sewing Archives - Page 40 of 41 - Handmade by Carolyn

set de la tree frog

15/01/2016 1:24 pm \ 27 Comments \ Carolyn

My new lingerie set is inspired by the red-eyed tree frog. Yes, really! and this is my “thing” for Jungle January, the fun yearly challenge set by Anne of Pretty Greivances.

Deja vu!! because last year I also made underdaks, also froggy-inspired.

photograph credit, Carey James Balboa; source

So, hello there, Agalychnis callidryas. This little cutie is native to the rain forests that extend from Mexico down through Central America to Columbia… and thank YOU, Wikipedia. Also according to Wikipedia, its name callidryas is derived from the Greek for beautiful wood nymph. So while I am wearing it I shall imagine myself as a … bwahaha, I’m joking of course, I cannot even type that with a straight face. Lol.

It’s an exquisite little creature, is it not? the colours are quite magnificent. So bright and vivid and with those eyes; big, round and true scarlet, with a vertically aligned pupil. I positioned my two-hole buttons accordingly, and used black thread on purpose to mimic that.

Well I reckon it’s the attention to the whimsical detail that becomes the most fun thing about making your own clothes!

Actually this was all a bit fortuitous… I kinda forgot about Jungle January, then Sue posted her dress and I was like doh! Jungle January! aaaaaagh! but as it turned out, I’d only just cut all the lingerie pieces of green jersey, like the night before. I’d managed to squeak these pieces out from the leftovers of a Tshirt… anyway, I looked at the colour and immediately thought “frog!”

So, with the perfect colour fabric (Fabulous Fabrics), plus it was already cut out and ready to go, I already had the blue fold-over elastic, navy blue underband elastic and the red buttons in Le Stash… so I just needed to dash out to Homecraft Textiles for some orange fold-over elastic; bob’s your uncle.

squeezing all details into one picture…

Patterns; both knickers are the Watson briefs and the bra is my favourite pattern, MakeBra 2610. This is hands down the most wearable of the bra patterns in my collection.

Oh, I mentioned the lingerie set was leftovers from a Tshirt? well, now seems a good enough time as any to blog about that too. Lime green jersey from Fabulous Fabrics, pattern is the Nettie byCloset Case patterns, my go-to Tshirt pattern. It’s actually way too hot for me to really wear it right now, it’s 37C phew! so this is like a 20 second photo shoot happening here. I bought this fabric at the same time as the black-and-white striped fabric for this recent skirt, because I reckoned they’d be kind cool together, Tim Burton-ish, in a good way.

Actually, this project is pretty funny to me; see, the Tshirt was really my primary objective, because I wanted more colour options in my Tshirt department… the lingerie was cut out just as a “oh, what the hey” afterthought because the fabric was already out. In all likelihood the pieces would have got shoved away like the three other unmade lingerie sets I’ve already cut out under the same circumstances…. oops! must make those too… *blush*

Then Jungle January breathed inspiration into those scrappy bits, and I got all excited and super focused and enthused about making the lingerie and it became a much bigger deal in my head… I almost forgot about that Tshirt!

Later edit; I eventually got tired of the Tshirt’s lime-green colour and dyed it brown, now it’s a delightfully sludgy shade of olive!

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: Closet Case files, cloth habit, jungle january, lingerie, makeBra 2610, Nettie, top, watson

zebra crossing

12/01/2016 6:24 pm \ 48 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve made a little black-and-white striped skirt… another Vogue 1247. How many is this by now? Okaaaay, just counted and this is version number seven, and that’s not even counting the ones that I made leaving the pockets off. Counting those ones too, this is version number fourteen. Wowza! what a great pattern this has been!

yes to the pockets this time

I bought the striped fabric from Fabulous Fabrics during their end of year sale. It was brand new in the store when I first spotted it and bought this bit, and it must have been popular because on my next visit a couple of weeks later, it had all gone! Don’t remember its composition… often when I buy something spontaneously like this I don’t pay much attention to “what” it actually is… whoops! bad me 🙂 However, the fabric is almost like a light upholstery; loosely woven, with slightly coarse, silk-like cords of fibre-dyed threads. Quite stiff and unpliable, and doesn’t hold a crease well.
I’ve been ironing it on the silk setting, and that seems to be about as much heat as it can take.

