December 2023 - Handmade by Carolyn

2023; a retrospective

31/12/2023 5:29 pm \ 10 Comments \ Carolyn

Hello! It’s the last day of 2023, and I’m feeling miraculously motivated to look back upon my year of making, and see what I made, how it worked out and generally do a bit of retrospective musing on the things to come… first of all I’m putting up some favourite photos/outfits, one from each month of the year. I made everything I’m wearing in each picture, barring some shoes…

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

NovemberDecember

Actually, it was funny for me looking back to find some favourite pictures because to be honest I had a bit of a photo slump this year. I stopped enjoying taking pictures of myself and struggled to find any motivation in it, particularly during the last four months.

What did I make this year?

So, I made 64 items this year, including 1 knitted jumper, 2 underwear sets comprising a bra plus two pairs of matching undies, 1 leather bag, 1 wallet, 3 hats, 8 dresses, 2 jackets, 12 tops, 10 skirts, 3 cardigans, 15 kiddies’ garments, 4 pj’s, 1 pr hand warmers, and 1 Wedding Dress! capitals intended… 30 of these items were for other people. The absolute biggest and most involved project for me this year was of course Lainey’s wedding dress. Yes, it sounds like a lot, and of course it is! That stash is not going to reduce itself!

Cassie and I were absolutely over the moon to add two new patterns to our Carolyn & Cassie Pattern Co stable this year; the Pinjarra twinset and the Meelup skirt. It seems like this has been the Year of Basics for our tiny company! It feels great to have some more tried and true patterns that we truly believe in and wear ourselves very frequently. And we’re excited about moving onto more adventurous design next year. #bighint

Stashbusting vs new fabric

I’m still diligently working through my stash, and not buying or accepting new fabric. I’m pretty proud of my restraint… in fact the only time I worked with new fabric this year was Lainey’s wedding dress! I’ve worked through quite a lot of my collection and it’s all looking quite manageable nowadays. Realistically, I estimate I have maybe another year of not buying new to get rid of absolutely EVERYTHING, maybe even less? Exciting thought! but we’ll see how that goes! #fingerscrossed. Wish me luck!

Regarding the very large wool stash I’ve inherited from relatives’ … I’m planning to enquire about donating most of it to my grandson’s daycare/kindergarten actually, because realistically it would take me years to knit my way through that. I have to be realistic about what is achievable!

Favourite makes?

Hmm, no surprises here, but of course Lainey’s wedding dress is by far my favourite make of the year! as well as being the most involved. This was a pure labour of love, into which I poured my heart and soul. Although there were challenges… I still have slight ptsd about that hem! I’m pretty proud of the final product and felt like Lainey chose an absolutely beautiful design that I was genuinely in love with myself too. I’m so thrilled with how beautifully she shone on this day, which was a truly lovely time in every way.

Some other favourites makes of the year are:

I’m really happy with how both this pretty pink Pinjarra cardigan and this little blue Jade mini skirt turned out, and I’ve worn both of these pieces pretty frequently. The ivory tee is my most most worn item of the year! I really need to make another, to take the pressure off!

For creativity, I was really happy with this weird little outfit!

And, so random, but I was thrilled with this little knitted set that I made for baby Gilbert! Making things like this, and the purple/raspberry set above just reinforce for me the joy I feel with making something useful from scraps and bits and pieces that otherwise suggest nothing. I need to embrace more projects like these because they are nearly always the most rewarding and satisfying to me. 🙂

any fails?

ooh gosh, that’s tough, because I didn’t really make anything this year that stands out negatively… strictly speaking there are a few items I’ve only worn once so far, but they are all things I like!

I made a whole bunch of things from this rather terrible paprika-coloured stretch fabric, all of which have a tendency to stretch out, and it was a relief to get this ghastly stuff out of the stash. However, all of them been worn a bunch so I can’t really call any of these a true fail either… Theo insists the red T-shirt is his favourite top!

What did I wear?

My most worn items can be summed up neatly in the following #ootd photos.

