Handmade by Carolyn

a patchwork pinafore and some other things

14/08/2026 3:41 pm \ 2 Comments \ Carolyn

hello! I’m back with a few further “things I have made” ….

1) Finished only yesterday is this new patchwork pinafore…. Mum bought a little bundle of Irish tweed cut-offs during a visit to the UK years ago.

I admit to being quite intimidated by this lovely stuff for a long time! but as my policy for the past few years is to sew my stash completely, the time came to step up, get brave and cut into it. I used a pattern partly based upon the Pauline Alice Turia dungarees pattern, but as I’ve unfortunately thrown out my copy I made a new pattern by laying down my pink pinafore and tracing around it.

I cut the tweed into equal sized squares, dimensions based upon the narrowest of the lengths, overlocked all edges, arranged and joined them so as to fit the pattern pieces.

I made welt pockets just like the ones I did on my pink pinafore because they work so well for me.

The straps are also patchwork, which created a few problems when I had to thread them through the buckles because of the sheer bulk of the fabric; but I managed to force them through eventually! Initially I decided to line the pinafore with some lovely chocolate brown cotton that I’ve had for many years.

Yes, it looks pretty nice but unfortunately made it quite difficult to wear. I realised very quickly I had to replace it with something a bit more slippery. So I cut most away and attached a new one made of polyacetate lining fabric. Sadly, it doesn’t look nearly as pretty now to my eyes, but it does make it SO much easier and more pleasant to wear!

The only way to attach this securely was to press down the seam allowance around the top edge all around and basically topstitch it in place to what remained of the previous cotton lining. However, the topstitching looked quite ugly to my eyes and I wanted it to look a little cleaner, even on the inside where no one can even see it. SoI made a bias strip from the chocolate brown cotton, and hand stitched this over the join all around on the inside to hide it. So much better!

Everything here was from my stash, and I’m so happy to have finally made something I love from this beautiful fabric!

2) Back in summer I made a new little dress using leftover cotton fabrics and the Esme pattern from the book “Everyday Style” by Lotte Jansdotter. I love how it looks like a French flag!

The seams look like straight lines, but in reality none of them are because of the weird shapes of the fabric scraps I was using! All the horizontal seams are curved to differing degrees. It was a little tricky to get a good neat result but I was actually very pleased with myself how cohesive it all looks in the end! Of course this is a fun and cool, airy little dress to wear and I am extremely happy with it. I’m looking forward to summer so I can get back into it again!

Again, everything from stash.

3) Also during last summer I also made this little lace dress using the Fibremood Lennox pattern and a pale “greige” lace originally from Fabulous Fabrics from many years ago. I underlined all pieces completely with a cream coloured muslin, also bought many years ago, I think from a Morrison remnant sale. The buttons are actually some leftovers from the covered buttons that I made for Kelly’s wedding dress, back here! This is also all from stash, and although I’ve worn this a tonne since I made it I took only one picture of myself wearing it… this rather terrible one, sorry. I’m trying to get back to photographing and documenting things better.

4) and 5) and oodie!! along with some new winter pyjamas. Not particularly glamorous or exciting, and I did have to buy all new fabric but we all have to do that sometimes since we need pyjamas, yes? I’d bought the fluffy pink blanket from Spotlight with a view to making a new dressing gown like my previous one… but the blanket was unfortunately way too small for my pattern. So I drew up a plan that used as much of the blanket as I could, while making a functional winter coverup. I absolutely love the result! It’s super comfy and warm and I’m in it every single evening, even during the day at home sometimes!

I chose the pyjama fabric simply because the pink of the teddies’ tummies perfectly matches the colour of the blanket so well. The patterns I used for these are my usual; the Closet Core Carolyn pyjama bottoms, and heavily modified Burda 10/2009; 121 for the top.

Finally I just want to add; thank you so much for the lovely welcome back comments on my previous post! I do still have quite a few more things to share once I get around to taking some photos, so please stay tuned!

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: burda 10/2009;121, Carolyn, Closet Core patterns, dress, esme, lotta jansdotter, own design, patchwork, pauline alice, pinafore, pyjamas, turia

Norwegian jumper

24/07/2026 2:39 pm \ 14 Comments \ Carolyn

Hello! I’ve been making new things, including this new jumper that I knitting using wool bought during our holiday in Norway last year… I posted about the wool purchase during my travel wardrobe post here, and finished it about four months ago. And finally, I took some pictures!

