.

and now, the unzipped, showing-the-pocket shot.

I think I’ve shown this next feature before, but I often find the bottom inside end of an invisible zip has a slightly scratchy area, pretty much invisible to the naked eye but it makes itself felt after you’ve been happily wearing your garment for a few hours.  You can feel it if you rub your finger over it a few times.  So I generally wrap the lower end of the zip in a bit of fabric, like so; and stitch it down to the seam allowances.

So, as soon as I finished the dress, I was so happy I immediately flung it on and took a few pictures, shoeless.  I love how it feels! the oversized ness is exactly what I wanted.  Large, flooffy dresses feel so incredibly feminine to me; which is kind of funny when you consider the well-established “modern” feminine perception tends to be for tight fitting and short.

I rushed out for a location shots too, but when I got back home I felt a little cool – it’s 24C today, but funny thing, 24C feels, dare I say it? cold? compared to over a week of 35C++ !! haha… so I put on a T-shirt underneath; and I think I REALLY love it with the little sleeves underneath.  I love it like this so much I might even just add little sleeves to it permanently?  Hmmm, food for thought!!

Sophie very often comes up for little cuddle while I’m taking pictures in this spot… it’s near “her spot” in the house.   Hehe, this picture of her little head sneaking into the shot above as she crept over to me gave me a laugh.  hello, my darling little snooky snookums!!

Details:

Dress; Vogue 1312
T-shirt; the Closet Case patterns
Nettie in white jersey, details here
Shoes; Zomp, from Zomp boutique

I have just two more things to share here before the end of the year… hurrah!

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Yesterday we attended a very special event, and I made a very special gift for the occasion! … Kelly’s bridesmaid and Tim’s groomsman, now a newly-wed couple themselves, hosted a baby shower for who else but our newest little not-quite-here-yet bub…  The new nursery is to be jungle-themed, so I thought I’d make an animal mobile.

I bought acrylic felt sheets, wooden beads and a bamboo hoop from the craft section at Spotlight, and everything else from my stash… embroidery thread for the embroidery, upholstery thread for stringing everything all together, and all-purpose glue… the blue/green wool that I used to wrap the hoop was from a large bag full of wool that a neighbour put out on their verge as rubbish.  When I spotted it I was like… whaaa??? well yes please and thank you! #wastenotwantnot

The designs are all my own:

toucan;

sort of a generic monkey… I kinda wish now I’d made him a specific type but oh well…

gorilla.  btw, most of them have a definite front and back so I’ve pictured both of his here…  He was one of my early favourites so I can’t believe I forgot to take his special close-up photo!  we’ll have to make do with a couple of zoom-ins …

tiger.   I’m pretty pleased with my tiger, it was easily the most labour intensive and fiddly of them all!  This is actually version three; I was dissatisfied with two earlier versions but kept going until I had one I was happy with.  He also has a definite back and front.

panther

blue and red macaw

blue and gold macaw.  Until I was making this mobile and made a point of looking it up, I wouldn’t have noticed that these macaws have black beaks while the red and blue ones have white beaks!

python.  this was a last minute inclusion and I really love him!  My python has a lovely diamond pattern along his length, and it should be noted btw that this is not a very common marking for this particular colouring but I’m claiming artistic license!

There are three different leaf sizes, and I went to a careful effort to balance everything out; the ground dwellers are at the bottom, then there’s the mid-range dwellers, with the birds flying up in the canopy.  Except for the toucan, he’s not flying but I imagined him perched on a branch.

I like the way the blue/green yarn I used to wrap the hoop is sort of “planet earth” colouring, as well as sky/leaf canopy colouring.  Seems sort of fitting.  And the dark wooden beans that are really there to weigh down the motifs, also sorta represent nuts in the trees and on the ground,  and the wooden trunks of the trees.

Lastly, here it is in motion.. thanks Cassie! for holding it up for me to film it!

Kelly sent me a picture this morning showing it hanging up already, which is so cool! and I sure hope baby enjoys watching it from his cot!

