March 2022 - Handmade by Carolyn

millennial holiday

30/03/2022 6:00 pm \ 4 Comments \ Carolyn

I made a new dress for myself.. using this super cute cotton … it’s called Millennial Holiday, which I have to confess gave me a real laugh! But isn’t it beautiful.. those happy, sunny and joyful colours, gorgeous girls wandering about under palm trees in their trend-tastic outfits, walking their dogs, drinks in hand… such a fun and happy print!

It’s another Nerida Hansen fabric – and yes, I’ve been extremely naughty adding new fabrics to my stash whilst not having “consumed” the promised 30m from my stash yet. I just don’t feel like getting upset with myself over it though.

The pattern is also another Nerida Hansen one; the Half Sleeve Dress… by the way, the links above lead to the products but they are not affiliate links and I am not getting paid for these posts. I wish! haha.

I did a slight modification that I that I thought gave it a nice little extra visual interest… the sleeve hem is finished with a facing; I cut 4 of these and made a “cuff” for each sleeve instead of putting the facing invisibly inside. The cuff has the seam inside between the sleeve and the cuff, and I hand stitched the cuff to the sleeve in a few spots to secure it in place. I love how this looks!

I used my circa 2022 on the sleeve this time, because it seemed like a better spot than the back of the neck I’d used for my previous 2022 makes. I felt like it would be a bit invisible in that location, in this print.

I’m very happy with this super sweet and cheerful dress! As well as the fact that the colours are absolutely gorgeous, the girls make me smile, and the shape and style is so perfectly suited to my current beach/dogwalking lifestyle. What more could one hope for in a dress 🙂

I’ve got several things to blog here, immediately, because I’ve been shamefully neglectful of my poor little blog. Life has just got so busy lately, I know I know… I hate excuses too; however, the thing is I’m babysitting my two beautiful grandchildren (separately) on two, sometimes three days a week, while Cassie and Kelly work; which is absolutely lovely although also quite tiring. But I want to catch up here too… time to embark upon a blogging onslaught. You have been warned!

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: Clara, daily outfit, half sleeve dress, nerida hansen, sleeve

butterflies

10/03/2022 9:41 pm \ 2 Comments \ Carolyn

I made this exceptionally pretty – I think! – new lingerie set…

Cassie bought this beautiful kit for me for Christmas last year; it’s stunningly lovely, with black bits and pieces; and a really lovely minty-coloured tulle embroidered with iridescent pink/blue/violet embroidered butterflies; from Emerald Erin. I’ve linked to the kit, it is not an affiliate link.

I decided to use my MakeBra pattern DL03 to make a padded, underwired bra, plus the Cloth Habit Watson pattern to make two pairs of matching knickers. I love my unpadded Watson bras dearly, but leading into winter I need some of the padded ones. They just look better under the tight merino sweater tees that I like to wear in winter.

The tulle lace is, of course, completely sheer, so I decided to underline it with some cream stretch stuff from my stash; I bought quite a lot of this from Spotlight years ago and it’s proved incredibly useful in my lingerie making. I’ll need to get some more when it’s gone!

I also used some black stretch cotton jersey also from my stash, for the backs of the knickers. The fronts of both knickers is the lace, cut on the bias, backed with the cream stretch. I had enough of the black fold-over elastic to do one knickers waist and legs completely, and the legs of the second pair. The waistline of the second pair is finished with regular picot elastic. I wish I’d had enough of the foldover to do both pairs, but c’est la vie!

I wanted to minimise slicing the butterflies in half on the bra cup pieces, so cut around some of the motifs that would have been too obvious in this aspect, and hand stitched them over the seams. This wasn’t possible with all of them, but just this little bit is an improvement, I think. You can probably just see it barely in this picture, but I always hand stitch the fabric to the foam cups “in the ditch” to keep everything in place nicely.

The kit is a really beautiful quality, with everything needed to finish my bra except for the aforementioned foam and cream and black stretch. ANDO ALSO EXCEPT, it contained only half a metre of strap elastic, which is about half the amount I need to make this bra. I’m not sure how the black beauty bra pattern works… there was quite a lot of foldover elastic for just one bra, so I wonder if that was supposed to be used for the bra straps somehow? Or the twill tape? which I used for the decorative bows. Strange… anyway, fortunately I had some black strap elastic already that did the trick. . I had no choice really; since I’d basically finished the bra by this point. If decided to buy another kit from this seller I might have to buy the black beauty pattern as well and see how it all works together.

Anyway, I’m super happy with this very beautiful set.

I just love the sharp contrast between black and white on the inside of the bra. I love it so much I might attempt a bra with this kind of look on the outside, someday 🙂

In #use30 chat, I did use some of my stash to finish, probably about half a metre of black and cream stretch all up; so I can legitimately claim this little bit off my #use30 pledge for the year. Well hey, each little bit counts!

My total for the year so far is up to 15.5m; and I have 14.5m to go, yay!

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: cloth habit, emerald erin, lingerie, makeBra DL03, watson

a fabulous Mr Fox

08/03/2022 8:18 pm \ 6 Comments \ Carolyn

Hello ! I’ve just finished making this cute little fox for Theo. And he has a nice little outfit too. A reversible waistcoat and a pair of smart trousers, no less. Quite dapper little chappy, no?

I was recently the lucky winner of the James Fox pattern from a giveaway run over on instagram by his designer Lisa of A Sewing Life, along with the patterns for his trousers and waistcoat. So I thought since I made a bunny for Arthur not that long ago, I should make some sort of an animal for Theo too.

