FO: The Christmas 'Space' shirt - McCalls 6044 again

This is shirt number 5 for Husband, using the same pattern as all the other shirts, McCalls 6044. Annoyingly I have lost the lengthened body pieces used previously, so I had to trace out the pattern and add about 5cms to the front and back pieces again.

The construction was pretty straight forward having done it several times already.  I had planned to change the sleeve from a two piece to a one piece and change the sleeve opening to a tower placket, but I didn't have the brain power to sort that out at the time.

I did fancy it up a little, I wanted to have contrast collar stand and inner cuffs again - I did this on the second shirt I made. But then I got a bit carried away... I had enough of the contrast fabric to make some bias tape as I wanted to do a bias hem.

I found doing a small curved hem pretty tricky on some of the other shirts and thought a bias hem might be easier - it was by miles.  So I had enough for the shirt hem and then discovered that I had just enough to make a feature of the button band as well (which I had done on the first shirt). 

Lastly, I made a yoke on the inside of the back of the shirt, using a toning piece of plain fabric left over from Eldest's cat dress and then made a feature of the label.

Fabric is from the Moda Nocturne set by Janet Clare. I saw the range online and was intrigued by the collection's name. I knew that Backstitch, near Cambridge stocked the collection so I went to have a look.  The two fabrics that I liked the look of online, just didn't look right together in the flesh, as it were, so I ended up with these instead. The main fabric is called Data:Hubble and the contrast is Orbit: Eclipse. I thought that the names would appeal to Husband's love of science (he is a physics teacher).

 

FO: Christmas Shirt for Husband - number 4

More unselfish sewing... I made Husband another shirt for Christmas 2014 using the same pattern as I have used before (McCalls 6044). 

He had asked for a shirt that was plain or at least a bit more 'everyday' than some of his others. He feels that a couple are a bit flamboyant and therefore need an occasion to be worn.  Well, I have a couple of plain fabrics would be suitable but when I was at Goldhawk Road last November (for the Lauren Lladybird meet-up) I found a lovely striped fabric that I thought would go with a couple of Husband's sweaters, in a teal/turquoise colour. I think is it 100% cotton and is lovely and soft. There were a couple of other colours too, but this one just 'spoke' to me.

I used the same pattern, in the smaller size and even remembered to use Carolyn's tutorial for flat felling the sleeve seam this time.

I tried to do it last time but trimmed the wrong bit of the seam allowance so they ended up being faux felled seams! My only quibble with this one is that the buttonholes are not as good as I would have liked, but we sewists like to point out the bad points don't we?!

Husband has worn this a lot but I have only just managed to get any pictures:

happy Husband!

Catalogue man?

Unblogged makes from 2013

Here is the catch-up of all of my un-blogged makes from 2013. Here's to getting things up here a bit more promptly! 

Bridesmaid dress(es)

it was very cold and windy!

I used Newlook 6749 to make this. I realise writing this that I had started to draft a blog post about this but I ran out of steam half way through! Initially I said that I didn't want to make the bridesmaid dresses as well as the brides dress. Fortunately my mother-in-law is a very good seamstress and had offered to any sewing that my sister wanted doing. Seems an odd arrangement but my m-i-l actually met my brother-in-law sometime before I did! My sister and I had decided that the 2 older girls would wear the same style dress as me and Youngest would wear a sparkly number from a shop to match with the other little dot who was the last bridesmaid. 

I traced off a size 6 for Eldest thinking I would do a tissue fit.  Which I duly did.... and it was too small.  I ended up doing the tissue fit again on Middlest which worked out fine, if a little long and a bit big in the chest department. I ended up tracing off a size 10 for Eldest. Having done all this, and having quite a lot of floor space, I offered to cut out all the dresses and mark them up for my m-i-l.  Having reached a hiatus in the Wedding Dress, I then decided to make my dress, so that m-i-l only had 2 to make. 

At a fitting session!

The dress was silk dupioni with a nice slubby texture and was great to sew. It was also great at fraying and instead of following my own advice to overlock all the edges before I started sewing (which m-i-l did) I carried on regardless. This meant that a couple of pieces were a little smaller than they should have been, but it wasn't too disastrous. I think I made a couple of small adjustments to the bodice around the sleeve and neckline. The dress would have fallen off my shoulders due to the extremely wide neckline, otherwise. M-i-l had to do the same for the girls.