As usual I added length about 10cm or so to the bottom edge. I didn’t measure exactly, just made it so as finish off with a black stripe at the bottom of the front hem. Since I’d measured so as to have black at the top merging in to the black waistband, it felt balanced to have the black at the bottom too. And this turned out to be a nice length for me too. There’s a little bit of the next white stripe graduating out the bottom of the back but I’m ok with this, it felt a little short when I trialled taking it up so as to eliminate that.

The black waistband is just cut so as to have exactly one full black stripe showing… the seam allowances are both in the white stripe on either side.

The camouflaged waitress pockets on the front of the skirt was the result of some very obsessive measuring during the cutting stage… followed by obsessive pinning, basting, slow sewing, and then some obsessive unpicking and re-sewing. #muchobsessiveness

I used a pale yellow poplin to line the waistband and to bind the seam allowances inside with HongKong seaming…. and I absolutely LOVE how this looks! I don’t always bind my seam allowances, but it always feels so good when I do! aaaaaah, there’s nothing quite so nice and deeply deeply satisfying for the home seamster than to gaze contentedly upon some HongKong bound seaming, yes?

Hmmm, that came out sounding a bit more navel-gazing and pathetic than intended. Clearly I need a life. Or at least to get out a bit more…

Whatever; new skirt, in too-cool-for-school black and white stripe, love it, ultra happy. I think this is going to be a very useful little thing to have in the wardrobe. I’ve already tried it on with a few of my current rotation of tops and it just goes with almost everything… yay! I LOVE it with my warm floral shirtdress, worn underneath here, so much so that I’m seriously considering re-hemming the dress a little shorter, so I can wear this combo more often.

Detail:

Skirt, Vogue 1247; striped silk-like woven, my original review of this pattern here
Shirt; Burdastyle 05/2010;111, silk georgette, details here and my review of this pattern here
Slip (under); the Ruby slip, a free pattern by pattern scissors cloth available here; mine made in ivory crepe, details here
Shoes; bensimon, from seed boutique

horizontal seam? what horizontal seam? *self back pat*

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: skirt, Vogue 1247

world, meet Sally. Sally; world.

09/01/2016 2:20 pm \ 61 Comments \ Carolyn

Hello there. I’m Sally 🙂

Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve indulged in making something like a doll and doll’s clothes but omigosh, this was SO MUCH FUN. Honestly I think I’m just about to explode with the exquisite fun-ness of it all! I’m still on a bit of a high. All those cute teeny little bits and pieces. Quick as a snap, with barely any fussy finishing details. My inner child has been squealing fit to burst, here.

So, my Mum took me to to Calico and Ivy for my belated birthday present; and we chose this book The Making of a Rag Doll, by Jess Brown, and a little stack of fat quarters. I know, right? I’m so lucky: FABULOUS birthday present! This was on Thursday and I finished this lot last night, so obviously I just could not wait to immediately get stuck into making my doll.

LOOK HOW CUTE OMG I CAN’T STAND IT

So I’ve named her Sally, and she has a complete summer and winter wardrobe. I’ve made for her everything from the book, bar the patchwork quilt. I might make the patchwork quilt too, well… everyone needs a little bed on which to rest our weary red head, non?!!! but in the meantime I want to do something else with the leftover pieces of fat quarters and I’ll wait until I’ve finished that before assessing my scraps for the quilt.

WARNING: NSFW, the following picture depicts nudity, do not proceed if a naked body causes offence to your eyes… bwahahahaha! I’ve always wanted to say that in a blog post! gawd so juvenile. *eyeroll at self*

I made my doll as per the book, but did my own face and hair design. I liked the face in the book but Craig reckoned it was a bit creepy … apologies to Jess Brown! Anyway I tried to make a face as sweet as possible, a fairly unsophisticated and simple design. I left her hair until last because I thought it would be the hardest bit and I was a little unsure about how to do it. The book has you just sew a piece of felt along the top, but I knew I wanted really thick woolly hair. As it turned out, doing the hair was lots of fun too, and I enjoyed every minute! I sewed strands of wool, two at a time, all over her scalp, so there is actually complete coverage of her scalp. I know from when I played with dolls as a child, my favourite dolls had complete hair coverage so that I could leave out or put up into pigtails or a pony tail, or do plaits… whatever I wanted. Even though I’m probably past the age of wanting to do my doll’s hair – or maybe NOT?! Anyway I still wanted proper hair. I absolutely love her wild shaggy mane of hair and decided to leave it untrimmed and just as is.

this first picture is the closest match to her actual hair colour

She has:

a summer wardrobe, comprising knickerbockers, a sundress, a pompom necklace, and a newspaper hat,

and; a winter wardrobe, comprising a long sleeved dress, an overcoat and a beanie. She also has an apron, for housework, and a little tote bag. A tote bag! eeeee the cuteness!