Before anyone points it out; yes I know these animals do not necessarily live in the same jungles as each other, but hey; at least they’re all actual bonafide jungle animals and I didn’t pop a cheetah or a zebra in there!

Now before I forget… I said I only had two more things to blog about before the end of the year, but I was forgetting the following!  for Kelly’s birthday she mentioned how she needed maternity clothes, so I offered to take her shopping for fabric and I’d run up a few things…  I’ve shown some of them here but not all of them for some reason, anyway, here are the rest…

a Closet Case patterns Ebony dress with set-in sleeves; in cotton jersey bought from Spotlight for this project

A raglan-sleeved Ebony tee, and a skirt made using Burda 7023.  Apart from the navy blue merino for the sleeves which is leftover from my Nettie tee, these fabrics are all long term residents from my stash, some give to me by Mum.  It’s not a glamorous outfit, but one I thought she could wearing hanging around the house or on the weekend for housework or something… hey, we all need those clothes too!

another raglan-sleeved Ebony tee, and Burda 7023 skirt combo… striped jersey a long term resident from my stash, originally leftovers from this dress; and black jersey from Spotlight, not a leftover but bought specifically for this project.  For my previous notes on adaptions to this skirt pattern, see here.

So; NOW I’m pretty sure I have only one thing left in this year to blog and it’s a lovely one if I say so myself …. stay tuned!

The post jungle baby mobile appeared first on Handmade by Carolyn.

My final creation for the year! and a couple of other things too, since of course I found/have recently finished more unblogged items which I am including although technically I didn’t “make” them.  But first things first… I shall start with my new tartan dress.  I did make this!

I think I’ve had a bit of a thing for a voluminous skirt lately, and this one is also on the flooffy side!  I used a pattern I’ve had on my “want-to-make” list for years; Burda 10/2009;119, but altered it somewhat:

A)  mine is longer and at the same time, more voluminous, more of a midi length than the knee-length in the magazine,

B) I added in extra seaming, to showcase both a bias and an on-grain tartan layout, and making it more user-friendly to put together, and

C) I changed the width of the skirt panels so I could pattern match the tartan across the skirt pleats and still get the correct width panel into the waist.

(A) needs no further explanation, so I’ll move straight on to B …. The pattern has you cutting a full-dress length centre panel that is pleated from neckline to waistline… rather than have a whole lot of, possibly unnecessarily bulky pleats in my bodice, AND having to pattern match the darn things… I cut the centre panel of the bodice separate from the skirt, and as a finished width, with no pleats.

I also cut the back bodice in three pieces similarly to the front; with a centre back centre bodice on the fold, and two bodice side pieces; and put an invisible zip in the left side seam of the dress.  Not only does a side seam zip make it easier to put on and take off the dress, but obviously … no pattern matching of plaids along either side of an invisible zip!! Since I was cutting the back bodice in this way, I took the opportunity to rotate out the waist-shaping darts, incorporating the shaping into the seams.

I’m doing the Burda styling thing here…

The back skirt pieces were cut similarly to the front skirt pieces; so as to have two side pieces and a generously pleated centre panel.  Maximum skirt volume!!!  Oh, I also cut all pieces so the bodice seamlines would match up vertically with the skirt seamlines… it just looks a lot neater.  OH! and also my skirt side pieces are just a touch more flared all round, not by much, just a few inches at hem level each side, but multiplied over the four gores and it adds up nicely!

As for point C; I carefully folded and basted the plaids together so as to pattern match the tartan perfectly across them, and then cut the centre front and back skirt panels at the finished width as indicated in the pattern.  Because of the width of my plaids, the skirt centre panels ended up a lot wider than those in the pattern, which is fine with me #maximumflooff

Originally I kept the pleats stitched together vertically for a little bit at the top of the skirt, but in the end decided it looked nicer for them to flare out immediately out of the waistline.

