sewing Archives - Page 4 of 41 - Handmade by Carolyn

new/old denim skirt

10/11/2024 1:49 pm \ 5 Comments \ Carolyn

hello! I’ve made a new skirt, using all bits and pieces from old denim jeans .. or should that then be an old skirt? Hmmm.. a debatable concept!

I like using old textiles to make something different, however it must be said that old fabric often does look old, and not necessarily in a good way. In this case, the denim is actually very well-worn and I may or may not subject it to a brief navy blue dye bath, just to maybe jzoojz (spelling?) it up a bit? as yet, undecided…

I used our own Carolyn & Cassie Meelup skirt pattern, and I think this could be one of the first ones I’ve made for myself without a lining? well, it is just a denim skirt! The skirt is partially cut from a pair of Tim’s old jeans shorts, and a bit extra from some other, previously cutup, old jeans.

The pocket linings are a lovely cotton lawn, leftover from this old favourite dress… I picked off the old pockets from the shorts and added them to the back of the skirt, and another one to the right front. I also made a large, slanted edge patch pocket for the left front, and this one has a totally superfluous coin pocket on it too… superfluous in that I put one in the right hip pocket too. This brings the number of pockets to a grand total of eight! Hurrah for pockets!

The hem of the skirt is the original hem of the jeans shorts, and I unpicked a little to sew the side seams, before resewing the original hem in place. The original topstitching on the jeans shorts was a mixture of navy blue and a kind of dull, mustard-y orange, but all my new topstitching is quite a brighter orange.

The buttons were harvested from off an old cushion here. The buttons for this skirt don’t matter at all actually since they’re not seen on the outside at all. Just one more of the things I love about our pattern!

It’s a bit daggy, let’s be real, but I guess I’m an 80’s girl at heart really so daggy is set in stone into my DNA. I’ll happily wear it as a knockabout skirt on the weekend and when I just feel like slouching around. It’s fun, very comfy, and I often kinda like that scruffy vibe anyway, hehe.

wearing it here with a Booragoon top and a hand knit cardigan

Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: Carolyn & Cassie Pattern Co, daily outfit, Meelup, Meelup skirt, skirt

green and blue scrappy jumper

09/11/2024 2:57 pm \ 4 Comments \ Carolyn

hello! I’ve knitted a new jumper, from that big inherited bag of scraps and leftovers that has stymied my dreams of a minimalist, streamlined stash for quite a long time now… I’m trying to make a project a month and this little number is actually October’s project.

It’s a bit late, but of course a jumper is quite an involved project and I’ve knitted two jumpers in as many months now, phew. I’m trying very hard to keep up the pace though!

Unlike my jumper from last month, I knitted this one bottom up, and have decided for once and for all that this is far less practical way of knitting something on the fly, when your purpose is to keep on knitting until the yarn is gone. It’s hard to explain without doing it for yourself.. but essentially you have to cast on for the sleeves, and then pick up those stitches again to continue on the sleeves; which is kinda awkward. Also, you have less idea about eking out your yarn to last until the neck edge. And also, I’d started knitting in stocking stitch, and then became dissatisfied with the curly up nature of the lower edge, and had to pick up stitches again to knit a final ribbed edge to the bottom edge. Of course, these are very minor concerns really; since any project in which you’re trying to eke out set-in-stone quantities of yarns and still end up with a garment that is actually wearable is ALWAYS going have some difficulties.

I didn’t take a picture of the “before” yarns, but actually this project changed shape and form several times during the making and new yarns got added in as I went along. I’m pretty happy though… because there were about 11 balls/part balls of yarn in all to start with, and now they are all GONE from Le Stash. I’m particularly pleased with the “turquoise” stripes on the sleeves, which are actually four strands of two different colours of an extremely fine mohair yarn that I had no idea what on earth I could use for anything at all. The four of them held and knitted together as one turned out to be a reasonably good thickness to actually use.

As I was finishing it and thinking about how I was going to wear it, I was suddenly hit with the certainty that I absolutely needed a long sleeve, white hoodie tee to wear with it. And since I sew, I was happily able to immediately acquire such a thing, with no need to go shopping.

I used our own Carolyn & Cassie Pinjarra pattern, the high necked top version. I cut a size bigger than my usual for a loose fit, and cut a hoodie piece to fit the neckline length. I also added a few inches of length to the bottom edge, again for that loose look. It was a pretty easy hack of our own pattern! so easy that I wondered for a little bit whether we should draft the hood up and add it to the pattern.