I couldn’t find any appropriately coloured felt in the shops here, so I ordered some. I ended up getting some hand-dyed wool felt from Indigo Inspirations; this is the Rust colourway, and I ordered some plain white from the same shop at the same time, for his chest and the other white detailing. His gloves and boots are dark chocolate brown cotton corduroy, leftover from my recently made brown skirt, originally from Tessuti, in Melbourne? I think? It was a gift from Cassie.. Buttons are old stash.

I redid his nose several times until I was totally happy. Faces can be tricky and I’m very happy with how his turned out in the end!

His trousers have POCKETS… oh my gosh how gorgeous is that?! Of course I had to pose him with his paws shoved insouciantly down into them. He looks exceptionally debonair like so, in my humble opinion…

hide and seek…

He has fully articulated limbs, which make it lots of fun to pose him. He doesn’t really stand up by himself very well; in fact he topples over at the drop of a hat. I’m not sure if I overstuffed his head, making it too heavy? but I do know from experience that you have to stuff a doll’s head very firmly in order for it to look any good at all. So I don’t know how the instability could be avoided? Anyway, he props against a wall very well.

“paint me like one of your French girls…”

Achieving the aforementioned articulation was a little fiddly, because of the difficulty of manipulating a needle through two buttons inside half-stuffed arms and body, but it turned out ok in the end, I think. My first go at stitching up the backs of his fully stuffed arms wasn’t very neat, and it’s an area that’s really on show on the finished fox. Before giving him away, I unpicked my previous stitching and carefully redid it to be a lot neater.

All his clothes are made from some of Craig’s old shirts; which I always keep for the buttons as well as for the (usually) beautiful quality fabrics.

I hope Theo enjoys his new fox, and I can’t wait to see him played with! I wonder what his name will be?

Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: a sewing life, doll, dollmaking, james fox, toys, Wardrobe Refashion

hand drawn check

03/03/2022 1:08 pm \ 4 Comments \ Carolyn

Isn’t this fabric totally gorgeous?!! I love it so much! I still have a huge affinity to pink, despite that I’m not “supposed” to wear it, whatever that means.. well, if it makes you happy! And this little group of colours really does.

This is the Hand Drawn check by Nerida Hansen fabrics, colourway Navy Pink – yes of course they had me at “navy” plus “pink”; one of my all time favourite colour combinations! and I used one of their patterns, the Summer dress to make this too! btw way, yes those are direct links to the things, but rest assured they are not affiliate links 🙂

goes so nicely with my teal clogs!! #bonus

and yes I made those too… details here

I’m totally over the moon with the gorgeously pretty and floaty result… it’s a really lovely combination, if I say so myself 🙂 The design is very simple; it just slips over your head with no closure needed, my favourite sort of thing to wear, especially in summer 😉 and the beautiful cool slipperiness of the tencel linen sliding over your body as it goes is an absolute delight.

The Summer dress design has massive pockets, ahem; not that that is in any way important, of course! 😉 and a slight oversized-ness that feels happily up-to-the-minute in the fashion stakes. I wasn’t sure if I should go down a size, but in the end decided to trust the size chart. And actually I’m in love with the loose fit. I really like the midi length. It’s not a length that I’ve been wearing a lot over the last few years but I feel it sneaking back into my list of “wants”; as in things that my mind feels lately are all of flattering, comfortable, and a little bit of a refreshing change. They say that hemline lengths are the barometer of the fashion world? well who knows, I often just think that anything goes in fashion right now, but it is nice to have a variety of things to choose from in the wardrobe.

I was careful to match up the checks at the side as best I could; even though I sometimes rail against the rigidity of this mindset, and I feel like it can sometimes lead to more fabric wastage too… I still do it myself most of the time! It does look a lot nicer when you go to the effort of making sure the print is nice and consistent all around. As it turned out; the skirt length was just about perfect that there was almost no wastage through pattern matching; which was a nice outcome. And I managed to cut the huge deep pockets from the sides, so I actually have a small amount of leftovers for … something.

Of course I fell in love with that print first and foremost, but actually the quality is superb as well. It sewed up beautifully; very soft and supple, but has a very nice amount of body too.

I cut some of the leftovers into bias strips and made bias binding; which I used to bind the front and back facing. I love the look of this! and of course it’s a much more comfortable finish to wear than if you just whizz it around on the overlocker; which can be scratchy. Of course I also added a circa 2022 label. These are so cute! and the novelty has not worn off at all for me 🙂 Probably going to put one of these on each and every thing I make for myself this year!

And I made a mask. As you do. However, just something about the print – which I love! – well in a mask I felt like it turned out a little bit … Hannibel Lector-ish? Yeah, I know; once you see it… The dress itself doesn’t trigger that for me at all… but in a mask? hmmm!

Why yes, I did indeed made my hat too. One of my all-time most worn garments! Details here

Now I have to confess this fabric was new to me this year, so I can’t really count it in my #use30 metres fr0m stash. In the process of testing our new pattern lately I have used another 4m of fabric from my stash, but I really should ADD the 2m I used for this gorgeous dress in there to be fair! So; I think I can subtract the balance of 2m off my tally; bringing me up to 15m used, and 15m to go? sounds kinda about right? I know; it’s getting a bit dodgy in the accounting department but honestly I have zero regrets. I absolutely love this fabric and it makes me very happy, so I’m definitely not beating myself up over the whole thing. I will use 30m from the standing stash in the end, however long it takes, and I’m content with that.