Hello...

Hello, long time no see....

A quick post to show I haven't fallen off the face of the earth.

I did not finish the leopard tunic in time for Pretty Grievances Jungle January. It is in a heap in my sewing room waiting for a hem and a waist tie...

However I have been doing some very special sewing for my sister which I am very pleased with so far. I am about to cut out a second special item relating to the first.... and will show more in a later post.

rubbish late evening shot!

When I have finished these I have another purple Renfew to make for Eldest. She has, as predicted, grown out of her Christmas present already, but is not prepared to surrender it to Middlest until her replacement is ready! I also have my eye on a very popular top from the February Burda magazine for me.

Better crack on - I have been putting off cutting out for long enough!

Leopard Print

A little peek at what I'm working on.

Eldest chose the fabric from one of M Rosenberg fabric sales at Trumpington village hall. She didn't know what she wanted - she just liked the fabric.  I suggested a loose tunic-y type top and she seemed happy with that so I decided on the Burdastyle Anda pattern, mainly becuase I already had the pattern printed out.

I realised that the smallest size was much too big for Eldest, so had a fair crack at grading the pattern down a couple of sizes. It is a very simple pattern, I'm not sure I'd tackle anything more complicated!  I think I went down to a 34 or 32.


The pattern pieces were super long, and as we were thinking of a tunic, I must have cut off over 30cm off the pattern piece.  When it came to laying out, I realised that this shortening of the dress/tunic left me with just enough to make a top for me - yay!

 

I have gone for a Colette patterns Sorbetto, it's free and it fitted on the piece of fabric. Having made a couple of Sorbetto's last year, I decided to lower the bust point by about 2cms. I have inverted the pleat, just for a something a bit different.  I have bought some golden lace trim to possibley go around the neck, but I think less is more on this particular print! I have finished this and was planning to wear this at New Year. When I put it on, however, I felt that it made me look somewhat matronly - When I finish the tunic I will take some pictures of both tops and you can let me know what you think!
I started these both before New Year, but still have a lot to do on the tunic so hope that it will qualify for  Pretty Grievances Jungle January

FO: Purple Present Renfrew

This is a present for Eldest. She has a habit of taking a liking to most of the things that I make at the moment. She is currently still smaller than me, but it won't long before she is my size. In an effort to stave off the stealing from the wardrobe situation I made this top for her.

Another reason for this was that we bought her some jade ladies jeans a while ago that were reasonabley expensive. Part of the deal was that she could wear them, but they would be wrapped up for Christmas.  The nearer Christmas got the less happy she was with this arrangement, so in order to take the edge off her disappointment, the top was born. When I chose the fabric I very carefully put the trousers in a bag to take them with me and then left them at home... I was pretty sure it would go.  Eldest also has a number of other items of clothing that this will go with.

modelled with the jeans

I used Sewaholics Renfrew pattern in size 2 and I used the same type of fabric for this as my Renfrew, but in a different colourway. I think this fabric is double knit - I used this Christmas present to determine this. (There are several more colours in this fabric and I am sorely tempted by a beautiful petrol blue and a rather strident red.  The red might have to wait - it is just the wrong red to go with my hair colour!). The fabric is very wide and I found that Sewaholic's fabric recommendations were somewhat on the generous side. I bought 2.1m and ended up with over 1/2 a metre left.

I think that, given Eldest is growing like crazy at the moment, I really should have made it a couple of sizes bigger.  I've had this problem before when making stuff for her - you'd think I'd learn from that... this version fits perfectly, although seems a little tight under the arms to me. If she keeps growing at this current rate she will be passing it on to Middlest within a few weeks. 

slightly tight under the arm

For me, this was a super fast make - I started the day before Christmas Eve and it was all finished and wrapped before dinner on Christmas Eve - yay!

Here are a couple of detail shots:

cuffs

cowl

 Eldest has decided she doesn't want her face in the pictures anymore, hence the chopped photos!

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!

FO: Green for Halloween - an Autumnal Renfrew

I have made a Sewaholic Renfrew!