I’m wearing them both here; at top with my Closet Core Patterns Ginger jeans, and then with my long term favourite Closet Core Patterns Sasha trousers… I really need to make some new ones of this great pattern!

Posted in: knitting, sewing \ Tagged: Carolyn & Cassie Pattern Co, daily outfit, jumper, Knitted, knitting, own design, pinjarra twinset

pink and blue lingerie

29/09/2024 2:00 pm \ 4 Comments \ Carolyn

Obviously the most worn items in just about anyone’s wardrobe is bound to be underwear… and so one is obliged to often update these things, even though you don’t get the benefit of showing of your new creations to your friends, much less the general public! I’m still using up small pieces of cotton jersey in my stash that are too small for anything else, thus this is another patchwork set. Oh, pattern? the Cloth Habit Watson pattern, adapted over time to become a long term favourite of mine.

The blue jersey was a remnant given to me by my friend N – in spite of the fact that I no longer accept fabric donations, honestly I have to get stricter about just throwing it out! however occasionally some pieces do prove useful. I had enough of the blue jersey for a partial set, but I always like to have two knickers to go with any one bra so I hunted about for more cotton jersey to make up the shortfall. I didn’t really have anything exactly suitable apart from white, but something in me found white to be unacceptable at the time so I whimsically decided to dye the white pieces.

I still have some dried calendula flowers which gives an orange dye, so tossed just 4 of them in with the pieces in a saucepan.

These are pretty potent things! The water looked very orange, however I was pleasantly surprised that the fabric became quite pink in the end! So pretty!

I used blue topstitching thread, and the small lace butterflies are leftover from this, previously made set. I carefully selected a blue butterfly for the pink undies and a pink butterfly for the blue undies and the bra, although the colour doesn’t show up so well in these close-ups.

For the bra cups, I like hand stitch the outer layer to the inner layer in-the-ditch along the seamline, to keep the seam allowances neatly in place. I try to keep the stitches even and as neat as possible, whilst also as invisible as possible … if this makes sense! but you can just see the stitches if you look really closely.

The knicker elastic and underbra elastic are all new, however the bra straps and closure are recycled from old sets. I generally find that these things can be recycled a few times, since it’s always either the knicker elastic or occasionally the fabric of the pieces that wears out the most quickly.

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: cloth habit, lingerie, natural dyeing, watson

snuggly dress/shacket

28/09/2024 10:19 am \ Leave a Comment \ Carolyn

I made this very snuggly and cosy shirtdress/jacket thingummy recently, the pattern is the new Fibremood Ildri … I think it is called a shirtdress, but it can obviously be cut shorter as a shirt or jacket too. btw, while it has a second version pictured here, when I got it the pattern only had the first, long version with covered button band..

I used a piece of quite fluffy, brushed cotton that I bought from the pyjama fabric section of Spotlight, several years ago now… and cut my dress as long as I was able!

The pattern is quite nice; with a self-faced yoke that I did with a burrito finish … such a nice finish. I can’t believe I used to hand stitch these down with most of the mens’ shirts I made back in the day, before I discovered it. The button band is hidden with an extra flap; I kinda like this but because my fabric is quite fluffy I worried for quite a while that it was going to be too thick to be workable. Fortunately it worked out just fine, but I agonised over this quite unnecessarily for much of the construction process. And is it even necessary to hide the button band? Is the button band ever so ugly that one feels the need to shut it out of sight like this? Why are we choosing such hideous buttons that we think; oh well, this should clearly not be seen by the general public! I’m a little unsure where I stand on this detail, that’s not even very visually interesting. Don’t mind me, just ranting for no good reason. I used press studs, which are not bulky and you can’t even see them because of the hidden button band anyway.

Anyway. I added side pockets, of course, as well as the breast pockets with flaps, that are in the pattern. The collar is quite a nice size, and sits well. The sleeves were a bit bland on their own, in my opinion, so I threaded a little elastic through a cuff to bring them in. I like having my sleeves shoved slouchily up to my elbow like this, I think it looks cool and it keeps the warmth in.

I cut the side edges in a curve, which is a small detail that I always like in a shirt/shirtdress. To be honest, it’s way too short for me to ever wear it as a standalone dress, so it will be more of a shirt/jacket in my own wardrobe. I do really like it though! We’ve had a very up and down start to spring this year, some days delightful, other days blustery and freezing… and it’s been lovely to have this cosy thing in rotation. For some reason, I think of black and white as being a very spring-time combination of colours to wear, and this fits in nicely.