Everything made by me, in fact I wore close to 100% me made clothing as usual. My most worn items are my ivory merino tee (23 wears), my Oxen Fibremood Jill dress (top row, middle, 21 wears), and jointly my navy Miette knitted cardigan and yellow merino Pinjarra cardigan (18 wears each). Honourable mentions go to my green Karijini dress (top row, left, 16 wears), and as usual my yellow raincoat, the number of wears I did not count… I’m also not counting my black tights, hand knitted sock, handmade sockettes nor any hats, all of which were very worn more than anything, of course!

other doings in general

I’m still learning Japanese, it’s been nearly four years now! and I am excited to announce we’ll be visiting Japan again next year. I’m thrilled to be able to try speaking a little, as well as catch up again with my lovely friend Yoshimi.

I’ve kept up my outfit of the day blog over on Tumblr for 10 years now! Wow! I’m pleased I managed this, however like I mentioned at the beginning of this post the habit of taking a photo of myself everyday has started to become tiring and I’ve decided to gently let it go. Actually, correction; I’m abruptly letting it go! 10 years is quite a long time! There have been plenty of times in the last year I’ve almost forgotten about it and have to hurriedly take a picture just before putting my pyjamas on… haha. Whoops! I think you’ve got to sometimes take stock of whether an activity is contributing to your happiness, or if it’s become a chore; and take the appropriate action. I may or may not take the occasional picture if I particularly love my outfit, but definitely not daily, and will most likely post only instagram from now on.

Finally, if you’re still reading, then thank you very much for sticking with me for another year! I really appreciate everyone who does and who chooses to leave a kind and generous comment every now and then; each and every one really makes my day and I’m so thankful for all of you.

I hope you all had a wonderful year, and wish you all a happy, healthy, rewarding and creative 2024 ahead!

Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: retrospective

Christmas dress! hot choccy treats and some cute little kiddie things

28/12/2023 3:39 pm \ 2 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve made some new things…

… including a new Christmas Day dress for myself… the latest subtraction from ye good old stash. So this new dress was made with a piece of lovely border print stuff bought in the closing days of 2019, New York when I went there with Yoshimi… I’m pretty sure it was from Metro Textiles?

I thought I’d make a simple, very plain shift dress and turned to a rather lovely little shift dress pattern I’ve made previously, Burda 07/2018; 118, which is exactly that, but with pockets! Win!

As usual I hadn’t really bought enough fabric and cutting out the pieces was a tight squeeze! I had to cut out those awkwardly shaped facing pieces from a different fabric. I used a pale latte coloured, stiff cotton for this.

Fortunately I also had a zip of the appropriate length in my stash too, although it’s a less than ideal bright white instead of ivory; it’s a little more noticeable that in appears in this picture.

This picture is really just to show the selvedge being used for the centre back seam; I often do this if the selvedge is lying nice and flat, and it does save that little bit extra if fabric is short.

If I’m totally honest with myself I’m not 100% happy with how the print matched up along this back seam but again, I didn’t have enough fabric to do anything about this so c’est la vie.

wearing it here with my crocheted hat…

This really is such a lovely print! and I’m absolutely thrilled it has now become a cute little summer dress that I felt comfortable and very happy in, all day long. I didn’t get any photos from Christmas Day because I was just rushed off my feet all day, but I wore it again today and took these pics. 🙂

Next up! for Christmas gifts, something I always like to do is to make some little edible treat for the whole family. This year I thought I’d make hot chocolate bombs… however, a lot of the recipes I found online were in the form of perfectly spherical, beautifully shiny chocolate shells that you fill with cocoa powder and maybe sugar and/or marshmallows… well such chocolatey artistry was completely beyond my skills! I decided instead to just make hot chocolate “bricks” 😉

These little morsels might not be things of beauty but they do comprise everything that one needs for a mug of yummy hot chocolate. My recipe:

Hot Chocolate Bricks

each brick contains:

45g dark cooking chocolate
1 heaped tsp cocoa powder
¼ tsp sugar
4 mini marshmallows

I used double the above mixture, which was an easy quantity to handle, to make two at a time. Simply melt the chocolate in the microwave then quickly and thoroughly stir through the cocoa powder and sugar. The mixture should be sticking together into a self-contained blob, picking up all the mixture off the sides of the bowl as you mix and leaving almost no residue. If it wasn’t, I would add a little more cocoa powder until it did stick together. Divide between two mini patty pans and gently push the marshmallows on top… this means people can remove them before melting the brick and pop them on top of their hot chocolate just before serving.

