Monthly Archives: September 2019

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box of socks; the September edition

27/09/2019 10:19 pm \ 18 Comments \

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 long-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!

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claremont shopping tote

24/09/2019 2:59 pm \ 4 Comments \

There’s a new pattern in Le Shop!!

So, last Christmas I made a few shopping totes, one for Kelly and one for Sam’s lady L, and they were quite nice if I say so myself!  Kelly in particular carried hers around a tonne, bringing it around practically every week, packed full of her stuff.  She reckoned it was an incredibly useful size… 🙂  Shortly afterwards I received several requests from lovely readers who were interested in the pattern which made me feel, yeah we can do this, and; well, wedding sewing did put pattern-making on the back burner for quite a while but ta da! finally we made it happen… and it’s now live in our shop!

I asked Cassie to name this one, and she decided upon Claremont, after our favourite shopping centre.  Well, I should qualify; our actual favourite places to shop are like; Fabulous Fabrics, and Potters, and Spotlight, but well, you know  😉

Specifics; the Claremont is an unlined, shopping tote with box-base and cut-on handles, with two options for internal pockets . The base measures 30cm x 20cm (12” x 8”); the height of bag not including handles is 33cm (13”). The length of the shoulder straps enables a person to sling the tote easily on the shoulder and to still be able comfortably access inside the tote while you’re wearing it.  The cut-on handles makes for a very strong bag that can withstand a quite heavy load of shopping.

The totes I made for Kelly and L were quite simple with no pockets, however for the pattern itself we added pattern pieces and instructions for two internal pockets; an open pocket for your phone, and a zipped pocket for your keys.  I ran up a pocketed version for a birthday gift for a friend, using a really lovely Spindle and Ink canvas; this is called Flowering Gum in Bluestone and Stream.  Isn’t that a gorgeous name?!  It’s designed by Lara Cameron.

The pattern is available to purchase in digital pdf format; and also; in consideration of the fact that I understand that lots of people prefer paper sewing patterns, and/or do not easily have access to printing it out at home, or just don’t want to; we are also making available an actual paper pattern too.  

This is unavoidably a more expensive option, sorry! so sweeten the paper pattern deal; with the first five paper patterns sold I’m throwing in one of our pattern company labels.  These are produced by the Dutch Label company, and I currently only have the five.  Anyone who has  bought from them knows and no doubt loves the very high quality of their work!  I’m thinking of ordering more!

 

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khaki suede top; 6 different ways

20/09/2019 5:22 pm \ 4 Comments \

Last week, on a whim; I randomly decided to mini-wardrobe-challenge myself to wear this khaki/olive suede tee  for one whole week, styling it differently each day … I’d made it five years ago! back in 2014 and it’s been such a great versatile piece!  It’s mostly a winter-y sort of a thing to wear, though it’s quite nice to pop on for a half-warm but not hot day.  A transitional piece, is what the cool kids of fashion would say, yeah.  Although, what am I talking about??  I’m the cool kid, well I can dub myself so here in the realm of my own funny little blog at least, anyway!   #imtheONLYkid

So yeah, I made this 5 yrs ago, using Burda 10/2009;121 and a very realistic dark olive green suedette that I bought in Tokyo during a holiday there; original post is here.  I remember Yoshimi bought the same stuff in pale pink at the same time, and made herself a top too.  I’ve worn my own top lots over the past five years, ‘cos it pretty much went with everything I own, though I still did develop favourite ensembles with it.  One of those I included in my previous 6-different ways post, with my terracotta skirt! but I decided it would be sorta cheating to include that outfit in with this six too.  Although it totally should be here too really, because it still ranks amongst my favourites for this year.

Anyway! without further chitchat!  I made every item of clothing I’m wearing in the following pictures, with the exception of my shoes.  All items are linked to their original construction post.

Below left: worn with my over-dyed Nettie tee, sage green wool tweed skirt, and my self-designed chenille scarf and black tights; and my old black booties.  I love love LOVE the olive green and raspberry colour combination together…  Need to establish more opportunities for such in Ye Olde Wardrobe….

