January 2021 - Handmade by Carolyn

Mundaring raincoat

30/01/2021 11:56 pm \ 5 Comments \ Carolyn

Hurrah! Cassie and I have finally finished making our newest pattern! please give a warm welcome to the Mundaring raincoat pattern, currently for sale in our shop, the linky dink to which is over to the right in my sidebar there… or you can just click on the this pattern picture just to the right here.

So, the Mundaring is a pattern for a loose-fitting, below hip length raincoat with raglan sleeves, large front zippered pockets with inbuilt weather flaps, a back weather flap covering a hidden vent panel, roomy hood that can be tightened with a hood cord. Closure is by an open ended zip, hidden underneath a front band. The pattern includes separate pattern pieces for an optional lining with additional inner breast pocket, and an appendix with tips for weatherproofing the seams of your raincoat.

I know it’s taken me a long time to finally finish getting this together, I first made this design for myself back in 2012 when I made my blue raincoat…

this is actually a great little raincoat and I love it and still wear it! Then I made a pink and blue colour blocked version for Cassie, improving on the design a little more.

Then I fine-tuned the design to be just about exactly what I wanted, albeit in unlined form, when I made my mustard one…

this is when I got actually got serious about turning it into a proper pattern and studying the grading criteria. btw the mustard one has been a really great raincoat too, and I still wear this one when the colour of it is what an outfit requires 😉

In testing the design I’ve made multiple Mundarings since that time, several in each of the five sizes each… plus another “proper” one for Cassie in this chic, pale grey pleather. And finally, the cheerful yellow one for myself, and then a lovely blue one for my sister-in-law S.

Doesn’t she look gorgeous? I’m so grateful she agreed to be my model again!

Both my latest are made using a fabric called Oxford Waterproof that I bought from Remnant Warehouse. btw, NO, I am not getting free fabric or recognition or anything for promoting it, and these are not affiliate links even, I bought this fabric and am recommending it because I am genuinely a fan and think it is the perfect fabric for my design!

My raincoat is this colour, the Gold colour-way, and S’s is the Royal colour-way. I fully lined both these raincoats using matching polyactate lining fabric from Fabulous Fabrics, and both of them have white zips and white cords and cord stops, which I think looks really nice 🙂

I sealed the seams on both raincoats using this stuff…

I selected it because it is an adhesive sealant with high flexibility, and bonus that while comes out of the canister kind of cloudy it then dries to be quite translucent. In my opinion it’s absolutely perfect for this purpose! ~~I’ll update this post with the exact product as soon as I can, and am truthfully kicking myself right now I did not take a picture of the canister before (doh!)~~

The pattern is for sale in pdf form here… we are working on getting a paper pattern up and running, and will update the shop with a paper pattern once we’ve got all our ducks in a row vis a vis that. But in the meantime… here is is!! I’m so happy to finally have it out in the world!

Here are some of the specs!

Pockets? Why, of course!

Details:

All raincoats; Carolyn & Cassie Mundaring raincoat pattern, in Oxford Waterproof from remnant warehouse
White tank top; my hand stitched Alabama Chanin tank top.. it was the first one I laid hands on in the drawer!
Jeans: Closet Core patterns Morgan boyfriend jeans, blogged here
White shoes; handmade by me, blogged here

Posted in: crafty stuff, sewing \ Tagged: Carolyn & Cassie Pattern Co, coat, jacket, mundaring, own design, raincoat

Theo

25/01/2021 11:00 am \ 15 Comments \ Carolyn

… so first post for the year! the most exciting news of all for us is the arrival of our darling little grandson Theo; Cassie and Daniel’s baby boy. He’s very little right now so he is extremely busy eating and sleeping… in fact, more sleeping than usual since he was a tad on the early side. I’m so proud of Cassie how she has coped in difficult circumstances… Mum and baby were sent home from hospital only a couple of hours after birth, and coming from a generation that was typically spoilt with about five days in hospital for your first baby, this is pretty shocking to me. She’s doing amazingly well!!

