Handmade by Carolyn

she’s the boss

27/04/2013 11:00 pm \ 47 Comments \ Carolyn

So, you might be thinking that this is not my usual style of outfit. And you would be right! I did make my dress, but it was chosen by another.
But, how is this so?

Have you heard of the Sew Bossy initiative? This is a fun game dreamt up by Heather of Closet Case Files and Oona of oonaballoona. Heather paired up Reana Louise and me as one of her fantasy picks! So after e-introducing ourselves to each other, Reana Louise and I mutually agreed to choose for each other something from the Stylish Dress Book, by Yoshiko Tsukiori; since we both had the book already. Exactly which something, and what fabric was left up to the other. I sent my package off, and then waited with bated breath.
Very soon, I received this in the mail.

This is dress “T”, from the Stylish Dress Book. Reana Louise chose for me a soft lightweight ivory cotton meadow sprinkled with delicate blue flowers, and with a solid blue cotton for the contrasting neckband and cuffs.

So OK. Floral, and puffy sleeves. Hmmm. I am being fair dinkum catapulted right out of my comfort zone here! But Reana Louise has exemplary taste and always looks quite lovely on her blog, in her handmade creations. I had to trust her guidance.

I did make a few teeny minor changes (forgive me, Reana Louise!) I thought a wide block of the blue for a neckband might be a bit strong against the delicacy of the sprigged floral, so I dug out some lightweight Japanese cotton in my stash, originally bought from Potters Textiles. This is pure white, with an irregular pattern of tiny white paisley motifs as well as little fluffy white spots scattered over. I used this for the neckband and for the sleeve cuffs, and just used a narrow, folded bias cut strip of the blue cotton sent by Reana Louise as a demarcation line between the floral and the white.

Similarly, I broke apart the hemline with bias cut strips of each white and blue together as well. I really like the look of these borderlines in the design, a subtle geometric statement against the pretty floral.

I also shortened my dress slightly to hit just above the knee.

Oh, and I added pockets. Well that’s a no-brainer. When it comes to pockets; if you can, then you do: no internal debate entered into!

How do you feel about letting go of control in what you wear…. would you dare to submit your style to another?

Details:

Dress; dress “T” from the Stylish Dress book, by Yoshiko Tsukiori, blue sprigged cotton, with blue and white accents

Hat; Vogue 8844, ivory corduroy refashioned from an old pair of jeans, details and my review of this pattern here

Sandals; Pedro Miralles, from Soletta shoes

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: daily outfit, dress, Stylish Dress Book

paper doll project

27/04/2013 2:00 pm \ 10 Comments \ Carolyn

20th-25th April
(I’ve pledged to wear only clothes handmade by me this year and to sketch my daily outfits in my Fashionary. I’m calling this the paper doll project)

from left:
burnt orange skirt, white Tshirt, knitted green hoodie
blue Pattern Magic hoodie + navy blue corduroy skirt
knots dress
denim skirt, white Tshirt, red hoodie
sunset maxi-dress, coffee net cardigan
black-and-grey striped Tshirt, ivory curtaining skirt

14th -19th April

from left:

bell-sleeved top + hot pink shorts

bamboo shoot top + long dusky pink skirt

check top + refashioned denim skirt

chambray shirt + burnt orange skirt

knots dress

powder blue tunic top + powder blue dress/petticoat

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: paper-doll project

the 21-day wonder diet

26/04/2013 3:30 pm \ 10 Comments \ Carolyn

banana smoothie

Every now and then, I notice that my banner proclaims my blog to be “thoughts on sewing, knitting and looking my best”. The first two are covered pretty comprehensively I think 😉 and the last is meant to be about how I’m going with presenting myself sartorially; but of course looking my best should also come from maintaining a healthy lifestyle. I don’t really delve into that stuff on my blog here much.
For the past 3 weeks, ever since Easter, Cassie and I have been on a sorta diet. Not a weight-loss diet. Neither of us lost any real weight which is cool since that was not my aim. My aim was to lose some unhealthy eating habits that had snuck up on me.

We used this marvellous cookbook, the Australian Women’s Weekly 21 day Wonder Diet. (I bought my book from a local newsagent, but it is available here)

I really think the Australian Women’s Weekly cookbooks are the best cooking books, ever! I bought it several years ago, and the first time we tried to get through it we got no further than two weeks. Fail!

