* … Tennessee Williams…
Hello! I’ve made a new skirt. Hehe, hot on the heels of writing that I was a wee smidgeon tired of making Vogue 1247 skirts; what should I do? but immediately 
make another one!! Doh!! Clearly there’s something terribly wrong with me… #madvogue1247addict
But wait, there is a perfectly good reason…. I’m doing One Week One Pattern again, and of course chose to use this pattern, well I’ve got so many of them!! lotsa skirts and I was kinda hoping that we would get at least ONE day warmish enough for me to wear the one top I have from it… but it’s been so freaking cold; officially the coldest and wettest winter and early spring we’ve have in like thirty years or something like that! I’m getting to the end of the week, no motivation whatsoever to wear that thin little summery top, and only have 6 pocketed V1247 skirts. Which are what I consider to be the only true V1247’s, all my ones without the pockets are kinda pretenders to that crown, and even though I love them all too I ruthlessly omitted them all from the line-up. So what can a girl do? but get cracking and make for herself another true V1247, obviously, so I have a nice 7 to round the week off. Yeah, I know; a normal person would have worn one of her existing ones, twice; but see I already had the fabric earmarked for the pattern anyway; and just decided go for it; whip it up, make it happen.
Fabric; pale teal denim, just very slightly stretchy, with a reverse print of smudgy roses. This was a remnant given to me by my friend LW, who was cleaning out her stash. Something funny/miraculous; the remnant was kinda oddly and awkwardly shaped, yet it was absolutely perfect for the pattern pieces! like it was cut just perfectly to fit them all on with the smallest of scraps leftover. I freakingLOVE when this happens! it’s like the planets aligned for a pattern/fabric match made in heaven 🙂 Even if I was feeling a bit meh about V1247 to start with, when I laid out the pattern pieces and saw how perfect it was it totally galvanised me into excited pattern-love all over again. I managed to cut my skirt about 10cm longer than the pattern, and I cut the pocket linings and waistband facing from a small piece of nani Iro quilting cotton, from the little bundle of pieces that Mum gave to me for my birthday, for my rag-doll Sally. I used it for her tote bag.
obligatory “waitress” pocket pic
aaaaaand, my week of exclusively wearing Vogue 1247 skirts, in a nutshell…!
Back very soon, with something that is NOT Vogue 1247… I promise!!
Details:
Skirt; Vogue 1247, lengthened by about 10cm, teal denim
Top; Nettie, by closet case patterns with my own collar variation, ivory knit; details here
Cardigan; knitted by me, Audrey in Unst, wool bought in Paris as a souvenir, details here
Tights, my own pattern, black stretch, details here and my tutorial for making your own custom fit tights pattern is here
Socks (not seen); hand knit by me, details here
Boots; made by me, details here
Firstly, two sage green/pale coffee, checked tweed skirts. I inherited this beautiful quality piece of wool tweed from my grandmother’s stash after she passed away. Although I earmarked it straight away as two skirts for Cassie and myself I just hadn’t got around to it and have sat on it all this time. It was one of those fabrics I couldn’t bring myself to cut into… you know, inherited from Granny, plus exceptionally good quality, equals inevitable thoughts of sewing tragedy followed by eternal self-damnation…. but I’m making myself get over that nonsense nowadays. Make it! Enjoy it! Live dangerously! So, finally… it helps too that I think Cassie has now grown into fabric of this calibre 😉 not that she didn’t deserve high quality fabrics before, but you know what I mean! it’s very much a grown-up fabric and makes a very smart little work skirt for her now that she has a serious and professional career. The fabric really is beautiful stuff… fine and evenly woven, and there are flecks of all sorts of colours in with the sage green/coffee check… blue, red and gold, caramel brown, forest green, and a hint of purple and black. It has no identifier on it but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was a fully English tweed. My grandmother was very much into that sort of thing 🙂
sie moved out of home she left this fabric behind and I almost started to factor it into my own plans mwahahahahaha… but of course she hadn’t forgotten it, o no! The reason she had deviously left it behind was so that I could make something for her with it! HA! She chose 
Details:
what’s with the ballet pose? I have no idea. Anyway… I have a 
I’ve kept the selvedge from off the fabric, and have sewn these inside one of the pockets! just because I love information like this… namely: this design is by prominent Finnish designer Maija Isola, and was created in 1964! out by a year but definitely still of my era, haha. “Pieni unikko” translates literally to “little poppy” I’m not sure what KI 2009 means yet, but I’m investigating…. Also, how cool is it that the laundering info is printed on the selvedge?! so classy and very considerate really, it’s been along long time since I’ve seen such consideration in a fabric. That information’s the kind of thing I usually forget the very minute I swan out of the shop with my new fabric tucked under my wing.