Anyway, I made little onesie for Theo, just before he was born; in fact I gave it to her at his baby shower which was held just barely a scant week before he arrived actually. Man, things went so fast… anyway, here it is!

O course there is a little story behind this… a few years ago, Cassie made a few workout tank tops for Tim and Sam for Christmas pressies. She drew the screen prints and printed them herself, and then sewed up the tank tops too. She gave one each to Tim and Sam, and I’m not sure what was the story with this particular one but it has sat unworn in the fabric stash every since. She can’t remember now either! Maybe it was always an extra? Anyway, I always thought it was such a thoughtful idea of hers, and it’s a pretty cute and clever print too. Couldn’t possibly just let it continue sitting there! So, I dug it out, and in the tradition of babies in this family; I made a little onesie for Theo out of it. The pattern is my own, I just had to make this one a bit bigger, because the writing on the back would not fit on the smaller size I’d made previously for newborns.

Pretty cute, huh?!

I’ve also made a much-needed, new maternity dress for Cassie, the same design as the white one I’d made previously. I had a few … issues… with this one, suffice to say stripes are always a nightmare and even when you think you’ve accounted for all stripe contingencies that may arise, a new one IS probably going to crop up and surprise you. Ok, guess I may as well go into it… somehow, despite careful measuring and checking, I STILL somehow managed to hem the dress with an extra stripe along one side seam than the other. Honestly thought I’d cut them the same, but well, turns out I had not. I had to cut off the old hem and make a new one.

The other disaster was that I somehow managed to stitch the separate tank front INTO THE WAIST SEAM! thus rendering it useless for its intended purpose as a maternity dress. DOH! This required unpicking the seam plus the overlocking, because OF COURSE I overlocked it before I’d noticed! in what is actually quite a delicate fabric, and well, fixing up the whole shemozzle. So, for a simple little make it ended up taking most of my day, which I can ill afford right now, to be honest, but at least it got done.

And she looks lovely in it, so it was all worth it actually.

I’ve finally finished another very long-term thing recently too… for me! and am hoping to get it posted in between packing boxes and organising some minor work done for our new house as well as this, our old, one. Oh, and of course our new pattern, which is far more challenging to finish now that I’m on my own with it, since my helper has her precious new baby to attend to. Aaahgh, my head is going to explode…

Onwards and upwards!

Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: baby clothes, babywear, Cassie, dress, maternity, own design, Theo

2020; a retrospective

01/01/2021 11:53 pm \ 22 Comments \ Carolyn

Yes, I know I’m a day late; maybe even two days late by the time I get this published! but well… I’m a bit busy right now. All will become clear in my next post 🙂

So it’s the end of the year, and I’m looking back on my year of sewing and blogging. First up, I’m posting some of my favourite pictures for the year, one per month…

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

So. It’s been a strange year; I dare say a BIG year for everyone. One of the happier big things in my own year was of course Cassie’s wedding in March, the preparations for which brought us much happiness and excitement, although the last week was tinged with growing uncertainty as we didn’t know whether the gradually impending threat of covid would cause problems… it was such a weird time and no one knew what to expect! With incredible good fortune, everything went ahead and only one week later lockdown restrictions were imposed that would have made the wedding impossible. So, MAJOR stress at the time, but ultimately a very happy and extremely lucky outcome! I wrote more details addressing this subject and how we handled it at the time in this post here…

I want to say too that I was very pleased for our government’s swift action that has definitely saved us from the virus all this year, and was more than happy for Perth to have a strict lockdown just to make sure. We were in lockdown for basically all of April and extended well into May, and I have to say my sewing output reflected the general level of anxiety that I had at the time. In fact I think that like everyone, my anxiety kept me from being productive in just about every aspect of my life! but honestly I have no complaints. I’m just grateful to be here, to live in a place that took the virus seriously and a government that had our safety and truly our best interests at heart, and acted accordingly. I truly feel like I live in the absolute best place in the world right now. I’m so very grateful.