Simplicity 2451

Easily my favourite of 2013, not to mention many of the sewing blogosphere.  I have had the pattern for well over a year, and I bought the fabric this time last year, going by my photo records. The material is from Ikea and I bought it with the plan to make a Sewaholic Cambi (which I did...) I cut both out at the back end of the summer and finished the skirt in mid to late October.  I wanted it to be wearable for as much of the year as possible so winged lining it. Only one major mistake - can you spot it? I have, as I hoped, worn this a lot, but failed to get a photo of me wearing it. It goes with many of my tops which makes a seemingly garish skirt quite versatile. I often wear it on miserable days just to have something jolly to look at!

Sewaholic Cambie

working out cutting layout for skirt and dress

Made from the same material as the above skirt. I was very patient with this make - I even made a muslin which seemed to fit fine. The construction took for ever. I made it in fits and starts, had to wait for a zip to arrive (I ordered 3 as I couldn't find a proper match just going on the computer screen colour).

waiting for Husband to pin hem..

I have only worn this once so far, out to dinner at Launceston Place, for my wedding anniversary.  

Unfortunately it is just fractionally too big. Enough to be noticeable and slightly distracting when wearing it. It is too cold and inclement to wear it at the moment, and I may get round to tweaking the fit. It is too big under the arms and in the bodice, which means it shifts around slightly and gapes at the bust.  I also feel slightly twee in it. I'll see how I get on in the summer.

Sewaholic Renfew

An exact remake of the top I made for Eldest for Christmas2012. As predicted, she grew out of it almost immediately. I bought the same material and promised to make at some during the year. It ended up as a Christmas present for 2013 and the same size as I would make for myself. No picture of the current version.

Husband's Christmas shirt #3

In the run up to Christmas, I made Husband a Stratconna Henley blogged here, which looks good but is a bit too snug for his liking.  We already have fabric another that is washed and waiting to go, but I wanted to make him another shirt. I read something the other day that said if you do something 3 years in a row it becomes a tradition, so I think this might be my tradition. I bought the fabric at the traveling Geoff Rosenberg fabric sale that comes to Trumpington village hall every month. It is 100% cotton, very fine and I think it might be lawn. Husband says that it almost feels like he is not wearing it.

I used the McCalls 6044 again with the adjustments from last year (smaller size and 5cm longer). The fabric was a dream to sew. I had hoped to follow Carolyn's flat fell tutorial for the sleeve this time round.  I found the tutorial, had it open on the tablet next to me, read it through and thought I knew what I was doing, then promptly trimmed the wrong side of the seam allowance - duh.  I also got completely confused when doing the cuffs and got the buttonhole on the wrong side.  Husband came up with the solution to put another buttonhole in the RIGHT place so that he could wear it with cuff links, which he doesn't get the chance wear very often.

Little girls's outfit

One of my friends has a very sweet daughter who is rising 4, and reminds me very much of Middlest when she was a similar age. For some reason I decided to make her a little outfit as a Christmas present. I made a denim skirt with a patch pocket, and a little long sleeved top using Simplicity 9603 (which is no longer available) as the basis, all from scraps from previous projects. the top was not what I had when I started at all, but was the best way to use the fabric I had.

Sewing Kit x 2

Sewing bag, needle case, pin cushion & scissor case using denim and and scraps from stash.  This set was for  Eldest as a Christmas present. I made another for my friends elder daughter.

Don't forget I will be giving away the Burdastyle Sewing Handbook very soon. To enter the giveaway please comment on the original post here and I will put names in a hat on Friday 24th January.  Good luck!

A little bit of Christmas sewing

Happy Seasons Greetings everyone!

One of the many things I have been sewing, but not posting, was a Christmas shirt for Husband.  I made him a wearable muslin for Christmas last year which he was very pleased with., using McCalls 6044:





Whilst we were in NewZealand, we bought some material from a fabric shop in Wellington (can't remember the name now) which was obviously bought with this shirt in mind. The picture below was taken in Novemnber 2010, andthe fabric has been sitting in my stash ever since:

Over the last year Husband has been slowly losing weight and getting fitter. He is very pleased with his progress, but is finding that many of his clothes don't fit so well any more. For example, a pair of jeans that he bought in the first week back from NZ in January 2011 that were a bit snug, he can now take off without undoing them!

The same applies to the shirt I made last year. I felt it was a bit on the voluminous side when I made it, but that is generally Husbands prefered style of shirt, however, since the weight loss it is even more so. I thought it prudent to take Husband's measurements before I started and it was a good thing I did... his chest has gone from 118cms down to 111cms and his neck from 44cms to 42cms. That meant that this time I made a XL instead of a XXXL - yay! Apart from changing the size, the only other thing I did was to make the whole shirt 5cms longer. Husband has a very long back and we noticed very quickly on his other shirt, that any further versions would need to be longer.