Below right; worn with an ivory wool Nettie tee, my purple Jade miniskirt, ivory hand knit möbius scarf, black tights, and my beloved motorcycle boots.  I guess purple is basically a variation on raspberry, because the olive/purple colour combo similarly speaks to my soul too!  Sadly this little skirt bit the dust last year too…

Below left; proving that chambray goes with everything.  I wore this outfit on a warmish day during my recent Week of the Olive Suede Top.  My blue chambray shirt is an oldie but a goodie, and the little blue denim skirt is another staple.  Also wearing unseen sockettes made by moi.

Below right; with my over-dyed Nettie tee, my once yellow, over-dyed corduroy skirt, a scarf knitted by Mum – oh, ok, there is one item of clothing not made by me! –  my over-dyed khaki leggings, and hand knit socks.  And my favourite desert boots.

Below left; This is my outfit from just yesterday, an unexpectedly very wintery day.  Worn with my mustard merino Nettie, my outback wife barkcloth skirt, hand knit mustard cowl, black tights, and my mustard raincoat. Did I mention that olive green and mustard is another favourite colour combination?!  Maybe I should amend that to say, olive green and anything?

Below right; I paired the olive green top pretty frequently with white, black to black-and-white combinations; all of which it looked pretty good with, I thought, lending warmth and life to the general colourless-ness, however chic said colourless-ness may be!  I picked this outfit for this post though, because it was one of the few times I tried belting the tunic.  I actually like it a lot belted; slightly 80s-inspired in a look that makes me nostalgic, in a good way.  I think I should have done this more often I think!

Worn with my Eve dress, black tights. and the lovely suede booties Craig bought for my last birthday…

So!  Sadly, the tunic has pretty much done its dash now… while the fabric seemed reasonably sturdy it actually was not; and over years of use it eventually developed a few holes from rubbing and little tears, particular around the side splits and the underarm area.  I haven’t actually tossed it out, but I may think about repurposing the fabric for something else sometime.  Because I still really really love the fabric!

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mustard pietra shorts

10/09/2019 7:35 pm \ 9 Comments \

Hack attack!

Despite initial appearances, my new shorts are actually based upon the Pietra shorts/pants pattern by Closet Case patterns… I loved this pattern immediately, loved the high waisted flat front with no waistband, and those cool side panels with pockets.  However, I was not quite so much in love with the elasticated back … or perhaps I should specify I was not quite so much in love with my own rear view in the aforementioned elastic waist version of the pattern?!

Yes, I did make up a test version with the elastic waist first … for version number one, I cut up an old linen dress given to me by Mum.  Unfortunately I decided I’m tragically allergic to elastic waistbands, with the one and only exception of pyjama bottoms.  Although looking at these pictures now my rear view is not as offensive to me as it was when I first looked at them!  at the same time, I am still much happier with the rear view of my second, non-elasticated and more streamlined version.

side view…

I was pretty sure I would be able to alter, modify, wrangle a de-elasticised waist with a bit of finagling… putting an invisible zip in the centre back seam and removing a whole lot of real estate from the back waist area, retaining that lovely flat front and pockets completely.

the front view looks exactly the same as the original, unsurprisingly since this is basically unaltered…

I shall now proceed to explain my butchery… and please note that these measurements laid out here are tailored to my own personal waist measurements and will obviously be different for other people.  Specific measurements for each of these modifications can best be determined from your own waist and hip measurements.

I removed 6cm from the waist of the back piece; and actually swung the side edge out towards the hem edge at the same time, adding a bit of flare to the back view of the shorts…

I also removed 2cm from the top/back edge of the side pieces, tapering off to nothing at the top edge of the pocket.  This wedge was also removed “mirror-image” from the front facing, shown already stitched on at the left…

I put a dart in the back piece… while my picture illustrates it to be 10.5cm, I actually stitched it a bit longer, closer to 11.5cm at its end point

… the dart is situated 10cm in from the centre back raw edge and is 3cm in width at its top edge

… I used the existing back waistband piece to cut my two new back waistbands to fit the new size…

… inserted an invisible zip into the centre back seam.  Note, the centre back seam is essentially unaltered, except that the back waistband now has a vertical centre back seam too.