The other huge thing I’m grateful for is the arrival of our darling first grandchild, Arthur. He is an absolute joy and delight. and we are all totally in love with this precious human being. And Cassie is expecting! I can hardy wait to meet her little bunny!

But ok, now on with my sewing! I might have had a crisis of confidence and motivation, but I did manage to keep making things! I kept up with my planned “make 12” and saw it through, even if once or twice that thing for the month was my only thing for the month! My picture for May above was a kind of lockdown game in which you gathered all the things in your house you could find in your favourite colour. It’s downright embarrassing how many red things I’ve accumulated!

What did I make?? well, I managed 91 things this year… 91! I’m shocked because honestly could have sworn I made hardly anything apart from a wedding dress! Anyway, the breakdown is: for me; 15 dresses, 2 coats, 6 skirts, 8 tops, 3 sets of lingerie, 1 pr of shoes, 7 sockettes, 1 knitted jumper, 2 hats, 1 pr trousers, 1 hoodie and 1 raincoat. For Cassie; the aforementioned wedding dress! including 3 separate petticoats, 2 tops, 1 skirt, 1 pr shorts, 3 maternity dresses; for my nieces, 3 bridesmaids dress, and 1 dress for Mum. For babies; 6 onesies, 6 blankies, 1 huge “texture” quilt, 1 knitted beanie and 1 baby swing. For Craig’s Mum; 7 masks and 1 bag. Oh and I also made 27 kangaroo pouches, that I’m not including in the total of 91 things. Aaaad.. I also made another sewing pattern?! It hasn’t been released yet but will be very very soon. Maybe even… tomorrow?! Ooh, did I just spill the beans in a big way! I’ve wanted to make more patterns for ages but sewing wedding dresses took precedent in the last two years.

Favourite makes of the year? hehe, obviously Cassie’s wedding dress! and I also really loved the girls’ bridesmaids’ dresses and my own mother of the bride dress too.

My most worn items for this year…?

I love most of these things pictured, but not all of them, strangely. I think during lockdown and the subsequent many many days of not going out by my own choice, I took up the habit of wearing daggy things that weren’t my favourites, simply because I wasn’t going out and didn’t need to “dress up”. I’ve decided this is very very silly and I’m going to only wear things I absolutely love from now on. yolo!

In other stuff, I fulfilled a long-held fantasy and took up learning a language! I chose Japanese because I love Japan, would love to visit again some day – although that might be a pipe dream! and I love the visual appearance of the language and kanji. I also felt in the need of a mental challenge. And boy, has it been a challenge! But I’m pretty thrilled I made it into the top 1% on the duo lingo app. Who me, competitive? Oooh, I never #TOTALLYcompetitive I also managed to top the platinum league, one crazy intensive week in which I did virtually nothing but study Japanese. Hmmm, did I mention… competitive?? #dirtyword

It says I studied French but i actually only did a few days dabbling in that, and the one other language was Celtic, which I eventually decided was just too hard to extend my brain to that AND Japanese. I’d still like to learn Celtic one day because it is my heritage after all, but I think that can wait until I’ve got a bit further in Japanese.

So what does 2021 bring for us all… much better times, I hope! and a world that can come together again and regain trust and health as soon as possible. I know this takes time, and maybe the world will never go back to the way things were. Every now and then I wonder if this is the start of a completely different world and what if something else unexpected is lurking just out of sight around the next corner? But really, we can’t dwell on the uncertainty too much, just keep on keeping on, chin up and continue doing the best for the important people in our lives. I just hope the worst is behind us. And that good times are ahead. And mostly that the vaccine WORKS!

Thank you so much to everyone who takes the time to read this silly blog, and even to leave a kind comment or two. I really really appreciate everyone who does. I hope the year brings you all much happiness and joy, good health, peaceful thoughts, appreciation of our home towns, and making many delightful memories with the important people in your life. Cheers!!

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: retrospective