Possibley the last person in the "sewosphere" to tackle it, I bought the pattern some months ago, I think from The Village Haberdashery. There have been many Renfrews around but the ones that I have liked most were by ScruffyBadger, Lladybird, and Marie from A Stitching Odyssey, Karen from Did you make that? was a pattern tester as was Handemade Jane.

I have to say  - I love this top! I love the colour, the length of the sleeves, the neck, and the variations available from the the pattern. I am thinking of making the scoop neck version next, but still with the long sleeves - practical for the winter months.
 



I bought the fabric from Cally Co in Cambridge at the beginning of the year, thinking that I might make a Burdastyle Lydia. It languished in the stash for sometime, then I got to thinking about the Renfrew. I had a brief play with the pattern pieces and layouts and came to the conclusion that I needed more fabric. By this time of course, Cally Co didn't have it anymore (or not on the day I went anyway) so it languished some more!  Quite by chance I went into our new craft shop (1 year old last week) and there was my fabric - hurrah! Of course I couldn't remember how much extra fabric I needed, but knew it was less than a metre so bought 70cms - it is very wide.

As noted by other sewists, it is a quick make.  I think it took me three evenings of not giving it my full attention, which is fast for me.  I'm sure if I knuckled down and stopped reading about other people's sewing, I would be able to make it much quicker. Tasia of Sewaholic puts a lot of effort into sew-alongs and tutorials to accompany her patterns, on her blog, and she is, at the time of writing, doing a series of posts about the Renfrew.  I made it all on my sewing machine with a zigzag stitch to maintain stretch, but when I make this again I will definately try it on my overlocker. It was finished in time for Halloween, so it first outing was at our Haloween Party. 

My friend's Witches hat matched perfectly!

This was the first time we have ever made an effort for Halloween, because it is also our wedding anniversary and Husband and I are normally enjoying a lovely evening out. We all had great fun carving pumpkins and the party was a huge success - phew!

There are a few wrinkles at the top of my bust, something that ScruffyBadger noticed in her first makes.  I'm not sure what to do about this - it may well be something to do with the vest/cami I am wearing underneath.  This may also be the cause of the wrinkles at my lower back, but I know (from my pattern cutting class) that I have a sway back.

wrinkley back

With a neck this big there is great potential for silliness:

Cushions

I mentioned in a post back in March about a quick project I had started - some cushion covers to spruce up a couple of sofas.

 I finally finished them in time for Halloween.  They were done in a rather adhoc way (I laid the cushion on top of the fabric and hacked away), but I did try to make them pretty!

The first one, which took ages and clearly put me off continuing with the rest, has giant ric rac on all four sides.  The second only has ric rac on two sides - much easier!

I thought I would have enough to cover a smaller cushion, unfortunatley I was out of luck.  I had a rummage and found some denim left over from my Denim Portfolio Dress, then added a strip of the stripey fabric and more ric rac.

I bought a selection of buttons at the same time I bought the material, but by the time I got round to finishing them, I couldn't find them.  I bought a new selction of buttons, hoping that the first lot would turn up, but they haven't yet!

two cushions

smaller denim cushion

FO: Burdastyle Twister Top

So, I finally finished the BurdaStyle twister top a couple of days after my last post.

It's interesting.

 
I'm not sure I like it very much - I like the concept, but just not on me. The jersey I used has turned out to be a bit fragile, and where I have joined a sleeve section I have a hole forming. Also after a days wear, I have a hole in the front, about where my jeans waistband and belt sit.  Not what you want to find in a brand new make. 

It was quite comforatble to wear, although the shoulder that I fiddled with continued to fall off  my shoulder thoughout the day. It wasn't too annoying most of the time as I was wearing it under a cardi, but when I took the cardi off, there was a certain amount of wriggling to keep my shoulder and bra strap under cover.

I made this almost entirely with my overlocker (serger). Only the hems were sewn on my normal machine, with a regular zigzag stitch.  I keep wondering about getting a twin needle for my machine - if I keep sewing with jersey I might look into it further. Given that my machine is 14 years old, I'm not at all sure they exist. 

The top survived the wash - I wasn't sure this would be the case given the couple of holes I mentioned. However I haven't worn it since.  I got it out to put on the other day, but couldn't bring myself to wear it.  I may try to recycle the fabric for a summer top.

I put my arms on upside down today!