The skirt side pieces, as with the bodice side pieces, are cut on the bias.

can I just point out… ^^ those little Sophie-ears!! ^^

The last modification, which almost goes with saying because I’m a well-documented pocket freak, was… well I guess it just got said!  I used my most used pattern piece for this, which is one I drew up to fit my own inelegantly large hands.  I cut it from an old Vogue magazine cover, which is a nice thick glossy card; and it lives permanently stashed in a handy place adjacent to my sewing machine.

My fabric!  is a really nice, poly-viscose suiting from Minerva.  I realise poly-viscose might not sound very nice, but it really has an extraordinarily realistic wool-like feeling to it and is lovely and soft against the skin!

One of the things I really like about this dress is that while it definitely has a winter-y vibe to it, it’s sleeveless and not body-hugging either, so I think it’s going to be ok to wear it in spring and autumn, and even cooler summer days too.  In winter it would definitely need a long sleeved skivvy or tee underneath, and tights, and I’m looking forward to wearing it like that too!

The next thing!  I didn’t make this dress but I did devote an entire day to making it fit for Kelly to wear so I’m totally OK with documenting my creative input here… I remember now it was presented to me basically a few days before I flew out the the US for my holiday with Yoshimi, which is why it slipped my mind to document it here before!

Tim and Kelly were groomsman and bridesmaid respectively for their friends T and G; who were likewise their groomsman and bridesmaid respectively! and together Kelly and G had ordered the below dress off the internet … and btw, can I take this opportunity to say? never ever ever order a dress off the internet at the last minute!  Kelly had specified “for maternity” and sent in her measurements and it was “supposed” to be made to measure – inverted commas there because of course when it turned up it was instantly apparent that it was not at all suitable for maternity and also, nowhere near made to measure.  For a start, there was an insurmountable gap of five inches between the two sides of the invisible zip, and obviously poor Kelly with her pregnant belly was going to do even more baby-growing in the two weeks before the wedding!

She brought it around for some urgent adjustments…

When I opened it up, I could NOT BELIEVE the innards of this dress… it looks so soft and floaty and comfortable in the modelled picture, doesn’t it? well far from it; the insides were built like a Sherman tank…

The bodice lining AND the underlining were interfaced with firm and inflexible horsehair stiffening that had been securely fused to the fabric. The princess seams were boned, believe it or not, with the boning going directly over the bustline.  SO uncomfortable!  The skirt looks softly gathered into the waistline with a little self-fabric belt, and you might think it had an elastic waistband? well NO, of course the skirt was gathered into a securely stitched and totally inflexible waistline.  The neckline/off-the-shoulder ruffle was very not-Kelly too, she’s just not a ruffle person at all.  So the first thing was to cut it off, as neatly as possible close to the neckline edge, leaving a chic little spaghetti strap.

I actually needed to harvest fabric from somewhere to put some wedges into the side seams of the inner skirts anyway, so was glad to be able to get some so easily from the ruffle!

I opened up the side seams of the two inner layers: the underlining and the lining; and inserted wedges to add in the needed 5″ of extra width, so the zip could close at the back.  I had a bit of pretty-good matching linen, which I used for the bodice; these wedges needed to be strong because these were the layers that had been stiffened with iron-on interfacing, I also ended up using the linen in the skirt underlining for opacity, and the chiffon from the ruffle in the lining, so it looked nice on the inside.  I know it didn’t really need to “look nice” on the inside because this was emergency butchery at best, but you know; old habits die hard!  After all this, the ribbon hanging loops needed unpicking and repositioning too.

For the shell; I unpicked and opened up most of the waistline seam and let out the gathers for the required 5-6 inches of needed extra width, then restitched it up.  And re-inserted the belt loops.

Finally, it’s hard to see from the before picture, but the bodice had too much vertical height, and horizontal folds of chiffon ballooned out quite unattractively over the bust and waist seam… so I turned up as much of the extra volume as I could into a sort of horizontal “cuff” just underneath the top neckline edge.  Cassie kindly hand-stitched this down invisibly for me  

It was all a bit rough and ready really, but at least Kelly was comfortable, and carried it off beautifully, plus I think she looked lovely!  And look at my handsome boy!!