This whole project was heaps of fun. I know I keep repeating that, but honestly, the whole time I was playing about with this I just kept thinking “Omigod, so. Much. Fun!” you know, one of those projects where you cannot bear to put it down but you just want to keep doing a little bit more. Then a little bit more. Some, if not most of her clothes took a mere handful of minutes each; SO zippy and super super easy. And fun. Did I mention it was fun?

yup, she’s standing in a soup ladle. She has trouble standing up by herself

My materials; Sally herself is unbleached calico, stuffed with Australian-made Hobby-fill from Spotlight, pom pom for her necklace also from Spotlight. Hair is Morris Empire Superwash merino 4ply, in colour 441, Rust Twist, from my sock wool stash. Fabric for clothing; a bundle of fat quarters from Calico and Ivy, the ribbon for the tote bag handle was cut from the ribbon holding the fat quarters together. Also some scrap ribbons, yarn, embroidery thread, button, and other small bits and bobs from my stash.

My only slight regret is that the ends of the embroidery yarns show up a little bit behind her face… I tried to hide them in the stuffing as I went but evidently my calico is wide-weave and a little see-through, and as I stuffed her head, compressing the stuffing has forced the thread ends forward a bit. Well, we live and learn, I’ll know to be more careful about this next time.

don’t want to wear your beanie, Sally? Just stuff it in your TOTE BAG!

Quickie review:

The Making of a Rag Doll, Jess Brown

Hardcover book, 136 pages, high quality paper, beautifully photographed and all over a very attractive presentation. Would be equally nice as a coffee table book actually!

The book contains patterns and full instructions for making the 41cm doll, plus clothing and accessories; knickerbockers, a sundress, overcoat, long-sleeved dress, beanie, apron, tote bag, quilt and a newspaper hat.

The patterns are full size, printed on both sides of two sheets of sturdy thick brown paper, kept in a slotted page in the back of the book, and are clear and easy to trace.

Contents; introduction is a nice summary of the author’s journey in doll making, then the next 20 pages or so are devoted to explanation of basic sewing terms and notes on sourcing supplies of fabric, haberdashery and sewing tools. All the explanations are extremely detailed, starting from the absolute basics and aimed at the complete beginner to sewing. As in this could be an excellent first sewing gift for a child. Instructions are exhaustively thorough, well laid out, and most are also accompanied by simple illustrations. All measurements are helpfully given in both imperial and metric.

Summary; excellent for a beginner to sewing, but really anyone could enjoy this book too, I certainly did! I was initially attracted to it because of the cuteness of the doll and her clothes and found it all to be a super easy as well as an incredibly fun project. Highly recommended!

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: doll, dollmaking, pattern review, the making of a rag doll

a townhouse dress

08/01/2016 11:19 am \ 33 Comments \ Carolyn

This new dress is the latest step in my current project to add some architectural whimsy to Cassie’s work wardrobe …. and it was barely off the machine when she wanted to wear it to work straight away, like the next day, meaning today! I took these pictures before she popped off this morning, looking exactly like this…

I consider that the hugest compliment 🙂

That townhouse print though; it did cause me a wee bit of angst… how on earth to make it into something that was going to look cute and fun and funky and stylish? You know with some prints the subject material is absolutely perfect for a person, but the print itself is kinda messy and busy and so has the potential to be disastrous? It’s one of those prima donna prints, I felt it would look overpowering in a dress with a sleeve, also I knew it would not play nicely with many other colours/prints; likewise any design details like draping or … well anything at all, was OUT. At first I thought about making a very simple plain sleeveless shift, but still worried that it would look a little naf.

