Monthly Archives: May 2025

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a Minä Perhonen dress and some new clogs

28/05/2025 1:51 pm \ 7 Comments \ Carolyn

hello! I’ve made a whole new outfit recently… it’s not so often that I can present a new, head-to-toe handmade outfit like this!

I bought this Minä Perhonen hessian on a previous trip to Tokyo, and after a suitable period of stash marination picked out Burda dress pattern, Burda 07/2018; 118. One I’ve used before, a true goodie based on its very tiny fabric requirements. btw, did you know that this very Finnish name actually belongs to a Japanese label? I didn’t; but I’d done some investigations prior to our trip and discovered this surprising fact. Of course then I had to visit the eponymous store and spent an agonising 30-60 minutes trying to choose just one of the beautiful fabrics. Difficult, indeed.

I settled on this cotton hessian with a multi coloured print of overlapping ovals. I loved this combination of colours; violet, duck-egg blue, teal blue, navy blue, lemon yellow and apricot. I thought it fitted in very nicely with my personal colour palette of true- to deep autumn.

Because of the wide weave and slightly rough texture I opted to line it, the first time I have done so for this pattern although the design is supposed to be lined. And now I have done so I can reliably report that the lining instructions are pretty sparse, bordering on unhelpful. They start out with one or two seams and then suddenly say something like “add lining”… ok maybe I’m exaggerating, but not by much! I ended up stitching the bulk of it in by hand. Of course this results in a very neat and tidy finish. I cut it it purposely to be a little generous, so I’m not concerned that those hand stitches are going to come under strain.

I cut the facings from a greige medium-weight linen from the stash. I used a different griege lightweight cotton from stash to bind the hem raw edge before stitching it by hand. The pale pink lining fabric was also in the stash, so my only required purchase was a new, “natural” 60cm invisible zip. I’m loving shopping the stash as much as I can! Gradually chipping away at it, honestly when I do get down to zero I’m going to throw a party!

I made a size larger than my usual for some reason. Not sure why I did this now because it’s a tad too boxy. Also, while the print is absolutely gorgeous, the hand of the fabric is both quite heavy and drape-y, a combination that I don’t really love all that much. Definitely not going to stop me from wearing it though!

Here I am wearing it for its maiden voyage, during me-made May.

Aaaand, I made a new pair of shoes! and fortuitously they go beautifully with my new dress. This style of shoe should look pretty familiar to anyone who regularly reads my blog, since I once again used a kit from leather needle thread. This particular woven, three-colour style is a new one though. I had lots of fun making these, as usual!

I have a kinda embarrassing confession though… it was in making these ones that I finally realised that I’d mistakenly been putting in the buckle upside down for some of my previous clogs, whoopsies. They are the correctly way up here, and for my most recent black ones too. My mustard clogs and teal clogs were upside down… fortunately it was actually pretty easy to unpick the pieces and reinsert the buckle in the right way around. I’m such a dolt, because I’d always felt they looked a little funny… well it all makes perfect sense now and the clogs look so much better!

at left, incorrect… at right, correct!

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: burda 07/2018 118, daily outfit, dress, shoes

some new things…

09/05/2025 6:56 pm \ 2 Comments \ Carolyn

hello! I’ve made some new things recently… firstly, some new winter pyjamas. 🙂

I used my usual Closet Core patterns Carolyn pattern for the bottoms, and for the top I used a pattern adapted from a Burda pattern, just a basic loose top with cut-on sleeves. I went to Spotlight and bought 1.5m coral pink, 0.5m navy blue and 1.0m white cotton flannelette… and right now I have to make a stern warning to future me; THIS IS NOT ENOUGH FABRIC TO MAKE A PAIR OF WINTER PYJAMAS. Well, to be more specific, it CAN BE enough fabric, but only if one is prepared do lots of careful measuring, careful cutting and careful piecing to use as much of the fabric as is humanly possible. And there will be practically zero fabric by the end of it.

I mean, this is a good thing, right? Reducing waste? To answer myself, yes it is, and I enjoyed the technicalities of the process and pretty proud I managed to use practically all of it, however this normally very simple project turned into a bit of an epic journey. I think it’s ok to admit that it’s not necessary to virtuously use “all your fabric” when you make something.