To belt or not to belt? that is the question. This is how I wore it yesterday… I think I prefer it belted mostly, but this makes the pockets practically inaccessible… !

worn with:

my black stretch Burda jeans… and then self drafted mini, and one of my recent ivory merino Pinjarra tees

In maintenance news; I made this, in my opinion; really beautiful bra with 2 sets of matching knickers set several years ago, and white the bra is thankfully still in excellent shape, the foldover elastic on the knickers had given up the ghost. That’s thing about foldover elastic, it really does not have the stamina of others and doesn’t last very long. I think it’s ok to use it as an aesthetic choice, but remember that it’s not going to do such a good job in the long run.

Anyway, I decided to run up two new pairs of knickers to match the bra. Obviously I didn’t have any more of that pretty Liberty jersey, but I did have a big-enough remnant of reasonably well-matching blue jersey from which I managed to cut out two new pairs of Watson knickers. I cut out a few small flower motifs from the old Liberty knickers and hand stitched them on too, just for fun. This was a very small project, barely worth blogging really but I’m so happy with it! Sometimes small things can make you really happy.

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: cloth habit, daily outfit, fibremood, ildri, lingerie, shirt, shirtdress, watson

green Japanese wool tartan

07/09/2024 12:51 pm \ 2 Comments \ Carolyn

I know, I know … “tartan” and “Japanese” are not words that should generally go together but anyway, let’s not digress! I bought a short length of this beautiful piece of wool during our recent holiday to Japan. At the time, I vowed to make up everything I’d bought in Japan within a year, and so, ta da – I made a little skirt, and then since there was a decently sized piece leftover I made up a matching top too.

The skirt is our very own Meelup pattern, which is currently my number one top favourite. It has all my desired features; deep pockets, no zip, and a streamlined, yet comfortable and roomy silhouette. I carefully lined up the pockets to match the pattern in the skirt front; Pattern Matching 101. The skirt is lined in deep green lining fabric, not a perfect match colour-wise but t’was already in the stash thus making it the perfect candidate.

later edit; our Carolyn & Cassie Meelup pattern is available in our Etsy store, here

I also used a khaki cotton for the pocket lining and red buttons for the same reason… I know I know; the purist in me shrieks “NO!” however the thrifty-miss in me reassures myself that it’s not like you can ever see either of these wrongly coloured things when you’re wearing the skirt! I used the same khaki cotton to make bias binding to finish the raw edge of the hem inside…

Some waistband thoughts: sometimes I think applying a fusible interfacing to wool is just not a good idea; the interfacing is surely not going to adhere to the “fuzziness” of wool felt and will peel off too easily, although I have no evidence to back up this thought. Just a hunch. Anyway; to ensure the waistband stays nicely interfaced in the long term, I used dark green thread to run a hand-running stitch around the top edge of the waistband, around 4mm or so in from the fold, through all layers. You can’t even really see it, but it’s there and I just feel better knowing the fold is being held firmly in place like this, as well as keeping the interfacing where it should be too. btw, my apologies for the “fluff” in this photo I promise it’s actually barely visible to the naked eye! It’s just very hard to see those tiny hand stitches without zooming in this hard.

The little tee-top is kinda based on another old favourite, the epaulette top from “she has a mannish style” by Yuki Takada. I had enough tartan for the sleeves and two big patch pockets, and the body is cut from an ivory wool felt that has been such a very long-term stash resident that I cannot remember its provenance. I did not include the eponymous epaulettes, … also I lined the body fully with an ivory silk habotai (also long-term stash) because the ivory wool is really itchy.

I stabilised the neckline with a biascut strip of cream cotton, then attached the lining to this, before stitching them all down to the top around the neckline.. yes, quite complicated but gives a nice finish, imo. The armscye of the lining is also stitched to that of the outer, and the remainder of the body and side seams float freely from each other. Having a silk lining makes it quite beautiful to wear!

I finished the lower raw edge with cotton bias, just like with the skirt… You can see here how I used dark green thread in the bobbin to stitch on those patch pockets… and no that is not a mistake! I discovered that a cream coloured thread to match the wool showed up just very slightly on the outside of the pockets, not terribly but enough to bother me…so I unpicked that and re-did it with the green thread. Now the topstitching on the pockets is nicely invisible… 🙂

I’ve also run up two new ivory merino T-shirts in the past week… this is another of our patterns, the Pinjarra twinset. These two items are of course the tee part of the pattern, and both have the scoop neckline. I basically made these to use up the last of a length of ivory merino that I’d bought a few years ago but only made one tee so far. Now it has happily realised the purpose it was bought for, at last!