When the idea of a white raglan sleeve occurred to me was an instant kapowww! that this could work out quite cute after all. The white raglan sleeve lends it that little bit of a fun and sporty vibe and just takes the right amount of edge off the messy print. The sleeve fabric came from an old puffed hem dress *shudder* which Cassie tossed out. I’ve kept it because it has a mass of lovely soft ivory jersey fabric in it.

Once the raglan lightbulb had popped up it was all super easy from there… I used my own raglan sleeve Tshirtpattern, that I’d worked out years ago from laying down and drawing around an old Tshirt … in a time when patterns for raglan sleeve Tshirt were non-existent! Yes, it’s hard to believe now there are tonnes of patterns available everywhere, but for a long time and until quite recently some design features were very difficult to get hold of. We had to hunt for them, and be creative and innovative and sometimes very devious in order to get what we wanted. The elusive Raglan Sleeve tee was one such rare beastie. I think it was often assumed that patterns for basics were something you either had already, or could work it out yourself with no pattern by cutting up an old one.

Collar band, simple folded band done using this method; sleeve and lower edges overlocked, turned up once and stitched on the machine with a twin needle. All seams stitched and overlocked inside to finish.

Details:

Dress; elongated raglan sleeve tee, body custom fitted to Cassie. No pattern, townhouse print fabric from Fabulous Fabrics, ivory jersey harvested from an old dress
Shoes; Melissa

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: Cassie, dress, own design

village dress, for Cassie

03/01/2016 9:46 pm \ 47 Comments \ Carolyn

It’s taken a while but I’ve finally taken pictures of Cassie wearing the dress I made for her for Christmas!

The fabric is a crepe printed with Cinqueterre-like, or Amalfi-coast-like villages, and we both loved it upon first sight. I knew at once it would be perfect for her, and make a fun little dress for her to wear to work. See, she works in an office, but it is a creative field, and apparently most of her female colleagues dress quite fun and funky, more arty than corporate. And previously she had mentioned in a slightly wistful tone that she was the most conservative dresser in her office.
My Christmas pressie radar immediately perked up.

O reaaaaaally!!!

Fortunately for her, she has a mother who will pick up on even the vaguest of vague-hints, well, when they’re sewing related that is, not so much other stuff that is.. um, less sewing-related ahem. Anyway, I’m launching the fun-and-funky-wardrobe goal right here and now. I sneakily snuck back to Fabulous Fabrics on my own and deviously bought some of the village print… mwahahaha.

btw, it’s faaaaaaar harder to hide Christmas sewing from Cassie than it is the boys! who pay precisely zero attention to whatever I’m mucking about with in the laundry… Cassie is a high probability to go snooping around the stash to periodically pet the fabrics and select stuff for herself. I had to be SUPER devious to get this made without her twigging as to what was going on… and she was completely surprised! Yay!!!

For a pattern, I chose Burdastyle magazine 02/2015, number 107, a little loose, raglan-sleeved, gathered into the neckline, tunic style of dress. It has inseam side pockets and an elasticised waist that sits up on the hips, allowing extra length above to loosely blouse out over it. The dress looks adorable when worn by a person, but unfortunately I think it comes across as kind of dumpy on a dummy and, dare I say it, positively heinous on the hanger… prime reason why I decided to wait until she could model it for me herself! In the meantime it has been a great success; having been washed and worn enthusiastically to work several times already. There is no greater compliment…!

The print was aligned crosswise and I laid down the pieces that way too, to have the houses “upright” in the dress. I found 2m of 150cm wide fabric to be sufficient. My fabric is quite see-through, so I lined it with ivory poly-crepe, the same fabric I used for my ivory Ruby slip… and I made the necktie in ivory as well. Actually I first made the necktie in the village-y print but it looked way too busy and a little overpowering so I made another one in ivory and it looks about a thousand times better. I suggested getting black fabric and making it in black instead but she likes the ivory.

I have some thoughts on the pattern construction too… skip this bit if you’re not making the pattern since it’s not going to make any sense otherwise…

Although it looks short on the model in the magazine, it didn’t look that short when made up so I removed about 9cm off the bottom to get the same look. Sleeves are about 2cm shorter.

The way they’re written; the instructions are a touch confusing since for much of it you’re bouncing back and forth between different construction notes, for style 105 and 106, and to complicate things the neckband of style 105 is very different from that of 107, since it has a collar whereas 107 is collar-less! and there’s zero mention of the collar-less version in the instructions… so you sort of have to work it out alone. I attached the folded neckband to the neckline in one pass, gathered it up inside the seam allowance a little, then overlocked the raw edges along the gathering inside. This helps pull the neckline in a little tighter, and the necktie does the rest of the work in gathering up that wide neckline.