But not this time… yesterday was our final day. This second time around we completed the whole 21 day programme, from go to whoa, working through each meal, comprehensively, one by one, all the way through. Success!

Multiply the above cup of green tea above by four, and pictured here is all the food I actually ate today, my first day back to free-wheeling it. These are all meals plucked from various days in the 21 day diet, and using up some of the ingredients I still had leftover. Also, they were some of my favourites 😉

tuna and rocket wrap

This is a fantastic programme; in that 3 weeks really does feel like plenty long enough to mentally release you from old, bad, eating habits. The meals are all nutritious, mostly delicious, and a lot of them are surprisingly hearty and filling, and you rarely feel hungry. Some days we couldn’t even finish what we were supposed to!

Since weight loss wasn’t a goal, I ball-park “checked’, but didn’t obsess, about the portion sizes while on the diet. Both of us fell of the wagon in a minor way a coupla times; for me it was champagne and cake at bookclub one night, and champagne and hor d’oeuvres at a friend’s birthday bash another night; for Cassie it was two 21st parties. Both of us admit to sneaking the odd macadamia nut or two, a supply of which I keep in the pantry for the boys.
And not to mention that frozen yoghurt, hello!

prawn stir-fry, done on the barbecue instead of in a wok

But I’m feeling pretty good. Clean and cleansed. Like I’m a new woman. And mighty optimistic about continuing with next-to-zero junk, and incorporating plenty of nutritious and fresh stuff in my daily intake.
Although I will be bringing back just a leettle bit of this… In moderation, of course 🙂

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: book review, food, random life stuff

Taurus

23/04/2013 4:49 am \ 64 Comments \ Carolyn

I have made a new leather jacket. Well… it’s “pleather” really. A faux leather jacket; or maybe we can call it a fleather jacket… ha! I’m going to go with that. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out! I’ve been thinking wistfully about a leather jacket for years, and I was super impressed with kbenco‘s gorgeous leather jacket. So, while I was staying at my parents’ place over Easter I noticed this pattern, designed for leather in one of Mum’s old Burda style magazines. I found this very nice chocolate brown and black-splodged PU laminate in Fabulous Fabrics; the texture is very realistic, semi-matte and soft and very faintly “crazed” like very well-loved, well-worn old leather. I bought up and got cracking.
The jacket is pattern number 113 from Burda style magazine, 08/2010. I made no modifications, excepting multiple teeny modifications to get a good fit. There were plenty of these, but I’m only listing them in my review below if you feel like plodding through the nitty gritty, since reading about personal fitting modifications is the most boring thing on the planet. The only one really worth mentioning is that the sleeve cap to this pattern is rather high and leather is not a fabric that lends itself well to easing. So I shaved off quite some height off the top of the sleeve cap, just over 1cm tapering off to the gathering start and end points.

I’m not completely sure about that slit at the lower edge of the centre back seam. I don’t really see the point of it. I’m giving it a fair go though. It’s on trial. I might decide to sew it up sometime down the track…
The jacket is fully lined with chocolate brown polyacetate lining fabric.

It has a hidden button placket for two hidden buttons, and two large, lined, flapped patch pockets at the hips, which are unfortunately not situated very conveniently for actually putting your hands in (sad face) But you can still put things in them, and they do look pretty cool. I like leather jackets to have lots of things and detailing and stuff on the outside. In my opinion details really up the cool quotient on a casual jacket and lend it a young, urban aesthetic.

The jacket also has one small welted pocket on the upper left. My fabric tended to “bounce” out of a fold, so I edge-stitched the welt, as well as the collar and front opening edges, to give them a flat sharp edge.
The pattern called for the pocket bag under the welt to be inserted in line with and perpendicular to the pocket, which would have meant it would sit stuck out at a slight angle. Whaaaa? So I changed it so it hangs down vertically from the welt. It’s hidden in between the lining and the jacket, so you can’t actually see the pocket bag at all, but I just didn’t like the idea of it sitting out all skewiff, defying gravity like that; it seemed an oddly imperfect and unbalanced way of doing the pocket, and it would have flopped in on itself a bit. I think Burda probably did it this way to make the pattern piece and the instructions easier; but I just had to alter it to have a straight-hanging pocket.
Apparently the sleeves are 7cm longer than normal so that the wearer can roll or fold them back. Well, I love this longer length. This is great for winter. I always get really cold wrists in winter, and so I won’t be rolling or folding them up at all!