A few little moth holes had sprung up during its confinement to the stash, so while I could cut mostly around them, I darned the few unavoidable ones up before making my tops… The merino is so fine, I used regular stitching thread for darning… and even then it looks thicker than I’d like.

Honestly, though, it really is near invisible, unless you get up really close! and I know these two items are going to work hard in my wardrobe next winter… btw, can you see how I used a white thread and and ivory thread in that double top-stitching? No?!

Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: Carolyn & Cassie Pattern Co, Meelup skirt, pinjarra twinset, She Has a Mannish Style, skirt, tee, top

new jeans

14/07/2024 12:41 pm \ 1 Comment \ Carolyn

honestly, I don’t ever encourage T to pose with me, he just does it all on his own. 😀

I’ve made some new jeans, and the overly wide-legged-ness of them is so funky and awesome … it’s silly but I am really feeling like this sort of thing at the moment! I’ve been working on these for several weeks now … taking my time to get the fit just right and exactly how I wanted them. It was fun to work slowly on something that I really wanted. They are super comfortable and easy to wear, almost like a tracksuit, only not. Way better.

I used McCalls 8206 as a starting point. The size chart put me at about size 14, which surprised me a bit. I’m traditionally a 10 in McCalls patterns, but anyway I went ahead and cut out the size 14, keeping the extra paper pattern bits of the other sizes that got cut off just in case the size wasn’t right after all. I basted the legs together, and oh boy, indeed the size 14 was absolutely huge on me. I’m not sure why the size chart was so completely out of whack but I could literally pull them down without having to open the fly basting stitches at all! I ended up having to reduce the waist to the size 10 after all, and shaved the extra width off the leg pieces down the side seams, dwindling them down so they’re back to a size 14 by about knee level. I think I didn’t bother to reduce the size of the pockets though, so they do look a bit bigger on the jeans than they should. But that’s quite fine with me; I love oversized pockets too!

The waistband is curved, which always makes for a nice fit on jeans. However there is no fly shield… and I’d used a jeans zip so there is that slight scratchiness against your tummy skin on the inside. But the jeans are really so baggy I don’t think it’s going to be an issue.

For the waistband lining and pocket flap linings, I used a gorgeous linen gingham, leftover from this dress I made late last year… I’d bought it in Japan during our 2019 holiday and it’s so lovely. I really like how it picks up on the orange topstitching thread, only of course no one can see it but me! I splurged and put one of my eponymous labels in them too…

The topstitching thread is two slightly different shades of orange, to explain; the waistband and belt loop topstitching is a brighter orange than the remainder of the jeans. Actually, now they’re finished I realise you can hardly see the difference so I’m not sure why I was worried about it, but honestly on the spools the colour was noticeably different!

btw, a hand stitched buttonhole, haha. Seems like a weird choice for a pair of jeans but my machine-stitched version just looked a bit flimsy and wholly unsatisfactory!

The fabric is a slightly stretchy, very dark midnight-navy denim, originally from Fabulous Fabrics, and all haberdashery was also sourced from Le Stash. But I do confess to having to buy the pattern new! I searched and searched my pattern stash and decided to splurge on a new pattern when I couldn’t really find anything that ticked all the boxes of my vision ie. wide legs, small waist, lots of pockets including cargo, fitted at the waist but with a flat appearance and NO PLEATS OR DARTS, and a below the waist rise…. I’m very happy I got this one though, because I really do love it and plan to make it again someday, just the correct size next time! I would like to make this in a lighter weight cotton drill, like maybe white, for a summery sailor look… or maybe a camo print. But in the meantime I’m going to try my best to carry off the “cool” vibe of these very trendy jeans!

worn throughout with one of my white Carolyn & Cassie Pattern Co Booragoon tops

is this my signature pose? I don’t why I feel compelled to do whenever I’m taking pictures of my clothes… I feel a bit sad I didn’t get an out-in-the-wild picture yet but I’ll come back and post one when it happens… 🙂

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: daily outfit, jeans, McCalls 8206

Balinese sarong-style “alberthe” dress

07/07/2024 2:27 pm \ 12 Comments \ Carolyn

I made a new dress, possibly the last summer sundress before our cold winter sets in for real… I was very fortunate to have a warmish enough day recently in which I could wear it to the beach and take photos of it! although it was cold enough that I couldn’t bring myself to take off my little white Tshirt from underneath. I used a new pattern; the Fibremood Alberthe, and a sarong/piece of fabric that I bought in Indonesia back in 2018, when we went there to attend a friend’s wedding. I posted about my travel wardrobe back … whoops, and wow, I’ve just realised I never posted about that travel wardrobe at all. I wonder if I should gather together some pictures and write about it?!