(I must apologise… it’s been a really long time since I wrote anything here. A series of separate and unrelated things have happened in mine and my family’s lives, mostly not good. It’s not worth going into all the details because none of them are things I want to dwell on. However I have actually managed to make a few things since I last blogged, and I’ll try to document them all bit by bit. My camera stopped working last year too, and since cameras are like dinosaurs nowadays I probably won’t replace it but just rely on my phone camera. I hope it’s good enough!)

One very good thing that has happened is this adorable little thing…

please say hi to Wendy…

Anyway… sewing/knitting updates, let’s go! Last June/July, my husband and I went on a long hiking holiday through Italy and later Norway, and I bought some wool in Oslo with a view to knitting a Norwegian jumper for myself.

I’d researched patterns for Norwegian jumpers and chosen this one … Night Shades (Drops 195-19 by Drops Design, a currently free pattern. I also researched yarn stores and visited several of them in Oslo. I found the above yarn in Fru Kvist, and Craig was so patient while I spent hours looking through all the offerings to find what was needed for the pattern! In the end, this particular yarn is actually Danish, Isager by Jensen yarn, but we won’t worry about that… I BOUGHT it in Norway and I’m just calling myself satisfied with that. The colours are 40S (heathered yellow-green) 0 (natural white), 82 (dark yellow green) 29S (light yellow green), 30 (black).

I took precisely two progress photos, whoops… Most of the main colour is one dye-lot, and a smaller ball of another dye-lot made up the required amount. I actually couldn’t tell the difference in colour, although the lady in the yarn store was quite concerned. My solution; I stitched alternate rows in the two colour ways for the torso until I’d used up all the second dye-lot, and then continued in the main dye-lot for the remainder. I know this is a lengthy explanation for something that seems kinda insignificant, but knitters are usually quite strongly opinionated about this sort of thing so I thought it necessary to mention, at least.

I knitted the body and both arms right up to the pattern yoke with some enthusiasm, and then kinda abandoned it for a few months. Silly, because the yoke is the interesting bit! Then my friend started messaging me with progress on baby blankets she was knitting for her expected twin grandchildren… and it inspired me to pick up my own knitting project again too. Of course the yoke was easy and fun to knit and I finished it pretty quickly after that!

The pattern is good, but I had to alter the body part a bit. Mine is considerably longer in the torso and arms. The yoke is pretty identical though. The front and the back at the neckline have short rows to make the back a higher fit, which I really like.

Pictures of the wrong side… just because

I thought what this jumper needed was a little black mini skirt to go with it, so whipped one up! The advantages of sewing your own clothes is that you can just make something you need without having to search the shops for that one perfect thing! This is made using one of my favourite mini skirt patterns, the Jade mini skirt by Paprika Patterns. Black cotton jersey an old resident from my stash.

I’ve worn this outfit multiple times and really love it!

Also made at some point during the past months; a new set of underwear, made using the Cloth Habit Watson pattern and old cotton jerseys left over from previous projects. Everything from stash.

Also using the same pattern, several new pairs of plain charcoal grey undies to replace some older undies whose matching bra is still going strong….

Also made back in February; we were going away and since I now swim daily I wanted an extra pair of bathers. I used my old standby McCalls 2772 and a length of Barbie pink stretch poly that I actually found in the stash… and, what was I thinking when I bought this? I honestly don’t know. They’re not the best finished things ever but I made them during a low point went I wasn’t really caring about gorgeousness very much and was just more focused on getting something… anything… done. I think I recovered from that now. Although I like the bikini style less that the tankini style, I’ve found them more convenient for swimming! and so I’ve gone on to wear these literally every single day for my early morning swim. The fabric was never ideal in the first place and also I really don’t take care of my bathers at all, so they’re now pretty worn out, seams failing, and ready to be replaced pretty soon.

I’ve made several other things too, not photographed or blogged yet, and I’ll get onto them very soon!

Posted in: knitting, sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: bathers, drops design, Jade, jumper, knitting, lingerie, McCalls 2772, Norwegian, Paprika Patterns, skirt, watson

bathers

17/10/2025 8:03 pm \ 11 Comments \ Carolyn

Hello! I made a new pair of bathers for myself… and I’m chuckling to myself that I’ve gone kinda Bay Watch this year. Is Bay Watch even a part of the collective consciousness any more? hmmm I could be aging myself a bit with that reference?!

it’s only a year since I made my last pair of bathers but the fabric didn’t last as long as I was hoping. Oh well. I swim every day nowadays so maybe it’s not so surprising that they’ve worn out. And I have to admit that I don’t think this fabric is going to last l0nger than a year either. It already has that very stretchy quality that doesn’t bode well for future stability.