Details:
Jacket; Burda style magazine 08/2010, 113, pleather
Skirt; Vogue 8363 with modifications, rusty red wool/silk mix, details and my review of this pattern here
Tshirt; self-drafted, white cotton, details here
Boots; Enrico Antinori

By the way, I often state that whatever I am wearing in my picture is what I am wearing that day, that I keep it real and never ever “dress up” just for the camera. Well obviously, everyone in Perth will know straight away that it is a bit too warm for a winter-y get-up like this today! so in this case I am “dressing up” (blush) Sorry, but I just couldn’t wait for winter to show off my new jacket!

Pattern
Description:

Fitted
jacket with a short V-neckline, narrow standing collar, single welted breast pocket and two flapped patch
pockets. Long two piece sleeves,
front has two darts for shaping, the back features a short lower hem vent and
the front closes by partially hidden button placket

Pattern
Sizing:

Petite/half
sizes 17-21; I made the size 19

Did
it look like the photo/drawing on the pattern envelope once you had finished
sewing it?

Yes.

Were
the instructions easy to follow?

Yes

What
did you particularly like or dislike about the pattern?

Well; I think the styling is great; a mixture of classic blazer and motorcycle jacket with a neat and nifty, waist-defining shape, and cute detailing. I really like the pockets and I think they look really great in leather. The sleeves are 7cm longer than normal. I love this, they will keep my wrists nice and warm this winter.
I’m not completely sold on that centre back slit at the hem. I don’t really see the point of it. This may or may not get sewn up in the future, if it lets too much cold air in.

Fabric
Used:

Faux
leather, with polyacetate lining fabric for the lining

Pattern
alterations or any design changes you made:

I didn’t make any design changes, but I made tonnes of small modifications for fit. Considering leather is not a fabric that eases at all, I think the sleeve cap is drafted too high and would have been too difficult to ease into the armhole. I shaved off about 1cm in height off the top, and also took about 1cm off the edge of each shoulder seam, the latter a fit modification. I took in all the seam allowances at the waist to bring the jacket in to hug my waist; the shaping as it was a tad boxy for what I wanted. The faux leather fabric I used didn’t take creases at all, so I edge-stitched all around the front edges of the jacket and collar, as well as the fold of the welt, to give a nice sharp edge.

Would
you sew it again? Would you recommend it to others?

Maybe….
so many patterns, so little time!
But yes, of course I recommend this classic yet cool pattern to others.

Conclusion:

Well
I now have a cool new (f)leather jacket.
I’m totally happy with it. ‘Nuff
said 🙂

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Burdastyle magazine 08/2010-113, daily outfit, jacket, pattern review, Sienna

Navy bloo-p

21/04/2013 9:10 am \ 37 Comments \ Carolyn

Hello 🙂
So, it turns out that navy blue is just as difficult to photograph as black… oh well!
I have made a skirt. This used to be a pair of extra-huge, navy blue, corduroy jeans, that I bought from the op shop yonks and yonks ago for a fancy dress party. They’ve been sitting in my refashioning pile, awaiting a new life. The fabric is perfectly good but they haven’t been worn ever since the aforementioned fancy dress party, because they did not fit anyone in my family.

My new skirt is based upon a firm favourite skirt pattern, Vogue 1247. I unpicked and re-used the sturdy silver jeans zip from the old jeans in the centre back, as well I took off and re-sized the waistband with its attached belt loops, and managed to retain the silver jeans button and its corresponding buttonhole, both in situ from the original jeans.
The pockets are lined with blue-and-white stripe fabric, leftover from Sam’s Christmas shirt.

Due to the fabric limitations, I had to cut the skirt to have a centre front seam, as well as the standard centre back seam.

