hello! long time no see! I’ve been very busy lately, being a diligent little jet setter and living out of one suitcase for an entire month … I do have a travel wardrobe post planned but it will take me little while!
Anyway, I made a new dress before I left and took it away with me. I’ve worn it quite a lot already! and managed to take a few photos out in the wild. Not that top photo though. The other ones 🙂
babysitting my littlest grandson G.. I knitted his beanie early last year (posted here)
The pattern is the new Mirri pattern by Fibremood, a delightfully quick and easy thing to make; and I used a lightweight cotton corduroy bought from Spotlight just before covid lockdown if I remember correctly. I loved the pretty bright florals on black background, and luckily had “just” enough for this pattern.
feels pretty good even in 36C heat!
Surprisingly, it reads as kinda “brown” from a distance, probably because of the large-ish amount of orange and black merging together. Honestly I did not expect that effect!
The Mirri is supposed to be a summer pattern, of course; since the new European summer patterns are all released during our, southern hemisphere, winter… however I can still usually manage to wrangle something together that’s suitable for me, somehow, anyhow. As it happens, I’ve found this dress has been that rare happy and successful marriage between summer pattern/winter fabric… it’s loose enough to be breezy and therefore cool in hot weather, but then can be worn over tights and a warm merino top to keep you cosy in cold wintery weather too. Versatile!
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…
worn over my indigo dyed, linen Pauline Alice patterns Mestre shirt, blogged here.
And, I made something else new on the eve of our departure overseas… a backpack. I’ve never really worn a backpack much during our hiking travels but decided it was high time I got one so poor Craig didn’t have to carry everything in his backpack! I used this tutorial called “DIY 3-pocket casual backpack” by a Korean channel, Tendersmile Handmade. This was an absolute terrific tutorial, very easy to follow and I loved the final result.
I made mine from a tomato red water-resistant stuff that I bought many years ago, I think from a Morrison clothing company fabric sale. I already had some white waterproof plastic fabric, leftover from when I made a whole lot of luggage for some of my family for Christmas one year (here). I also interlined with some wool wadding between the two layers for a bit of padding. All these materials were from stash, and I bought the strapping, zip and plastic hardware from Spotlight.
I altered the dimensions by a bit; specifically making mine 10cm “higher”, and so made the side pockets a little higher to compensate proportionally. My zip was also a different length, so all the dimensions of the side, bottom and top pieces are different actually. It really wasn’t all that difficult to work out though.
I couldn’t get a zip like theirs that zipped from the middle out, mine zips from each outside edge in. This wasn’t ideal, but didn’t make a lot of difference. I also stitched the lining down firmly to the seam allowance inside to keep it firmly in place as far as I could possibly reach; the bottom and top edges, and part of the side edges. The tutorial doesn’t tell you to do this but I imagine the lining would just kind of float around inside the bag in an annoying way if you didn’t anchor it to the bag in a few key positions.
The backpack worked out really great! and would have been actually perfect if it had been for one small modification… to have a shoulder strap as well so I could carry it comfortably as a cross body bag if I wanted to. I desired this variation so greatly that since I returned home I did indeed pop off to Spotlight for all the necessary bits and added one. This can be removed if not in use. As well, I added a “made in 2025″label, that I’d forgotten when I first made it. Voila!
So this bag did absolutely great duty and I enjoyed making and wearing and using it. It passed the waterproof test on one day of continuous rain and all my stuff inside remained perfectly dry. My water bottle fitted in the side pocket just fine. Having three internal pockets worked well for how I like to arrange my stuff. I did think it possibly couldn’t carry a superheavy load, but then I wouldn’t want to do that anyway.
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.
in the Nagano region
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.