The last thing, that I worked on yesterday actually! was binding this baby quilt… When we went down to visit Craig’s parents for Christmas, his Mum took it out and asked me if I could please bind it for her as she was not going to get the time or the opportunity to finish it herself.  Of course I obliged!

She had appliquéd and embroidered all these cute little motifs on squares of calico, and patched the quilt top together, and quilted it with decorative stitching, stitched around the edge where the binding was to go.

She couldn’t find any more of the blue fabric that she had wanted to use for the actual binding, but I assured her I could probably find something that matched.

It took a bit of searching because I didn’t actually have a nicely matching plain blue cotton after all, but I dug out this old shirt of Tim’s? Sam’s?  I’d thought it was one of Craig’s old shirts but he assures me it wasn’t his.  I’m not sure now which of the boys it belonged too, but I thought it was a lovely colour match for the quilt! checks in soft green and yellow, and blue too.  I cut strips on the bias and bound the quilt by machine on the top edge, and by hand underneath.  It was quite interesting to me that the sleeves were plenty for the job!  I’ve always marvelled at how men’s sleeves take up a TONNE of fabric, and here’s more proof!

btw, I could not find a good tutorial online for a nicely mitred corners for a quilt; all the ones that popped up had you encasing the edges in the folded-up bias strip and just machine stitching the lot, catching the underneath edge along with the top edge all in one go.  Maybe I’m a snob, OK I probably am! but that just isn’t nearly neat enough for me and you run the risk of the machine stitching underneath looking all wonky, and maybe even not catching the underneath edge at all, since you can’t see what’s going on under there.  In my opinion.  So I worked out my own way which I think turned out quite neat, and think I’ll write a tutorial  on here sometime, when I get time.  If I get time.  Next year, no doubt!

SO CUTE!  I think Tim and Kelly are going to love it!

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It’s the last day of the year; the day in which tradition demands a bit of looking back on the year gone by and pondering on what I would like to do for next year.  First of all, I’m picking my fave outfits/photos for 2019, one for each month.  Some pictures are of new creations or outfits, others I’m just remembering a really nice day…

January

just a really nice day.  I’d just dyed this dress, previously a pale grey and I was newly in love with it all over again

February

wearing my new jasika blazer to head out to lunch…

March

playing on the turtle stepping stones in the Kami River, Kyoto

April

visiting the studio Ghibli museum with Yoshimi!!

hiking up in the Kizo valley

May

just dyed this top too

June

Kelly in the wedding dress I made for her

in my mother of the groom ensemble

July

wearing my new Clementine dress

August

my new pink pinny

September

new pietra shorts

October

at stone mountain fabrics in San Francisco with Yoshimi… such a wonderful holiday here and in New York with a dear dear friend, and meeting so many other dear friends for the first time too!  

at the famous garment district statue in New York City

November

a new dress

December

old bathers, but a really beautiful and blissfully lovely day at the beach

What did I make?

phew, here we go. This is usually where I found out how intensely I’ve been indulging my making obsession during the year… so adding it up it turns out I’ve made 73 items this year… that number includes 18 dresses, 2 prs shorts, 1 pr jeans, 8 tops, 7 skirts, 1 pr pj’s, 1 bathrobe, 1 tie, 3 bags, 4 lingerie sets, 3 petticoats, 1 pr shoes, 5 jackets/coats, 12 prs hand-knitted socks and 7 baby things – onesies, beanies and the jungle mobile.  Out of those things, 29 were for others, so I don’t think I’ve been too selfish actually.    The  major-est of major makes for the year, Kelly’s wedding dress was an entirely self-less affair, so I feel pretty good about that!

What did I wear?

so, the most worn items for this year can be summed up in the following pictures… number one spot goes equally to my mustard raincoat, and my baggy blue cords with 22 wears each, and my olive suede tunic and my dark green Sienna jacket had 16 wears each.  All the other items pictured here got at least 13 wears, most more.