With the pockets, the instructions have you stitch up the side seams, THEN insert the pockets… well I always do it the other way around, so it was kind of a whaaat? moment for me. Anyway, gave it a whirl. It works fine, of course… just thought I’d mention it because it was different… 🙂

I made a size 36, Cassie’s usual size, but in the course of making it I tried it on a few times, just to check various bits and pieces, and found it worked perfectly well on me too, a size 38. Something to keep in mind if you’re a larger size but only have enough fabric for a smaller size!

Anyway whatever; she loves it, I love it on her I think she looks adorable in it, so the final verdict; a great success!

Details:

Dress; Burdastyle magazine 02/2015-107 also available here, crepe
Sandals; Sportscraft, mine! I’ve had these for about 10 years or so

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: Burdastyle 02/2015-107, Cassie, dress, pattern review

welt pocket in a shearling coat

01/01/2016 9:14 pm \ 20 Comments \ Carolyn

SO! I’m currently making a shearling jacket to take to our much anticipated trip to snowier climes, coming up v v soon… eeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I can’t wait!!

Anyway, I’ve put a couple of welt-like pockets in, and found it necessary to devise a method just a tiny bit different from the usual. So, I took a few pictures to show how I did it…

First, cut two pocket pieces in the shearling, two pocket pieces in a lining fabric, and two welts in shearling. Cut the pieces biggish, at least a little bigger than you think you will need, just in case. Remember the golden rule, you can always trim a little extra away, but you can never ever add it! For the pocket lining I used an ivory cotton denim from the leftovers of my favourite flared jeans.

Try on the coat and determine the position of the pockets, mark with pins. Lay the two fronts together to transfer markings to the other front piece, and measure several times to ensure the markings are symmetrical.

Cut pocket opening between the marks, no less than 3cm shorter than the welt piece. To give an idea of lengths; my welt is 20cm long and my pocket opening is 16.5cm… but my hands are pretty big and a small handed person may not need quite so big an opening 🙂

Lay the shearling pocket piece underneath the top edge of the pocket opening, pinning the pieces together with an overlap of 1cm (below L). Stitch from the top side, in a a double row of closely-spaced stitching. (below R)

Finish the raw top edge of the pocket lining with overlocking stitch, then lay over the shearling pocket piece, aligning all raw edges and pinning the pieces roughly together near the top (below L). From the outside of the coat, turn in the top edge of the pocket lining piece and pin to the pocket opening edge (below R). From the outside of the coat and keeping the shearling pocket piece free, topstitch in a double row of closely spaced stitching

Now stitch a few backward/forward passes of stitching along the two short edges of the pocket opening through all thicknesses.(below)

Unpin pocket pieces from each other, and lay shearling pocket piece away from the welt, pin it up well out of the way… likewise, pin the pocket lining piece in position to the coat (below L). Lay the welt piece, right sides together to the coat, underneath the pocket opening and pin; stitch together catching the pocket lining piece in underneath (below R) Note; it’s better to lay the welt closer to the pocket opening edge than pictured below right, as in with the welt raw edge hard up against the pocket opening… but I neglected to take a picture in the correct position, sorry!)

Turn up the welt, pin in position, and again keeping the shearling pocket piece free but the pocket lining piece pinned in position; topstitch 6mm outside the previous stitching (below L) Unpin the shearling pocket piece and lay it back against the pocket lining. Now is the time to determine the finished, desired size of the pocket… try the coat on, measure and trim pocket pieces as desired; finish the raw edge of the pocket lining with overlocking stitch, and stitch pocket and pocket lining pieces together, right sides together. (below R)

Pin the welt up into position. At this point, determine if it needs trimming or neatening up; I eyeballed mine and decided to trim 1cm off the long free edge; a purely aesthetic choice. Once you’re satisfied with its proportions, topstitch it in position along both short edges with two evenly spaced rows of topstitching.