Because I whimsically fancied something a bit different for the back of my waistband, specifically a V-shaped cut-out effect at the centre back … I put in the zip a bit lower and stitched the top edge in an angle like so…  Yes, I’m very much oversimplifying here, because making my two sides exactly identical actually took aaaaages and some super precise measuring.  I even unpicked one side completely and re-did it because it’s amazing how even 1 or 2mm difference will show up as a glaring inconsistency.  Hint; making a little paper template made it a lot easier to get everything perfectly mirror image; which yes, seems super obvious in retrospect!

corners trimmed and turned out…

I hand stitched the waistband self-facing down with tiny fell-stitches…

To finish; the side seams were pinned, and the already-understitched front facing was wrapped around over the top and over the back waistband piece.

Side seams were then stitched, corners trimmed and seam allowances finished etc. before pulling the whole thing right sides out.  And that’s it!

 

 

Oh! of course, the ever important fabric notes… this is actually just a super cheap cotton drill from Spotlight… I LOVE the orange-y mustard colour of course, SO MEEEEE! and the random vertical dashes.  The pattern sorta reminds me a lot of this felted wall hanging I made, many moons ago; my vision was of a sort of poem carved by an artistic cave man, in a language or alphabet wrought in colours and strokes of differing lengths and groupings.  This is still hanging up in our front room! and you can read more about it here

Details:

Shorts; both the Pietra shorts/pants pattern by Closet Case patterns
Drapey white top; based on the loose drape top no.1 in the Japanese pattern book “drape drape”, by Hisako Sato
Hat; Vogue 8844, in khaki drill
Plain white tee; Nettie tee by Closet Case patterns, white jersey

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box of socks; the August edition

01/09/2019 4:43 pm \ 8 Comments \

Wait, it’s now September.  It’s not August any more…. dammmmmm!!!!  I’m a day late!

In my own defence I did actually finish these yesterday, which was still August; but it was like nigh on midnight and the lighting at midnight is kinda not conducive to Un Fashion Shoot of Le Feet.  And I was tired.  I had to wait until morning.  But I got there eventually!

I chose this warm, colourful and cheerful colourway specifically because August has always legit been my least favourite month; the last month of winter, my least favourite season, and it’s so cold and miserable and depressing and always seems to drag on fooooreeeeveeeeer.  So I wanted, nay needed! a project that I thought would cheer me up.  Even so; I don’t want to even go into the details of now these socks were started and unravelled and restarted and re-unravelled over and over.  I think they had four, if not five; false starts.  I had grand fair isle plans, shall we say, that came to naught and got abandoned…  it’s a bit depressing to think about though, so that’s all I’m going to say on the subject.  Instead; look how upliftingly joyful and lovely!  They’re like a warm, comforting, crackling fire for the feet!

I bought the yarn in Japan; it’s the Opal Regenwald 14 or “rainforest” range of sock yarn, in col. 9627 “Sascha – der Sommelier”, and added some blue in the heels and toes; this is a yarn I bought in Haynes, Alaska during our holiday from two years ago; Online Supersocke 100, Vintage Colour; col. 1412.  The heels are alternate stitches of the two colours, with the two yarns carried and crossed over each and every stitch at the back; making them double thickness for a bit of extra strength in an area which always wears through the fastest.  I’m not sure now why I selected this particular blue which doesn’t even match for the purpose but it’s neither here nor there any more since there it is.  The toes are in the straight blue.  I was quite doubtful about the blue after the first heel was finished, but at that point was NOT going to unravel yet again and redo; and actually I like the contrast with all that orangey/crimson-y/turquoise in the end.  Yay!!

I went to great lengths to make the stripes identical.  This is not as straightforward as it sounds; some of the orange sections had four orange stripes, some had five.  There are more than a few joins in there; all neatly woven in on the inside.  Final verdict?  I really love them, the colour is so happy and heart-warming; but phew boy! I am SO GLAD to have finished them!

the box of socks… looking quaite naice I reckon!

and PS; thanks so much every one for your kind and thoughtful responses to my previous post.  I wasn’t trying to complain! honestly! but I really REALLY appreciate all those lovely thoughts.  🙂 xxx

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