Now you might be thinking; if the jeans were so big to start with, how could you possibly have “fabric limitations” in making a rather small skirt out of them? Well, when it comes to re-fashioning a new garment from an old, even if your old garment has plenty of fabric it still can be quite a trick to get even a smaller new garment out of it. This can be due to several factors, such as awkwardly placed seams, or if your fabric has a nap. In the case of this old jeans to new skirt refashion, there were both of these factors to contend with. Even though I was starting with satisfactorily extra-big trousers, they were cut in an old-fashioned, late 80’s, early 90’s style, with wide hips tapering down into narrower ankles. This is the exact opposite of what I wanted in my little skirt; which is narrowest at the waist and gets wider going down to the lower hem; plus there was the nap of the corduroy which you always want to be running down the garment, never ever up the garment. Plus there were big slanted hip pockets in the jeans, getting in the way of cutting anything out from the top of the jeans. Plus, a lot of the old bar-stitching was done with an incredibly strong thread, almost like fair dinkum fishing wire or something, making unpicking a sheer joy. That was heavy sarcasm just there, by the way. So in the end, it took quite some careful measuring and giving and taking a few centimetres here and a few centimetres there from different pieces, to get out the pieces I wanted. This is a lengthy justification for why my skirt has a centre front seam, as well as a centre back seam. So not ideal, I know, but it was the only way the skirt could be!

Details:
Skirt; Vogue 1247 modified, refashioned from a pair of old navy blue jeans/trousers… my review of this pattern here
Top; the hoodie from Pattern Magic 3, blue knit, details here
Thongs; Havaianas

D’ya want to hear/see something funny? This will give everyone a laugh…. I actually made this skirt back in January of this year, specifically for my high school reunion! and wore it, and photographed it on that day for the blog, but I never put the photo up here… I decided I just looked silly. Now I’ve decided that it’s not toooo bad, so here it is! I made the skirt because I got this whacky idea in my head to kinda reproduce my old school uniform for the reunion. I found my old school tie, which is tiny! and wore it. The other pieces are from my regular handmade wardrobe, but it was such a hot night that I left that blazer in the car…
Yes, it was silly… but it was fun!
So, this outfit below is a pretty close representation of what I used to wear to school, every day 😀

Details:
Skirt; Vogue 1247, as above
Top; the bamboo shoot top from Pattern Magic, white linen, details here
Tie; my old school tie
Blazer; Simplicity 4698, navy blue silk, seen first here, and also worn in 6 different ways here
Sandals; Vincenza, from Soletta shoes

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: daily outfit, fancy dress, Sienna, skirt, Vogue 1247, Wardrobe Refashion

Desert Island Sewing

19/04/2013 7:45 am \ 9 Comments \ Carolyn

I’m a desert island castaway!

The wonderful whimsical Winnie of Scruffy Badger Time, is hosting an awesome (virtual) getaway and I am now (virtually) kicking back on my little lonesome on my very own fantasy island. By fantasy, naturally that means one that has all the essentials for nonstop sewing. And g&t’s too, of course.

There is but one limitation; we are allowed to have with us eight patterns, and eight patterns only. If you had to narrow down your selection to just eight patterns, which would you choose?

My choices are here.

Thank you so much for the (virtual) beautiful beachy sewing paradise Winnie 🙂

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: random life stuff

Frozen yoghurt

17/04/2013 1:41 am \ 21 Comments \ Carolyn

We are a frequent-yoghurt-eating family, but sometimes I get a half a tub of yoghurt sitting in the fridge getting too close to its use-by date. Well I can’t have that!! Just like with fabric, I cannot bear the idea of throwing food out, and I just have to find a way to use it…

I adapted this recipe here, and it couldn’t have been easier. I don’t have an icecream maker, nor did I “strain” my yoghurt though. I just tipped the sugar and vanilla essence directly into the half tub of yoghurt and froze it in its own container.
I kinda guesstimated while I was making my batch but I reckon a good ratio to work with is:

1/2 cup of sugar, to every
3 cups of yoghurt,
plus 1/2 tsp pure vanilla essence
Stir it all together thoroughly to dissolve the sugar and then stick it in the freezer. I gave it a good stir every hour or so, to break up the ice crystals, for the first five hours, and then left it overnight. The next morning the texture is absolutely perfect; it is not too sweet and deliciously tangy.

No icecream maker required! 🙂

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: food, recipe

new toy

13/04/2013 10:56 am \ 25 Comments \ Carolyn

After tonnes of deliberation, I’ve bought a new lens; an early… something? present for myself 🙂
My old lens is a 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6, which is a really fantastic little lens that produces great shots. But for a while I have been really wanting to up the ante on my pictures and it has been frustrating that I have not been able to change the settings just how I would like. So I’ve bought the 50mm f/1.4.