The loose front pieces also allows you to have these big loose comfortable pockets that you can shove your hands in, while still maintaing quite a slimline dress overall. As a result, the pattern uses very little fabric. I managed to squeeze my pattern pieces out of 1.5m, which is not too bad, not too bad at all, I think *preens oneself on an exceptionally economic layout* I had the merest of scraps left after cutting out my pieces, scraps, I tell you! The pattern has you line the dress, and after a bit of um-ing and aah-ing, I decided to not. Reason? summers here are very hot and I think the breeziness of this lovely cotton fabric is going to be perfect just as it is.
Press the pocket lining out, then turn it under the front piece and press, forming the 1/4″ (6mm) wide bound edge of the pocket.
from the right side (with some irrelevant (white) basting along the side edge… not really necessary for this method)
I’ve made a new dress using a bunch of my kids’ old jeans that I have 
been saving for this very purpose… and please note; yes, I am wearing 
Materials; obviously, all blue denim jeans. I used three pairs of children’s jeans, one pair of child’s long shorts and one pair of adult jeans. The adult jeans turned out to be necessary when I realised that the full-length panels at the back would look pretty terrible if pieced at the waist; it’s a very much piecemeal kind of a design anyway, and to have that nice long smooth length of fabric at the back is just a nice visual anchor in amongst all that busy patchworking, in my opinion. I decided it would be best to retain it; fortunately I had one pair of Craig’s old jeans in my refashioning bag and could cut the long back pieces from those.
My vision for this dress has always been to have lots of the existing jeans’ details retained in it, like the pockets with their decorative top-stitching, the coin pockets and belt loops and so forth; HOWEVER when it came down to it I retained very little of all that! The design was just so… busy; I ended up removing a lot of the little details I was going to put in. There’s still plenty of the jeans bits and pieces left in, I reckon just the right amount to keep that definite “jeans flavour” to it. There are a few original topstitched seams here and there, and the portion of a pocket left on the bodice. I also added tonnes of new topstitching in terracotta upholstery thread, in fact every seam is topstitched down in some cases doubly so.
Something I’ve managed to forget to blog about each time I’ve written about this dress… like all Vogue patterns, for a fitted design it’s a little blouse-y in the boob-al region for my figure; however the princess seamed bodice makes this a very easy fix. I simply pin and stitch to shave a bit off the inner curve of the central bodice piece (above), and this solves the problem for me. A very very easy small bust adjustment, and one I usually end up using for pretty much every fitted Vogue bodice with princess-seaming. I don’t have the same issues with Burda, but always with Vogue. I guess their “blocks” are a little different.
One pair of jeans, the very pale blue pair, was practically threadbare in places, but I still really wanted to have that pale blue as part of the lovely indigo-y mix… these pieces I reinforced with lightweight iron-on interfacing to the back to stabilise and strengthen these areas (below). Don’t want my new dress ripping in its first wear now, do I?!
Hello! just a few quick items for today… I’ve actually been sewing a few things for other people! Scary stuff, huh. I mean, it’s one thing that I can see all my own flaws in things I make for myself, and on a daily basis! but that’s kinda the rough with the smooth, you accept that because it’s all your own doing, all your own fault and you can tell yourself you’re “learning” and going to do better next time haha…. but to subject another person to those flaws … well that’s really exposing yourself. ok, you know what I mean…
Sure, they’re all near identical, but still. What’s not to love about that.
This is the first time I’ve put an exposed zip in a skirt with lining, and wasn’t totally sure how to do it; I put the zip in similarly to how you’d do a welt pocket, and then hand-stitched the lining to the zip tape on the inside. I cut the bottom edge of the pleather clean and straight with my rotary cutter and left it unhemmed; and hemmed the paisley portions in a deep 4cm hem by hand. The skirt is fully lined with raspberry polyacetate, itself a leftover from 
Item number two; a hoodie for my son’s girlfriend. I had made 
Hello!
I just adore jackets with tonnes of hardware and detailing, like zips and lots of different bits and bobs and interesting pockets. So set about planning for this one to be chockablock with loads of that sort of thing. I considered using the same Burda pattern I used for the previous one, but I had to make lots of additions/adjustments to that in order to make it the complex, feature-laden army-style jacket that I wanted, which is fine! but since making that one, lots of great patterns have popped up with all those features already incorporated into the pattern. Eventually I settled upon the 
There is tonnes of topstitching all over, so satisfied that part of me that adores precision sewing. I’m that weirdo that LOVES topstitching! and am pretty much totally and blissfully happy when I’m hunched over the machine, chugging along; churning out lines upon lines of precise, neatly and evenly spaced, stitching. The wonderful thing about this ripstop is that the little squares in the weave of the fabric make precision stitching and lining up pieces to be perfectly square very very easy.
So; like, we were going to this 80’s themed party, and, like, EVERYONE in this particular group always dresses up to the max! Not dressing the part would be heinous! and of course I had to be fully self-made, ‘cos of my challenge. Also, like, I had to be warm. It’s like the middle of flipping’ winter! Like, duh!