I used my old favourite “vintage” pattern – oh and it hurts to use that word since I bought it when it was new! of course McCalls 2772, that I’ve been using practically every time I make bathers. I just really like the style of this pattern, and when you’re happy with a thing then it’s ok to stick with it. The stretchy red polyester is from Fabulous Fabrics.

As usual, I made a skirt that I’ve stitched to the underneath of the bikini top to make a tankini version of the pattern. The whole back “skirt” is cut in one piece just using the upper curve of the bikini back as a guide and with the regular length of elastic attached to the top of it.

The first beach swim in the new bathers! and here’s to many more. When I was browsing fabrics I really wanted to find a cool print like palm leaves, or beach balls, or something with a mix of beautiful colours, or pretty florals, or wide stripes or something nautical. I found nothing at all that I liked in the print selection, this plain red was the only thing I even vaguely liked in the end. It’s ok, because I do love red, and it feels both cheerful and timelessly fashionable.

Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: bathers, Clara, McCalls 2772

a special lace dress

11/10/2025 5:47 pm \ 5 Comments \ Carolyn

hello! Recently my lovely niece J married her long-time man and so of course I had to make a new dress for myself for the occasion… I was vaguely toying with the idea of shopping for fabric before I remembered two things: 1. as everyone in our family knows, J’s favourite colour is famously yellow, and 2. I have a piece of very yellow, and happily wedding worthy fabric in my stash already!

I bought this neon-bright yellow guipure lace from Mood Fabrics in New York City back in 2019, when I was over there with my friend Yoshimi… we met with other sewing ladies and they took us on a fabulous fabric shopping spree! Such fun. I wrote about it on my blog here… Originally I had envisioned making a little mini skirt from the lace but when the fabric was rolled out on the counter it turned out there was a pretty large chunk of the border cut out, so the salesperson basically threw that part of the fabric in for free. Meaning, I ended up with a lot longer length than I had needed. And obviously I couldn’t waste the extra bit by making that little mini, so it sat, awaiting some other project that could make use of it.Et voila!

I used the Closet Core Ceilo pattern with a few small modifications… namely; spicing the back yoke and back pieces together to eliminate that seam, including inseam pockets in the side seams, and I also cut it to be a bit more flared. Oh, and I also traced a size up – or maybe two? can’t remember now – for that fashionable oversized look. The hemline, which is of course the natural border of the lace, was determined by how much length I could get, and I also managed to get the sleeves on a border. It only took a little bit of pattern Tetris but I’m thrilled that I achieved what is one of my primary aims with any sewing project, which is to have minimal leftovers!

My dress is underlined completely with a pinkish/coffee coloured silk chartreuse that I bought from Fabulous Fabrics originally. I basted the lace and silk layers together within the seam allowance all around except for the side seams below the pockets, and then overlocked the edges before continuing to treat the two layers as one. The side seams below the pockets I stitched the layers separately and actually the lace is arranged so there’s not a “seam” in this part, but the lace motifs are arranged and hand stitched carefully so you can’t see a seam here.

I cut the pockets and neckline facings from a natural cotton linen that I’ve had in the stash for years, saved specifically for this same sort of purpose.

I chose this because the silk charmeuse wasn’t going to be stable enough in these areas – actually the lace is very heavy, far heavier than it looks! I cut the lace front and back to have side seam extensions along the pocket area and stitched it down carefully to the pockets inside. So, when you’re wearing the dress the lace appears to go all the way inside the pockets, no flash of offensive beige to be seen, so it looks really nice.

The seams allowances around the neckline, especially the shoulder seam area here are seriously bulky, and I trimmed, clipped and understitched aggressively to get everything to sit nice and flat! I also went back later and stitched the facing to the silk underlining as far around and as close as I could get to the shoulder seams.

I’m including a picture of the happy couple because, although I did not make the dress, I did alter it to fit her and also did some minor repairs. This took three separate fittings and I took precisely zero photos of the process or anything. My only excuse is that I was also working on my own dress and stressing a little bit that I wasn’t going to get it all done on time.