I realised I had not bought enough fabric once I laid down my pattern pieces, and so had no choice but to cut and piece every single offcut in order to make the pyjama legs as long as I needed, as well as the pyjama top sleeves and body as long as I needed. It was kind of fun to have the different colours appear as stripes like this too.

All the seams are overlocked on the inside, and all the seams are faux fell-stitched down using white thread on the outside. I like that all those little bitsy-bits are highlighted like this!

This is the tiny pile of my total leftovers. Honestly, in the end, “using all the fabric” became such a quest that I slapped on a few superfluous pockets, which is kinda silly really. It was a fun experiment, but of course it’s a truth that superfluous pockets are not morally superior to throwing away small scraps. Just saying.

I also made some new clogs!

I used a kit that I bought from Leather Needle Thread, hmm, perhaps a few years ago. It’s taken me a while to get around to it, yes. 🙂

The colour is black, which of course will be extremely handy . As much as I love colourful things in my wardrobe, black shoes really are the most useful ones. As previously, I applied several layers of clear varnish to the clog bases with light sanding in between each coat before making the clogs. I know the supplier of the clog kits doesn’t recommend this, but I personally have found it an excellent idea with regards to keeping the clogs clean. Even if you scrupulously wash your feet each time prior to putting on your shoes, you still can’t help but get them a bit dirty, and varnishing the bases really makes the cleaning process a lot more effective.

Posted in: sewing, shoes \ Tagged: Closet Core patterns, leather needle thread, own design, pyjamas, shoes

“cool bunny” T-shirts

02/05/2025 4:57 pm \ 2 Comments \ Carolyn

Hello! For the Easter just gone by I wanted to give something to my three little grandsons… chocolate has been ruled out by the parents and so I had to think of something else. I decided upon this! As a teen, my eldest Tim used to have a pink T-shirt with a “cool bunny” printed on it which he absolutely loved. It was actually a very different print from this one, but with this in mind I googled “cool bunny” and something like this was one of the millions that came up. I thought it was really cute!

The following is my process… I’d done a screen printing course years ago and so already had all the materials on hand. Most of my old paints had dried up but fortunately the red and black were ok. Phew!

I hand-drew the design on tracing paper in lead pencil, then transferred the designs to equally sized pieces of wrapping paper.

Why wrapping paper? Well, because it’s a little stiff and “waxy” in texture I thought it would last a little longer in the printing process, and hopefully not disintegrate after a few prints. Yes I could have gone out to buy proper printing paper but I’m still on a “use what I’ve got in the house already” kick. I’d pre-cut the paper pieces to be the exact same size, in the hopes of being able to overlay the two colours as perfectly as possible.

Using a scalpel, from my shoemaking kit, I cut out the two designs. I’d also cut out four pieces of white cotton jersey (from stash) big enough for a T-shirt front. Four pieces? but I only have three grandsons? well I was accounting for one possibly not working out well since I wasn’t going to easily be able to do all this a second time! Screenprinting is quite involved!

To help line up the prints, I’d drawn the corners on the white cotton jersey in disappearing ink. As it turned out, this didn’t work out well at all because the edges of the paper are stuck down to the screen with masking tape which then obviously also masks the corners drawn on the cotton jersey underneath. So of course you can’t see them. I mean, duh! It was actually pretty difficult to line up the screen for the red print afterwards. I’m going to have to put my thinking cap on for future multi-colour prints.

First print done!

I’d cut the black with little “bridges” to keep the design actually together, so after printing I went over with a paintbrush and carefully filled in the bridges.

Second print!

These are the three that worked pretty well…

and this one did not. If you can’t see it straight away, just look at the red, inside-the-ears bit, and you can see how skewiff it is compared the the others. I’ve still got this fabric, and may use it for something else in the future.

Heat set the prints, and then I sewed up the T-shirts.

I used Butterick 5510 for G’s T-shirt above, that I’d used for him previously…

and for A’s and T’s I’d traced around a child’s T-shirt and adapted it to their sizes as well as I could. I deliberately made them all oversized so they could grow into them, but they did all turn out pretty big. Fortunately all the boys seem to like them and have worn them, so I’m happy!