And… pocket done! At this point, I actually decided the pocket itself was still a little too big, and trimmed and re-stitched the curved edges… no biggie, it’s pretty easy to do this, even at this late stage since it’s tucked away inside the coat. That’s a personal choice! Also, technically this is not a pure welt pocket but a sort of faux-welt pocket really… maybe you could call it a sort of patch cover over a welt-less pocket?! 😀

I hope this tutorial is useful to someone, please do leave me a comment to let me know if you have found it helpful. Like everyone, I do love comments!

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: own design, pocket, tutorial

3 hoodies

27/12/2015 2:33 pm \ 28 Comments \ Carolyn

In other Christmas “making” I also made hoodies for my three menfolk; Craig, and for Tim and Sam. For the last few years I’ve made summer shirts for them, but this year I wanted to do something different. And all of them love wearing hoodies! so bam! easy decision really.

Hmmm, yes, I had to get Bessie to model them, who is shaped very differently from each of my guys, of course!! but I took these pictures before I wrapped them up to pop under the tree and haven’t had the opportunity to get the boys to model them for pictures. Not to mention that it’s been 30C+ every day… phew! so no one wants to wear them just yet! Pictures with them actually IN their new Christmas stuff will have to wait for a little while…

I used my pattern taken from an old hoodie of Craig’s, that had a really cool style of hood/collar combined; it sits really nicely and looks a bit more stylish than the regular two-piece no-frills hood. If anyone’s interested I once wrote a tutorial on this collar/hood, with pictures of the pieces if you’d like to have a go at it.

Over the years since I first drew the pattern out I’ve had to slightly alter it and custom fit to each of my boys each time I’ve made it. They keep doing annoying things like working out and growing taller with longer arms and gaining a bit here, losing a bit there as time goes on. So it’s always a bit more of an exercise than just whipping out a pattern and zooming it up with the greatest of ease…. NOT!

Anyway, I’m not complaining. I love making stuff for my family 🙂

I went to Spotlight and bought up big on stripe-y, fluffy jerseys in a winter weight. And the beanies in the previous post? I chose the colours to match so that each man’s hoodie/beanie is a nicely toning ensemble in their colours.

Sam’s hoodie, at top; is light grey and white, with a grey beanie to match, because I think he looks great in grey. I bought some pale grey marled lightweight jersey to do the hood and the kangaroo pockets, because I feared it would look a little too pyjama-y, or sort of juvenile or something. I don’t know what it is about the pale grey stripe that made me worry about this, because… it’s funny, can’t logically explain why I have this thought, but I reckon you get away with a full hoodie in a blue stripe whereas in pale grey not so much, looks bit cheap or something. Can’t explain it. In any case I just intuited having a contrast in this particular colour would be a good decision and I’m glad I did it.

For Craig, I chose a muted air-force blue, with a small white pin-stripe. And with a red beanie for him, because he likes red and blue in winter and tends to wear them together a lot.

The air force blue looked pretty cool and right up his alley and it’s a very nice weight, I loved it upon first sight. However, after washing it and hanging it out to dry, then laying it out for cutting, I discovered to my amazement that the “stripe” actually was more of a gentle, slight “wave” of stripes across the fabric looking like this ” ~ “, NOT a straight horizontal stripe. AAAAUGH!! and being “slight” of course, means it really comes across like a bit of a boo-boo, rather than look like an intentional wave, which I could work into the design somehow. Nope, this just looked OFF.

Grrr. Anyway, I did my absolute best with it, pulled it into shape in some places, cut out a wee bit dodgily in other places where it didn’t matter, like the kangaroo pocket. I know the pocket appears to be not drastically far off straight in the picture but trust me, that’s an optical illusion created by clever cutting and placement!! Also the side seam stripes don’t match, the most obvious area where the fault can be seen. He really likes it though, so I’m putting aside my dumb perfectionist tendencies and just enjoying that he enjoys it 🙂

For Tim, I chose a navy blue with ivory stripe and his beanie is the matching navy blue. This fabric was the thickest of the lot, slightly ribbed, and is toasty warm. For the drawstring in the hood, the fabric was too thick to work and so I used a strip of Craig’s hoodie fabric, folded outwards so the solid coloured blue is on the outside.

Oh, the hoodie strings… in each case I made a self-fabric drawstring for the hoodies, bar Tim’s, as explained. To make a drawstring in the jersey, I cut a 1-2cm strip of fabric across the grain. Most jerseys have a natural tendency to roll or curl up across the grain, and you can use this to full advantage while making your drawstring.

