I’ve made a few more things to wear this winter/early spring….
Firstly, a delightfully warm jacket. I bought this buffalo plaid fabric from the remnants table in KnitWit quite a few years ago and hadn’t really known what to do with it ever since. Anyway I finally decided it was next up, time to make something with it, something… ANYTHING. Often with fabric I don’t feel very passionate about, I end up putting a big effort and time and care into making it as nicely and as well as I can, and this is what happened this time too. I carefully aligned all the plaids, was a teeny bit disappointed that I couldn’t make them match down the front opening edge, but apart from that everything lines up A-ok, yay.
I used the Closet Core Sienna jacket pattern again, cutting the jacket style of my imagination which kind of blended all three views. I gave it inseam side pockets, fully lined it (kind of silky stuff from a Morrison clothing remnant sale) and added two inner patch breast pockets to the lining.
I just cut the fully lined hood, using the joining edge of the collar for the bottom edge, otherwise not using any specific hood pattern. At some point, I decided the obvious choice for closure to be toggles… black ones. Of course Spotlight only had sorta murky-greenish ones. So I bought the requisite, gave them a sand, strung them up like so:
and painted them with three coat of matt black acrylic craft paint, finishing off with a clear matt varnish to protect it.
I happened to have a short length of black braid that I could use for the “anchors”, and bought some black leather lacing to attach the toggles and for the closure.
I’m really happy with how these turned out!
I also made a simple little skirt, the kind of thing I like to wear all winter long. This is from a length of stretchy blue denim, a longterm leftover from a pair of trousers I made once. Because I only had a smallish scrap with oddly shaped pieces I hauled out ye olde favourite V 1247, and added about 10cm.
The waistband is navy blue skinny-wale cord (from stash), lined with a blue cotton (also stash) which I also added on to the front yoke to get enough length for the pockets, as pictured. The stash also provided a dress zip.
And thus the remaining stash is lightened just a little further and I have some nice new winter threads. Very happy!
1) Finished only yesterday is this new patchwork pinafore…. Mum bought a little bundle of Irish tweed cut-offs during a visit to the UK years ago.
I admit to being quite intimidated by this lovely stuff for a long time! but as my policy for the past few years is to sew my stash completely, the time came to step up, get brave and cut into it. I used a pattern partly based upon the Pauline Alice Turia dungarees pattern, but as I’ve unfortunately thrown out my copy I made a new pattern by laying down my pink pinafore and tracing around it.
The seams look like straight lines, but in reality none of them are because of the weird shapes of the fabric scraps I was using! All the horizontal seams are curved to differing degrees. It was a little tricky to get a good neat result but I was actually very pleased with myself how cohesive it all looks in the end! Of course this is a fun and cool, airy little dress to wear and I am extremely happy with it. I’m looking forward to summer so I can get back into it again!
3) Also during last summer I also made this little lace dress using the Fibremood Lennox pattern and a pale “greige” lace originally from Fabulous Fabrics from many years ago. I underlined all pieces completely with a cream coloured muslin, also bought many years ago, I think from a Morrison remnant sale. The buttons are actually some leftovers from the covered buttons that I made for Kelly’s wedding dress, back here! This is also all from stash, and although I’ve worn this a tonne since I made it I took only one picture of myself wearing it… this rather terrible one, sorry. I’m trying to get back to photographing and documenting things better.
hello! Recently my lovely niece J married her long-time man and so of course I had to make a new dress for myself for the occasion… I was vaguely toying with the idea of shopping for fabric before I remembered two things: 1. as everyone in our family knows, J’s favourite colour is famously yellow, and 2. I have a piece of very yellow, and happily wedding worthy fabric in my stash already!
I cut the pockets and neckline facings from a natural cotton linen that I’ve had in the stash for years, saved specifically for this same sort of purpose.
I’m including a picture of the happy couple because, although I did not make the dress, I did alter it to fit her and also did some minor repairs. This took three separate fittings and I took precisely zero photos of the process or anything. My only excuse is that I was also working on my own dress and stressing a little bit that I wasn’t going to get it all done on time.
hello! I’ve made a new/old blouse for myself… I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of using old textiles PLUS I’ve also always loved patchwork and mixed-prints in clothing so obviously this new blouse is certain to become a favourite! why? because the fabric is salvaged from three well-loved old shirts of my husband’s… I really liked each of these shirts when he was wearing them, so when he decided they were too worn to be worn any more (hehe) I packed them away to be refashioned one day.
I’m wearing my new shirt in the above pictures with 
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!
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.