Each brick is designed to go in 100-150mL milk, depending on how strong you like it. If you like it super rich then you can substitute a little cream for a portion of milk! because they’re quite rock solid little things they actually need a LOT of stirring and occasional re-heating to mix in thoroughly enough. But they are delicious! I used one of the earlier, not-so-pretty ones to check out that they worked ok…

btw I also made a little instruction slip to put in with each pack, explaining the how-to stuff. Actually, I can’t believe I didn’t take a picture of the final packages, obviously I got a bit stressed for time towards the end there!(Later edit: Mum took a picture of hers for me… :). )

However, to describe; throughout the year I’d saved up those little plastic punnets mini tomatoes are sold in… I peeled off the labels and managed to squeeze 7 chocolate bricks in each punnet. I popped the instructions in as well and finished off with tying up the punnets with coloured ribbons.

Finally, and possibly my very last makes for the year? there are just three days to go, so maybe! I made three little garments, for my three little grandsons. Two raglan sleeve T-shirts in different sizes and a little onesie for the newest and littlest, all self-drafted. Each using a mix of white and vaguely Christmassy red plaid cotton jersey, although I didn’t actually make them for Christmas! I bought the red plaid cotton jersey from (I think?) the Fabric Store in Melbourne during a past trip over there… it’s quite thin and was actually not much fun to sew with. Doing the twin needle hems on the T-shirt sleeves was a hideous experience, each one unpicked and re-done multiple times each. I don’t really know what the issue was but it only occurred on this particular fabric, not the white cotton body hems.

The white jersey was from old stash. I think they turned out pretty cute, and if I get a picture of the little guys wearing their new things I will upload it here!

Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: baby clothes, babywear, burda 07/2018 118, daily outfit, dress, own design, recipes

check it out…

20/12/2023 3:10 pm \ 6 Comments \ Carolyn

I bought this beautiful, slightly crinkly linen gingham from Japan a few years ago, during our last visit there and it was always intended to be a Vogue 2900… I frequently jump and haa about a particular fabric and which one of the one million different designs it could better be suited to, so it’s pretty nice when a piece of fabric can actually get matched with a pattern and actually go through with it, and no agonising along the way!

There’s probably not much more to say… this Donna Karan design has been a favourite for years, I’ve made a few – this is my fourth! – and still wear and love all of them. I initially thought about putting in a contrasting bias-cut strip like I did with my first one but it actually looked way too busy. Painstakingly, I unpicked each one and saved the strips for a future project.

I cut out the front pieces twice, because the first time I was dissatisfied with how the centre front seam turned out. The second attempt, I carefully cut them so the pattern of the gingham meets up perfectly in the centre, as if there was no seam there at all. It looks so much better than my first attempt, which, although the checks matched, the overall colour pattern was not matched across the seam so it looked weird. My second attempt looks way better.

I also cut some pieces on the bias, for visual interest, and think this looks quite nice. I’m glad I did it! The armhole and back neckline are finished with bias cut strips. After understitching, I turned these under and hand stitched them back to the dress as invisibly as possible.

I’m going to enjoy wearing this dress over summer. I like wearing short dresses and skirts, but I also like this longer length too. It’s such a comfortable style, and quite chic too, imo.

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: daily outfit, dress, Vogue 2900

an assortment of sewn things

11/12/2023 4:50 pm \ 6 Comments \ Carolyn

hello! Once again I am presenting an odd assortment of disparate things made recently…

Items 1 and 2; two completely identical new Booragoon tops. Both from a pink cotton jersey from stash, originally Spotlight from ages ago. I’m wearing one above with my newly dyed Closet Clore patterns Mitchell trousers… the trousers used to be a paler pink and I felt like a colour change though I fear I overdid it a bit! never mind… the other pink Booragoon has gone to my niece T. It really suits her!

Love this cute and yet chic little pattern! I know it’s mine and I shouldn’t be too self-congratulatory, but I really really love it so I just have to gush occasionally. I’ll stop now.

Items 3, 4 and 5, or should I just call this item 3? I’m never quite sure…

anyway, I made a new set of one Watson bra plus two pairs of matching undies. I used some of the leftover pink cotton jersey, from those aforementioned pink tops, and some striped jersey, that I’ve had for a long long time (actually made this striped shirt from it). And whipped up a mixed fabrics set… actually I want to make more things like this at the moment, mixing up different fabrics.