When I started counting and reporting on the number of wears my clothing got, well it was all a bit of an eye opener… inevitably someone will comment “that doesn’t sound like many wears to me!  I’ve got things I’ve worn a hundred times this year, at least!”  to which I usually think – did you actually count?  The only things I would wear a hundred times in a year are my black tights, of which I have six pairs, so even those are not getting one hundred individual wears.  I do tally my black tights up too but don’t ever include them in my summary here, to be honest…  if you’re interested, my black tights got 108 wears in the past year.  Oh, I expect a few of my sets of underwear might be getting about a hundred wears each too, but I’m definitely not profiling those!

Favourite creations?

Hmmm, well let me think… haha, kidding!  the amazing and beautiful fabrics, the importance of it, the care, the love and the sheer number of HOURS spent in making Kelly’s wedding dress catapulted it straight up into number one position of anything I’ve made for a looooong time!

I loved every bit of making this exceptionally special garment, though to be sure there were some very stressful moments and at the end of it I was completely and utterly exhausted.  It’s back living in our spare room wardrobe while they’re renovating their house and I’m looking forward to dropping it off to her permanently!

Personal favourites for myself include: my colourful Ariane dress, my unicorn skirt which got itself into my most worn items of the year too! and my own mother-of-the-groom outfit  

Special mention to my box of socks too! which is so pretty I don’t know if I can even bring myself to start wearing them

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What are my plans for 2020?

Oooh! the fun bit!  SO as I’ve mentioned, I have just one or two things (haha) in the work, because Cassie is getting married to her man D this year.  And I will be making her dress.  I am also making my own outfit, obviously.  And my three nieces are going to be her bridesmaids, and I am making their dresses too.  So yes, I have my work cut out for me, just a leeeeeetle bit already!

But as far as future, “for me” plans go… so there’s a thing “make nine” where people choose nine things to make for the year…  and the pretty thing about it for instagram purposes is that you can make up a nice, 3×3 cube of plans to post on instagram.  Obviously I love the idea of this! and have decided to give it a go, although I’m making mine more of a sort of “make 12” actually, giving myself one thing to do per month.  I think it’s been well established here on my blog that I like a one thing per month project for a year!   I’ve kinda gone for a range of ideas, but nothing’s particularly set in stone, I’m allowing myself some flexibility as to specific deets.  I’ve thrown in a pair of shoes and underwear, because these are definitely things I want to making more of this year too…

Also!  I’ve nominated fabrics that are already in my stash… to make it a good stash-busting exercise for myself too. I’ve actually already got one cut out and halfway finished… so maybe I’ll make them all up in the first few months?! on the other hand there is wedding sewing to be achieved and traditionally this always turns out to be way more stressful and time consuming than I originally anticipated, hmmmmmmmm….  So we’ll see…

Anything else?

Of course the most important thing; a big thank you thank you thank you! to all who still read my blog and take the time to leave a kind word every now and then… I appreciate it so much.  I’m taking this opportunity to wish you all a very happy and successful 2020 ahead, filled with time to do the things you love to do too.

Cheers!

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This is not the post which I would ever have wanted to start the new year, let alone the new decade but sadly this is how it just is… Australia saw the end of last year and the beginning of this one with the most devastating fires in our recorded history, they’ve been burning out of control for months and the tragic loss of wildlife has been particularly heartbreaking… earlier this month saw a callout for some of these animal pouches for wildlife rescue centres so I hopped to and made some.

I got the recipe off the internet here, and used leftover bits and bobs from my stash, and some old T-shirts too.  There are 10 fleece pouches of various sizes for various sized joeys and other animals, and two cotton jersey liners per pouch.  All the seams are French seams, as requested by carers, and with seams and hems on the outside of the pouches.

The fleece I’d bought ages ago for sweat pants and tops, and just never made it up because really, I don’t even like sweat pants or tops, so I’m just really glad it’s going to a place where it will be much more appreciated.

I actually finished these and sent them off back in early January but was just too sad to blog about them… but anyway, here they are.  I hope a little joey or two enjoys snuggling down into them.

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