Thanks to its oversized and loose nature, my dress was so comfy to wear and to dance in, and I was so happy about that! and just saying, I only wore these high heeled sandals for the ceremony and photos. For the reception on the same property I went to our car and switched over to my white sandshoes with little socks, brought for this very purpose. Much warmer, and fabulously comfortable for dancing! I also wore my new pink wool Sienna jacket for the cooler temperatures that came as evening fell too, but no pictures of that I’m afraid. Anyway, I hope I can get more use our of this dress, which actually turned out more lovely than I thought. 🙂

Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: cielo, Closet Core patterns, daily outfit, dress, evening wear, own design, wedding

winter white Dyron hoodie

03/10/2025 3:36 pm \ 3 Comments \ Carolyn

Hello! I’ve made a new hoodie for myself, and think it’s rather beautiful if I say so myself. Many years ago, when I started this blog, I would sometimes berate myself for being scared of wearing colourful clothing. I tried to break away from making too many white things. I think I’ve succeeded in training myself to wear more colourful clothing, but actually my love for plain white things, or really, ivory things, hasn’t gone away. I still have quite a lot of cream, white or ivory fabrics in the stash! When the new Fibremood Dyron hoodie pattern landed in my inbox I got out some of my hoodie-weight fabrics and found I had enough of this lovely winter-white corduroy to cut out the hoodie. I’ve been hoarding this corduroy for a looooooooooong time so it feels really good to enjoy it, at last!

I made a size small, haha. Yes, it’s huge.

To be fair, the blurb does state that it’s deliberately styled as oversized, but still… I really love this design actually. I had an ivory zip in my stash already, fortunately, so I didn’t need to buy anything new to make the hoodie. As well as a zip, you needed velcro tape, which is the closure for both pockets, and is also on the sleeve tabs and hip/waist tabs. I only had black velcro, which worried me a little for a while. But it shouldn’t have. In the end I decided the black looked absolutely fine.

Speaking of those hip/waist tabs, to be completely honest they really are completely unnecessary, and are just a nuisance. In the end I unpicked the velcro tape and just stitched them permanently down.

This shows the front pocket with once of its side velcro closures. Inexplicably, this pocket also has a top opening with velcro closure too. This is kind of inaccessibly tucked right up underneath the “flap” so I don’t even really understand why it’s there.

The hood is lined with a matching cream coloured lightweight cotton, when I realised a double layer of corduroy was going to make the hood too heavy and stiff.

This is a rather clever sleeve pocket in the left sleeve. It’s inserted in one of the sleeve seams, and also has a velcro closure. I’m not sure what you’d use it for but it is big enough for a phone. So I guess that could come in handy.

Wearing it here with my really old, but favourite, Closet Core patterns Sasha trousers. I’ve been saying for ages I need to replace these, and the good news is that I have finally taken steps to make this happen. Stay tuned!

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: daily outfit, Dyron, fibremood, hoodie, jacket

Acacia skirts

27/09/2025 6:21 pm \ 2 Comments \ Carolyn

hello! I made a few new skirts, using a new pattern, the Acacia skirt. The pattern is a Peppermint magazine and Warp and Weft collaboration… available in the magazine for free, or as a pdf pattern from their website. It’s a cute little A-line miniskirt with deep deep pockets and a central back zip closure. Of course I’m always going to be interested in a winter miniskirt pattern with pockets! I couldn’t wait to try it out!

Unusually for me, I decided to make a sort of toile. It’s a wearable toile, of course. For this, I used a piece of fabric that was given to me by my Indonesian sister-in-law. It was fortunately the absolute perfect size to cut out the skirt!

I really like this little skirt but I’m glad I made a toile, because I felt that the front was a bit flat for me, making it jut out a bit at the waistline. I unpicked the pocket joining seam and cut out a dart allowance from the pocket on the inner edge, and this worked really well. So I made this same adjustment when I made the real version, the corduroy one.

The wide wale corduroy I used for the “real” skirt is is colour Amber from Warp and Weft (available on their website here). I decided to do a “nice” finish to all the raw edges inside and applied a HongKong finish. For this I found a small scrap of lovely brown linen leftover from my patchwork dress. It was just enough to finish the skirt.

Corduroy is a little tricky when it comes to the seams lining up in the wales… and centre back seams are notorious for turning out pretty terrible, so I did this zip insertion by hand so it looks perfect. So glad I did this!

Initially, I added 10cm to the length of the skirt, I thought this would be necessary because the samples I saw did look quite short on the models… however after a few wears I have to admit that I felt like it was a little too long after all. Trust in the designer! I ended up lopping off that extra 10cm. I wouldn’t rule out adding length to the design again in the future, but a lining is absolutely necessary, imo.

