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 know it seems weird and silly to use three whole mens’ shirts to make just one woman’s shirt… like an exceptionally inefficient use of resources really! however there really were so many bits of each shirt that could not be used because of holes, stains, or threadbare patches that I had no choice. I was on a rescue mission!
The pattern is one of the newly release patterns from Fibremood, the Mimi blouse. Such a quick and simple thing to make! Especially coming hot on the heels of two jackets, ahem. It was nice to be an able to whip up something without having to think too much!
The pattern actually has the button and buttonhole bands cut on, so my use of the third contrasting fabric is an alteration really. I did have to do a bit of calculation to get this to work out well. I was seriously worried I wouldn’t have enough of the yellow fabric but thank goodness I did in the end. Another issue was cutting the lower front panels… I had to join some pieces together to get a piece big enough you might be able to see the joining seams on both of those sections of my new shirt. The sleeves also have joining seams that I did my best to make reasonably unobtrusive.
I’m wearing my new shirt in the above pictures with a pieced denim skirt I made last year using old jeans and our own Meelup skirt pattern, plus a number of superfluous pockets, making this outfit a wholly recycled-fabric ensemble. I really love this skirt too! it used to be quite a bit paler in colour and I overdyed it blue while I was dying something else one day. Oh, I remember it was this skirt...
Something else I’ve made recently was a “golden chain mail” tunic for my middle grandson T for his book week costume. Doesn’t he look amazing?! He wanted to be Tom of the Beast Quest series. I was only commissioned to make the tunic, and my clever daughter Cassie made the rest of his costume including that amazing helmet. Theo made his own shield!
I used the measurements from an oversized T-shirt he already had, and bought the golden sparkly remnant from Spotlight. It was very cheap but is actually quite nice stuff … I have a little bit left over and am wondering what I can use this for?!
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.
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 
Hello! I’m back with a few new things…
