in the Nagano region
Hello! We recently spent nearly a month overseas in east Asia, specifically South Korea and Japan. I’ll write a bit more about our trip in a future travel wardrobe post, but for now I’ll just be focusing on the two new things I made to wear for our holiday…
First up! a new mini skirt. I find a little stretchy fabric mini skirt to be an extremely comfortable and practical garment for hiking in a winter environment… which is why I make a new one practically every year, ahem. I’ve actually promised to myself to branch out into different patterns this year but that promise was made after I’d made this, honestly. Because yes, it’s yet another old favourite that pops up here with mind-numbing regularity, the Paprika patterns Jade mini skirt pattern.
I used a bright pink jersey that had been given to me by my friend N when she cleaned out her own stash. I actually already have a pink mini skirt from last year that’s still in very good condition, so I made this new one with a view to dyeing it immediately afterwards. I’d decided upon purple, thus the decision to use a purple zip which I happened to have in my stash too. I’m pretty happy with the very good colour match after the dye-job!
btw, I don’t always put a zip in the Jade but it’s usually a good idea. Also, I always have to substantially change the shape in the fitting stage, bringing in the waist by a good 15cm or so, which necessitated a redrafting of the waistband. Over numerous iterations of this skirt, I have found it a good idea to line/interface the waistband with a non-stretch material for longevity, since otherwise it will eventually stretch out.
looks lumpy here but that’s because of the shaped waistband, which won’t sit flat nicely
I added a cotton pocket inside the skirt, this cut from an old worn out shirt of Sam’s. I’ve found some sort of pocket a useful addition to the skirt pattern previously although I haven’t used this one yet, in spite of wearing the skirt quite a lot already. As it turns out I always wore it with other garments with it that had more convenient pockets so didn’t need it. The Jade pattern is not ideal for pocket addition at all, but I’ve still tried to force one upon it a few times now. I’m confident that it will prove useful in future wears, though.
The other new garment is a T-shirt, made from a blue and white striped jersey also from N. You may recognise it from G’s T-shirt in my previous post. For mine, I used our own Carolyn & Cassie Pinjarra pattern, sizing up because the fabric doesn’t have much stretch. I actually didn’t have much opportunity to take a photo of the T-shirt on our trip because it was rarely warm enough to wear it by itself! plus for some reason taking pictures of my outfits didn’t take a lot of priority in my mind. Is this a good sign? Am I maybe getting more mature?! All pictures featuring the Tshirt are pretty ordinary quality, haha…
Anyway, both these pieces are obviously comfortable and nice to wear, and feel like really good new basics for my wardrobe.
hello!
Unfortunately there wasn’t enough to do every single seam and edge like I have done in previous examples of this method but I just did as many of the more prominent bodice seams before I ran out of it.
I know I’ve used this pattern quite frequently but it really is such a beautiful dress design that I don’t see myself every tiring of it any time soon. Of course I really should branch out more and I’m resolving to try more new patterns this year and not fall back so often on the old favourites. In the meantime though, some of my recent as yet unblogged projects have failed this resolution already whoops.
I wore this along with my 
rhetorical question, don’t mind me. I actually love stripes, even though when I do sew with them I feel inextricably compelled to pin each and every stripe. It’s ok. A small amount of suffering is acceptable when it leads to nice things.
hello! I’ve made a new outfit by refashioning some other previously worn old things… from a skirt and old jeans, I’ve made a new/old tunic top and some new/old shorts. I realise I probably I should be using some of the new fabric already in my stash instead of “already used” fabric – truthfully I am not very sensible a lot of the time – however if I really like a fabric but not the garment so much then I do feel like it just makes sense to reuse the latter if I can. Actually, I have been making a number of things lately, and from my stash! but just haven’t got around to taking photos or blogging them yet. For some reason, I’m finding taking photos to be the biggest challenge now.
I bought this pretty raspberry/cream tie dye cotton? jersey from Stone Mountain fabrics in San Francisco during my trip over there with Yoshimi in late 2019… always with the intention of making a new lingerie set. Five year later and finally, ta da! I actually had it all cut out several years ago, and then it languished, and languished… The fabric is a tad on the thin side, not too thin but just a little. I think it might have some bamboo in, it has a slight hint of that tell-tale slipperiness. Maybe that’s why I left it for a while. Jerseys are so variable, it’s honestly quite amazing.
I had a small amount of leftovers so ran up a quick pair of sockettes using the Sytt och Prytt Florens ballerina sockette pattern. 
Taking off all those long (long) lengths of bias cut channelling took quite a long time, made even more painful with the memory of how carefully I had stitched them on in the first place to perfectly line up the channels with the lines of checks, as well as switching up threads depending on whether I was stitching on a black row or a cream row, this additionally making it more difficult to see the stitches I was unpicking. I know, I wonder about my own sanity too, sometimes…
Anyway. Iteration Number Two was essentially the same dress sans the elasticated channels. I reused the same shoulder straps to be a halter neckline and allowed the otherwise unaltered dress to hang like so. I actually quite liked it like this and wore it with a little T-shirt underneath a few times.
please excuse the totally gratuitous Clara pic…
I finally decided on a little skirt and naturally chose 
I used the very last of my “made in 2024” tags in the little breast pocket. Honestly, the dress was actually cut out in and partially made in 2024. So, 2024 or 2025? It’s kind of a “saddle” project really, spreading itself from last year to this one. I think I can use the tag with a clear conscience. 🙂
I laid the dress pieces on the cross, and the front overlay on the bias, and used some of the leftover bits to cut extensions to the front overlay so the ties are a bit longer, about 10cm or so. I really like them this longer length.
As per our pattern, I flat felled the side seams, which I always think looks really nice. You can see here that I used red thread to sew the dress up; this is because it was in my stash already and I didn’t want to buy new thread. I thought this would be fine, and it is really. I hand-stitched the hem.
A casual passerby would never see any of the bias binding finishes on the inside of the dress, but these give me a lot of joy too. I bias-bound the pocket edges, and the back neckline and armhole edges are bound according to the pattern. Gingham makes the prettiest bias binding! Because of this I actually cut up the entirety of the leftovers and made it into bias binding that I can use on a future project, so please look out for that!
It was hideously windy on the beach this morning which makes the above pictures a realistic portrayal of my day, however it does make everything look a little wild. Thus, a still picture where the dress is not being blasted to bits. Honestly, the things I do…