Just allow the fabric to curl up just like it wants to, and stitch it with a zig-zag stitch in a width set to just under the width of your finished strip. Start from the centre, because it looks neater that way with the central start/stop point hidden inside the hood casing, and finish at each end.

Thread the flat drawstring through a wool needle and pull it through the hood casing; cut both ends equally to size, then tie off in a simple knot, so they won’t slip back through the eyelet at all. Easy peasy, and colourwise looks like it was tailor-made to go with the hoodie perfectly, which it was, of course, haha. Well, by that I mean that we all know how difficult, if not impossible it can be to get drawstrings to colour-match our fabrics perfectly? mm hmmm.

Problem solved!

The first three hoodies that I made from this pattern can be seen here, here and here; hoodie tutorial here

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: Craig, hoodie, own design, Sam, Tim, tutorial

a Japanese indigo dress

18/12/2015 10:19 am \ 41 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve made another Yoshimi dress 🙂

Pattern: Vogue 2900. This pattern will always be in my head the

“Yoshimi dress” since her versions are all very inspiring to me, and as well, the lovely Yoshimi herself personally recommended it for me, so there you go.

Fabric; linen, which I bought as plain white from Potters Textiles and then dyed real indigo, by which I mean using a real live, actual Japanese indigo plant-based dye pot! Yup, how awesome is that? I feel so very fortunate to have been given the chance to use Japanese indigo dye, since it’s quite a rare beast in WA. Growing the plant itself is very difficult here, and yes, I have tried and experienced a personal fail myself in that area… *represses sob*

Anyway, a few months ago, Nicki got together a group of us Perth girlies to go on a fun day out… and what constitutes a fun day out for the likes of us self-dressmakers more that a sartorially related, hands-on, “doing” thing! And what’s more hands-on than dyeing your own fabric in a real indigo dye vat?! This dye-vat is the work of the ultra talented and creative Trudi Pollard of Pollard Design Studio. Visiting Trudi’s studio in Bedfordale and viewing her many amazing creations is quite the inspiring and very humbling experience. Some of her exquisite textile art can be viewed at the studio’s site here.

I pre-washed my linen twice before the day but was hoping/aiming for just a touch-but-not-too-much blotchiness/unevenness; that lovely natural patina, you know. It worked out just spot-on how I wanted!

Construction notes: the seam lines in this pattern are lovely and interesting to my eyes and I wanted to highlight them somehow… the first time I made it up I made black cotton edging strips and this time I wanted to do something a bit different, to differentiate it from that dress in my wardrobe. Now, what does one think of when you think of indigo cotton? well for me Levi jeans are pretty high on the list. And Levi jeans have that very distinctive double orange topstitching allover, so I went with that as inspiration. It’s a lot more visually subtle than the black edging, but it’s there, and I really like it!

I had a look online to learn more about the origin of that orange topstitching, and interestingly enough, the reason for it was to go with the copper rivets that were used to strengthen jeans! Hmmm no copper rivets on my dress, whoops. Oh well!

I took great care to make sure those diagonal seam lines ended on the exact point and also put in a few little orange bar tacks on other random sewing junctions, for fun. I know, you can barely see them on the far-away pictures, but up close and personal I think they add a bit of interest to the dress.

The invisible zip saga… to sum it up, there was not a colour match even halfway acceptable! I chose a light blue and after inserting, just very carefully touched up the more visible bits of the zip tape with a felt-tip pen. This may or may not wash out over time, in which case I can always just touch it up again.

Then the pale blue zip pull was still too glaringly pale for my liking too; so I painted it coppery-orange with nail varnish, custom mixed using a few different colours from the small army of nail varnish bottles that live in my bathroom drawer. I knew all those funny colours would come in handy again some day!

Insides; all raw edges were overlocked with white thread, and I used white thread in the bobbin too, for continuity. I know; it’s not like anyone will ever see inside the dress, but to have it all looking cohesive is still a very satisfying sight to me.

So, that’s it, done and dusted! Now to continue with the small mountain of Christmas-related tasks I’ve lined up for myself and been busily and secretively working away on like a squirrel. I feel like I’ve been racing around like a crazy scatterbrained whirlwind lately. Crisis point not yet reached, but getting there…

Later dudes!