Fronts and back of the knickers are contrasting, the strap elastic, rings and sliders, and hook and eye closure are all recycled from an old bra. The other elastics are all from the stash, by which I mean they’ve not been used before even if they’re not actually new. A free set! Yay!

Items 6 and 7 (or 4 and 5?). some matching clothes for Cassie’s two; T and G… Oh, I’ve just realised I haven’t introduced my newest grandson here yet… I did over on instagram but this is his first appearance here…Cassie had baby Gilbert a few weeks ago, and here he is!

Isn’t he sweet! This is the first thing I’ve made for him and I made a matching T-shirt for his older brother too.

I’m quite sad that this next one has zero hanger appeal, or should I say floor appeal, and even on the body it doesn’t look particularly chic; which is pity because the fabric is absolutely beautiful.

Mum wove this length of beautiful lilac/blue fabric with her own two hands many years ago, and had partially made a dress or tunic or something out of it.

I cut off the bottom, hemmed, and reattached the cut off portion as sleeves. I’m wearing it as a summer dressing gown. So that was item 8, for those keeping count, and now for number 9….

my new summer nightie! So I really really love this and it feels so lovely to wear! I used a short length of silk from Le Stash, originally from (I think) Tessuti fabrics of Melbourne, from years ago. With some clever pattern placement I managed to cut a Closet Core Simone slip. I French seamed the side seams, and was very careful to match stripes all around. It feels incredibly luxe! Why have I never made silk sleepwear before?!

Ok, I think that’s all for now! See you later!

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: baby clothes, babywear, Booragoon top, Carolyn & Cassie Pattern Co, Closet Core patterns, cloth habit, Gilbert, lingerie, own design, Simone slip, Theo, watson

Lainey’s wedding dress

02/12/2023 5:27 pm \ 6 Comments \ Carolyn

Hello! It’s been such a long time since I mentioned it no doubt everyone has forgotten; but at the beginning of this year I made a wedding dress for my daughter-in-law Lainey!

It was quite a journey! first we went for the customary wedding-dress try-on together with Lainey’s parents; and after taking time and consideration to really narrow down the style that Lainey wanted, we all headed for the fabric store… Interestingly we ended up with basically the same style of dress that Lainey had very first sketched down, right at the very beginning before any shopping!

We started out with V9328 as a starting point but of course there was a loooot of adjustments to the pattern. I ended up making four or maybe five muslins of the bodice; I’ve lost count now… Lainey wanted for the bodice to be quite closely body-hugging as well as a low-cut V both front and back, and no to a corset; I really wanted to get that as right as I possibly could. However any dressmaker will tell you that that sort of style is quite the challenge. I think I managed to get the front as low cut as we could within those guidelines!

The body of the dress itself is a medium-weight, slightly matte white satin. Lainey wanted white-on-white, a lacy bodice, translucent sleeves with lace, and for a bit of sparkle on the bodice as well… I got this effect by overlaying the bodice with a layer of sparkly tulle, and then hand-stitching the lace motifs free-form over the top of this. The sleeves are just the sparkly tulle, with lace motifs artfully hand-sewn over. Those sleeves just about drove me mad… but I’ll get to that later….

The lace that Lainey chose was absolutely exquisite… leaves sewn on quite lightweight tulle in a free-form very naturalistic style… some of them were only partially sewn on so lifted off the tulle in a sort of 3D way; and Lainey wanted this look on her dress as well.

So, multiple calico muslins later and I finally got started on the dress itself. I carefully constructed the bodice with the sparkly tulle overlaid, and added the skirt. Then came the long long part, hand-cutting, arranging and hand-stitching all those lace-y leaves…. I do enjoy this part, it’s artistically very satisfying while being quite technical challenging, and absolutely a hugely time-consuming activity. I know it took well over 100 hours because I got through literally every one of the 152 BTS Run episodes on YouTube, plus a lot of other content too…

I aimed to get the leaves artistically arranged, curling around each other with just the right amount of spacing to be sorta evenly arranged while also looking organic. I left a few curling up and away from the bodice, as Lainey wanted, but not on the front part of the bodice where I decided it looked a little funny.

yes it has pockets!