The pattern can be made as either a little top or a dress… I wanted to use the border at the bottom of the dress, so the pattern pieces were laid down on the cross, and made the dress version as long as I was able to cut it. Actually, it’s supposed to be a much longer dress, like ankle length; however I was pretty happy that my pieces fitted perfectly on my fabric, albeit shorter; with almost no leftovers at all. My aim with sewing nowadays is for a few key outcomes, namely:

to use fabric already in the stash
cutting the pattern out with as few leftovers as possible
to also use all haberdashery, like buttons, zips, elastic etc etc from stash as much as possible too.

So far this year I’ve succeeded in just about all of these endeavours, which has certainly made me really happy… at least enough to assuage my occasional desires to violate outcome number 1, and indulge in buying new fabric. Yes, I still have such desires! I’m only human!

Anyway, that’s neither here not there right now… although I just wanted to mention it again to reaffirm that it’s still an ongoing thing.

The Alberthe is quite an interesting pattern, with an asymmetric long front fold providing width to the dress. It’s supposed to have a zip in the side seam, but I tested how it went over my head first and was happy to realise I could slip it on easily without the need for a zip. The back is a plainish, regular sundress style, with wide straps stitched in between the dress and a facing.

It has lovely deep pockets which is nice, although I certainly would have added them myself even if it didn’t! I didn’t hem it, which sounds lazy, but I wanted to retain the border as much as possible. After photographing it, I have second thoughts about this decision. It does look a little unfinished, to be honest. I may or may not go back before next summer and give it a narrow hem, we’ll see.

Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: alberthe, dress, fibremood

another twisted collar shirt

07/06/2024 8:03 am \ 3 Comments \ Carolyn

I made another unusual little shirt … this one is similar to the other, cotton one that I made just recently but does have some key differences.

I used a length of beautiful snowy white linen from the Linen Shack … very fine and lightly crisp, almost floaty, and it was just as lovely to work with as the dusky pink linen I used for another recently made shirt… Honestly is there anything nicer to wear than a crisp and fresh linen shirt? It’s one of my favourite things to have and wear and all my white linen shirts get worn to death. I mean, a white top goes with absolutely everything so although one might feel like it’s a bit predictable it is also undoubtably indispensable. Personally, I absolutely must have at least one white shirt in my wardrobe at any time and particularly a linen one for summer!

This one has many details that you’d expect for a classic button-up shirt with collar, collar stand, and cuffed sleeves; except it’s not classic at all because of the off-set nature of the collar. I’m really enjoying exploring this idea for a new pattern and haven’t finished experimenting yet!

For this one, I used tortoiseshell coloured buttons which I think is a nice contrast to the white. These were long ago harvested from off an old business shirt of Craig’s. Galica commented on my previous post about considering just one pocket so I decided to give this a go. I went for a double-topstitched arrow headed pocket and pocket flap with identical profile. This blouse has topstitched seams throughout for a classic casual shirt look, which I really like.

I cut the neckline of this shirt quite a lot wider from the cotton sample I made recently, so it needed an obviously different collar and collar stand. This also took me quite a bit of time to finesse… and I haven’t quite settled on which one I like better! The hemline is longer on this one too, only reason being that I had a tad more of this fabric than I did of the cotton! I do really like the gently curving hemline. In my opinion it’s a really nice shape and I’m very pleased with it. 🙂

I’m wearing the shirt here with my blue Closet Core patterns Sasha trousers. By the way, I must apologise for the funny colouring in these photos… I had to substantially adjust the colour, which must be the primary cardinal sin when blogging about and/or illustrating clothes! However I took my beach photos here at about sunset and the natural light was a quite strong and definitely misleading pink/orange glow. I just wanted my new, beautifully white shirt to actually look white!

The Linen Shack white linen can be found here

(not an affiliated link)

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: daily outfit, own design, shirt