Again, no photo's of the construction as it happened.  I only decided to make this about 2 or 3 weeks before Christmas, so for me this was a speedy make, especially as I also decided to make something for Eldest as well (more in a later post).  As I was finishing up on the shirt, Carolyn posted about a shirt she had made for her Husband, in which she referred to a tutorial on flatfelling the sleeve seam. If only she had posted a few days earlier!

I struggled to find buttons initially, but these square ones caught my eye just as I was about to leave the shop and thought they were the perfect fit:

I am very happy with this shirt. It is much better put together than the previous version. The insides look considerably nicer too. I went for the view with contrasting collar stand and cuff and happily found a perfect piece of turquoise in an old pair of trousers that I had tried to butcher in the past.
 
I thought about trying to mimic the previous version with turquoise piping down the button band, but I couldn't work it out with the material I had in the trousers, so just stuck with the collar and cuffs.  

I put one pocket on the front:
 
and finally the completed shirt, donned for the day's festivities:
 

Meanwhile I recieved this from Eldest:

She made it all by herself on a little John Lewis sewing machine that I bought for her birthday!

Husband's Christmas shirt

This post is somewhat overdue, I was having problems on Blogger, which lovely techy Husband has solved for me!

Some time ago (May 2011), I bought some gingham to make a muslin for a shirt for husband:
I cut the shirt out sometime in June, using McCall's 6044, and then it stayed put for some time. I vaguely remember promising to make a shirt for Husband whilst we were still in New Zealand (and we even chose some material during a trip to Wellington), so I thought that I would try to get a muslin underway before Christmas.

I interspersed the sewing of this with my Denim Portfolio dress, so that I wouldn't get bored with either project and I could swap between my sewing machine and overlocker appropriately, in theory.

This shirt was supposed to be a muslin, so I basted it together to assess the fit. Once Husband tried it on, we decided that it didn't need anything in the way of alterations, so I decided to make it a proper shirt. I did not take any construction photos, unfortunatley, but I did decide to make it a little different. I have often admired the shirts that Carolyn has made for her husband and sons and have thought in the past, that I would steal her idea of diagonal buttonholes.

I didn't do that on this shirt, but instead used bright yellow bias binding to make certain features pop. I emphasized the front button placket, cuff, and pocket, which even though I say so myself, looks pretty good!

I'm not sure why I had such a colour hidden away, but it may have been something to do with this!

Husband expressed a desire to wear this for Christmas day, which I was well on course to accomplish, until taking to my bed with some horrible illness, on the Thursday before Christmas. By Christmas eve I was just about upright, and managed to sew on the many buttons, and wrap up the shirt. Any grappling with machinery was not on the cards, so the card on the parcel read 'I owe you one label and some seam finishes!'

My girls were keen to buy buttons that looked like pencil sharpeners as Husband likes properly sharpened pencils. Unfortunatley, even though the shop had the perfect matching blue, they only had three and I needed nine - shame.

So, this now has the label and nearly all the seems finished (two more to do).  Yes, I know they should have been done as I went along, but it was supposed to be a muslin, and I got carried away, and I wish I had done them earlier, but hey ho... Once we get heating back - the boiler is being replaced and hot water tank moved - I will venture back into the sewing room and finish it completely.  It's a little fresh up there at the moment.

The shirt tucked in:

and un-tucked:

I'm pretty pleased with this, and I'm fairly sure Husband is too! The shirt got lots of comments (all positive) from family over the Christmas period. 

For my reference, if I were to make another one, we decided that it would need to be a bit longer in the body to maintain it's ability to stay tucked in.  

New Fabric photos

I mentioned recently that we had been fabric shopping when we were in Wellington, and I finally got round to taking some pictures of what we bought. I forgot to take a picture of the first fabric uncut, but you can see it made up in my previous post.

First up is the nightie material for Middle and Eldest daughters:

Secondly, the material Husband chose for his shirt. Not sure which view I'm making yet:

Thirdly, this stripy jersey for a top for me, possibly a BurdaStyle Lydia top, or a HotPatterns top, although I don't think I have enough for that. It is a different colour of one of the samples I discussed on an earlier post:

I am currently almost at the end of making a muslin for a dress, which will be my next post. I am not sure when the above projects are going to be made. My muslin is taking foreverahh, and I am planning a couple of other little projects too!