I also had the lace motifs coming down over the waistline to disguise that seam between sparkly tulle and no sparkly tulle. I carefully arranged the leaves to cover the seam as much as possible while trying to keep it organic.

I’m extremely happy with how the lace turned out. I do have to say that the artistic side of me sorta pined for a not-white background colour that would enable the lace to stand out a bit more visually because you have to get up really close to even see it. However, technically I do think it turned out really beautiful and I’m exceptionally proud of this.

I don’t think I took a picture of this? here’s a slightly blurry one from the professional wedding photographer… I constructed a grosgrain ribbon belt, stitched to the skirt seam allowance and hidden between the dress and lining just like I did with both Kelly and Cassie’s dress – you can just see it peeking out at the bottom right of the picture; and also a blue hand-embroidered plaque for their wedding date.

I absolutely love this picture…

Oh! I haven’t even mentioned those sleeves yet! Yes, they were a tiny nightmare. btw if you don’t want to read any sewing-related whinging; stop now and just enjoy the pretty pictures! Rest assured it all turned out alright in the end!

look at my handsome boys…! #heartisbursting. btw, Tim (at right) made the wedding arch for his own wedding to Kelly…

OK, sleeves… For a start, we had already made drastic adjustments to the original, extremely fluttery sleeves of the pattern, to get them down to an acceptable level of flutter. Then I made them in the sparkle-y tulle, and stitched on the leaves. I was pretty happy with how it was all looking. At almost the finish line Lainey tried the dress on again, and thought the sleeves still too fluttery. I had already added the lining by this point, and so you can just imagine… I could have happily run away from home at that point. (jk). But she was absolutely right, of course, and the sleeves did look better sans adjustments… I carefully took leaves off from the top of the sleeves and then, heart in mouth, cut out a wedge of tulle. Then hand-stitched an almost invisible seam along the top of the sleeves to close the gap, and rearranged the leaf motifs to cover it.

The other big adventure was the hem. You know when you’re at the finish line and you’re like; oh, only the hem to go! It’s basically finished! WELL! Fate had other ideas…. I had allowed a fabulously deep 10cm for the hem. I had done the same for Cassie’s dress and it turned out absolute perfect… however this fabric was completely different. Firstly, I bound the edge with lightweight bias cut muslin; which looked really nice of course. Then I stitched up the hem. And it looked absolutely terrible. The hem just wouldn’t ease into place nicely at all and it looked bumpy and fluted on the outside. At first I thought the muslin binding might be a little heavy or even overstretched? though I had been careful, so I painstakingly removed all the binding and just stitched an overlocked edge in place… same problem. I realised then that it was a feature of the fabric itself… it just had too much body and would never ever ease in… fortunately I had enough leftover fabric that I thought I could make a facing. I held my breath and again, heart in mouth, cut off the lovely deep hem allowance. A deeply scary moment! I made a pattern for, and cut out a hem facing from the leftover fabric, stitched it on, understitched. Then turned up and stitched the facing up. It looked way way better; however even though I had taken tiny stitches you could still see every single one very clearly all the way around. There was just something about that fabric; each stitch was like a distinct dimple on the surface. I (for like the third? fourth? time) unpicked, and finally achieved success by just hand-picking up the scantest of scant, barely even a full thread with each stitch of the hem. Honestly, any more than a single thread and you could see it standing out like a sore thumb on the outside. Absolutely amazing! I am fairly happy with the final look of the hem; but it was Quite a Business.

I’ve just remembered another thing that was quite difficult… I had cut the dress lining at the same time that I cut the bodice, meaning after (as I thought) perfecting the fit from multiple muslins. But of course there were subsequently still multiple tiny changes to the bodice itself, and by the time I got to attaching the lining I had long lost track of all such tiny little changes. In the end much of the lining was actually hand stitched in place.

Anyway; the final result was very very satisfying, as you can imagine all such very intensive and emotional projects always are. I think Lainey looked absolutely glorious in her dress and it gave me immense joy to see both Lainey and Sam glowing with happiness and love on the day.

wedding photographs: Amelia Claire photography

hair; Ree Meraki on Beaufort

make-up: Melody @ Luxury Makeup House

flowers: Kisschasey Weddings

Dress; made by ME!

venue: Brookleigh Estate

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: Lainey, wedding, wedding dress