hello!
I’ve made another Sienna jacket, yes, hot on the heels of the last one. I realise this is a weird thing to do but I’m well known for doing weird things so it’s just the norm at this point. I had this large and rather bulky piece of thick, woolly, charcoal knit in my stash and decided that to use just this one piece would actually free up a disproportionally large amount of space in there. OK then! I think I originally bought it from the remnant bin in Knit Wit, Nedlands.
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.
This fabric had two distinct sides; a side that looks like boiled wool and the other side looks like a stocking stitched knitted piece. I chose the boiled wool side to be the right side of my jacket. It’s really very bulky stuff so instead of traditional seams I got creative …
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.
The sleeve bands and sleeve band “holding pieces”? keepers? (forgot the proper name for those) are made the same way.
The front facings, pocket tops, jacket and sleeve hemlines were made by overlocking the raw edges, turning under allowances/facings to the inside, and then hand-stitching in place.
I actually went out to buy new buttons for this jacket when I decided only plain, black, matte buttons would do. I’d initially stitched on some other buttons from my stash but just didn’t like the result. So I made the executive decision to go against my “buy nothing” principles this time. I think it’s ok to do this if you’ve used all the workhorse buttons in your stash and really have trouble finding fabrics that match any of those colourful, wild and wacky buttons that remain in there!
This is an EXTREMELY warm jacket, much warmer than just about all the other ones in my wardrobe at the moment, yes, even my new pink one! I’ve been wearing this charcoal jacket just around the house mostly, and have saved the pink one for wearing out. I think we only have a few weeks left of weather cold enough for this one – hey I’m definitely not complaining about that!
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!
It’s such an easy to make design there’s really not much to say. The neckline is finished with a bias cut strip and the pattern includes a lovely deep hemline facing, which I edged with the same orange linen bias binding. I think this looks so pretty. Designwise, it has deep side pockets and sleeve cuffs. Hmm, that’s it, really…
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 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.
hello! I’ve made some new things recently… firstly, some new winter pyjamas. 🙂
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!
I hand-drew the design on tracing paper in lead pencil, then transferred the designs to equally sized pieces of wrapping paper.
First print done!
Second print!
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.
hello! I made a fun new little dress…
I cut the collar and cuffs from a neutral linen that I’ve had in my stash even longer. I think this is from Calico and Ivy originally; it’s been very useful over the years for just cutting pockets, facings, and other bits and bobs that require a sturdy and neutral coloured fabric.
