My mother gave me a length of bottle green, sparkly stretch velvet for my birthday last year… and I wanted to make something nice with it before my next birthday rolled around. This is fast approaching so I needed to get cracking!
I decided to use the twist top pattern from the Japanese pattern-making book Pattern Magic by Tomato Nakamichi. Since we moved house five years ago I actually threw away a lot of my old patterns, including all the ones I had painstaking drawn up from first principles using this book. I know, seems like a silly thing to do, but at the time it felt important to clear the decks so I could make a fresh start with a reduced sewing stash, so I can’t really regret it. Anyway I needed to remake the pattern again from scratch, but that wasn’t really such a difficult task in the end.
It’s a great design, one of my favourites; and I’ve enjoyed wearing all my twist tops over the years. I’m wearing it here with my purple Jade mini skirt made earlier this year and blogged here; and my self-designed black tights.
I had a little leftover velvet, just enough to cut a new set of underwear, my usual combination of one bra plus two sets of undies
I used the MakeBra DL 03 pattern, and foam lining and underwires from the kit I bought from them a few years ago. I still had some elastics in my stash, and the only thing I had to buy new was the hook/eye closure, from Spotlight. The undies pattern is of course the Cloth Habit Watson pattern, probably my most used pattern ever since I bought it!
I made one small difference between this bra and my previous ones… I’ve always had the ring/slider adjustors situated at the back of the bra for all my previous ones, for some reasons I can’t even recall now. Eventually I’ve come to realise that whatever those reasons were in the past, ultimately it’s actually extremely INconvenient to have the adjustor on my back. So I switched it around for this new one. I have no idea why I’ve put the straps on in that idiotic way all this time.
I love this beautiful “star-dusted” fabric and it feels so luxurious and beautiful to wear it! Thank you so much to Mum for such a lovely and thoughtful birthday present!
hello! I’ve made a new/old blouse for myself… I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of using old textiles PLUS I’ve also always loved patchwork and mixed-prints in clothing so obviously this new blouse is certain to become a favourite! why? because the fabric is salvaged from three well-loved old shirts of my husband’s… I really liked each of these shirts when he was wearing them, so when he decided they were too worn to be worn any more (hehe) I packed them away to be refashioned one day.
I’m wearing my new shirt in the above pictures with 
hello!
This one is a little different from the previous pink one, as well as being different from the pattern… I cut the front so as to have a straight edge and to have the front facing integral with the front. I also left off the collar and made a hood instead. I love hoodies and don’t have enough in my wardrobe! Honestly if I’d had enough fabric I definitely would have made my pink Sienna to have a hood too.
for the hood, I turned under a seam and lined the hood completely with a black, sorta silky but not-silk stuff that is thin but nice and soft. I cut the back neckline facing from the same fabric. The hood edging is turned over the edge of the hood lining and simply topstitched in place. After stitching, I trimmed the hood edging inside close to the stitching.
Similarly, the pocket flaps were made by laying the two flap pieces wrong sides together, and stitching together as normal; then trimming the seam allowances off neatly close to the stitching.
I fully expect by September it will be just too hot for it… really I should have made it at the beginning of winter! In any case, it feels great to have taken the fabric from out of the stash, and into the wardrobe!