Is it a little too short now? I’m not sure, maybe. It still has a reasonable hem so I could still add a little length back. Probably in the future I would add 5cm and then see how I feel about that.

Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: acacia, peppermint magazine, skirt

green sparkly “stardust” velvet

30/08/2025 3:28 pm \ 6 Comments \ Carolyn

My mother gave me a length of bottle green, sparkly stretch velvet for my birthday last year… and I wanted to make something nice with it before my next birthday rolled around. This is fast approaching so I needed to get cracking!

I decided to use the twist top pattern from the Japanese pattern-making book Pattern Magic by Tomato Nakamichi. Since we moved house five years ago I actually threw away a lot of my old patterns, including all the ones I had painstaking drawn up from first principles using this book. I know, seems like a silly thing to do, but at the time it felt important to clear the decks so I could make a fresh start with a reduced sewing stash, so I can’t really regret it. Anyway I needed to remake the pattern again from scratch, but that wasn’t really such a difficult task in the end.

It’s a great design, one of my favourites; and I’ve enjoyed wearing all my twist tops over the years. I’m wearing it here with my purple Jade mini skirt made earlier this year and blogged here; and my self-designed black tights.

I had a little leftover velvet, just enough to cut a new set of underwear, my usual combination of one bra plus two sets of undies

I used the MakeBra DL 03 pattern, and foam lining and underwires from the kit I bought from them a few years ago. I still had some elastics in my stash, and the only thing I had to buy new was the hook/eye closure, from Spotlight. The undies pattern is of course the Cloth Habit Watson pattern, probably my most used pattern ever since I bought it!

I made one small difference between this bra and my previous ones… I’ve always had the ring/slider adjustors situated at the back of the bra for all my previous ones, for some reasons I can’t even recall now. Eventually I’ve come to realise that whatever those reasons were in the past, ultimately it’s actually extremely INconvenient to have the adjustor on my back. So I switched it around for this new one. I have no idea why I’ve put the straps on in that idiotic way all this time.

I love this beautiful “star-dusted” fabric and it feels so luxurious and beautiful to wear it! Thank you so much to Mum for such a lovely and thoughtful birthday present!

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: cloth habit, lingerie, makeBra DL03, Pattern Magic, top, watson

colour-blocked Mimi and golden chain-mail

23/08/2025 2:10 pm \ 1 Comment \ Carolyn

hello! I’ve made a new/old blouse for myself… I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of using old textiles PLUS I’ve also always loved patchwork and mixed-prints in clothing so obviously this new blouse is certain to become a favourite! why? because the fabric is salvaged from three well-loved old shirts of my husband’s… I really liked each of these shirts when he was wearing them, so when he decided they were too worn to be worn any more (hehe) I packed them away to be refashioned one day.

I know it seems weird and silly to use three whole mens’ shirts to make just one woman’s shirt… like an exceptionally inefficient use of resources really! however there really were so many bits of each shirt that could not be used because of holes, stains, or threadbare patches that I had no choice. I was on a rescue mission!

The pattern is one of the newly release patterns from Fibremood, the Mimi blouse. Such a quick and simple thing to make! Especially coming hot on the heels of two jackets, ahem. It was nice to be an able to whip up something without having to think too much!

The pattern actually has the button and buttonhole bands cut on, so my use of the third contrasting fabric is an alteration really. I did have to do a bit of calculation to get this to work out well. I was seriously worried I wouldn’t have enough of the yellow fabric but thank goodness I did in the end. Another issue was cutting the lower front panels… I had to join some pieces together to get a piece big enough you might be able to see the joining seams on both of those sections of my new shirt. The sleeves also have joining seams that I did my best to make reasonably unobtrusive.

I’m wearing my new shirt in the above pictures with a pieced denim skirt I made last year using old jeans and our own Meelup skirt pattern, plus a number of superfluous pockets, making this outfit a wholly recycled-fabric ensemble. I really love this skirt too! it used to be quite a bit paler in colour and I overdyed it blue while I was dying something else one day. Oh, I remember it was this skirt...

Something else I’ve made recently was a “golden chain mail” tunic for my middle grandson T for his book week costume. Doesn’t he look amazing?! He wanted to be Tom of the Beast Quest series. I was only commissioned to make the tunic, and my clever daughter Cassie made the rest of his costume including that amazing helmet. Theo made his own shield!

I used the measurements from an oversized T-shirt he already had, and bought the golden sparkly remnant from Spotlight. It was very cheap but is actually quite nice stuff … I have a little bit left over and am wondering what I can use this for?!