Wednesday 24 July 2013

Summer Sailors

Last week was Kids Clothing Week so what better time to crack on with the shorts I kept promising my daughter. I searched the interwebs and what I found was that most kid patterns only go up to age 8. My daughter is aged 12 so this posed a problem. After much more searching I eventually found  the Summer Sailors from Brownie Goose
[Source]

Cute, non? My girl liked them as soon as she saw them, so I downloaded and set to work.

I had most of the materials to hand, apart from the buttons which I had to pop up the road for. The pattern was very quick to put together, I think there were only 8 pages to stick together in total. The only problem I had was matching up the hem of the front and back. I don't know why but the front seemed a fraction shorter. I don't know if it was a slap-dash cutting issue, printing issue, who knows?? Anyhoo, I just chopped off the extra and it didn't seem to matter, he he! The rest of it went super smooth. I added a bit of ric rac to the waistband seam for another pop of white.


My daughter is thrilled with the end result and I have already started on a second pair, with plans to make some corduroy ones for A/W wear with tights.




Apparently navy is as hard to photograph in bright sun as black, oh well you get the idea I hope.




Friday 12 July 2013

A Twirly Skirt

Last week I had a disappointing week, in terms of sewing. I had wanted to get started on the Colette Hawthorn sewalong but once again I seemed to run out of time everyday. I couldn't even squeeze in a measly 30 minutes of sewing. However, I did get my PDF pattern all taped together and ready to go. So when the weekend arrived and I had a bit more time to play with you'd think i'd get cracking on with it, but no. I decided to make this instead:




 All this hot weather had left me longing for a cool and breezy skirt. Something I could knock out in the limited time I had available between school fetes and rocket launches (true!). Initally I was going to make another Miette but I couldn't place the linen fabric I had in mind. Lost in the depths of my fabric storage.

In my search I came across this Denyse Schmidt fabric that i'd had for ages and thought it would be pretty as a fifties style full skirt.

I got my fabric measurements from the tutorial on the By Hand London blog, then did my gathers using the dental floss trick, which is by far the easiest way to gather I think.
 
 I didn't have an appropriate zipper, invisible or otherwise, but did find this 2" wide black elastic to use as a waistband.

Having sewn it all together and given it a beautiful invisible hem I tried it on and was rather underwhelmed. Firstly, it was just too gathered at the waist and secondly the length was all wrong, sorry forgot to take pictures. I'd based the length on one of my favourite RTW dresses but somehow the length just didn't work with this style.

So, out came the seam ripper, off came the elastic and off came 3 inches of fabric from the waistline, therefore leaving my lovely hem intact!

Then instead of gathers I did this...


I don't know if these are pleats or tucks. There was no science behind it, I just eyeballed it and it worked out okay. I certainly prefer the look of it this way than with the gathers. There was one major mistake I made though. Obviously when you have gathers the fabric stretches nicely with the elastic, making it easy to take the skirt on and off. With these pleats or whatever they are, not the case!! For once I am very thankful to have a small bottom as I can just about squeeze in and out of it.

Monday 8 July 2013

Scout Take Two

I finished this a couple of weeks ago, just in time for the start of the good weather. If my Miette is the perfect transitional skirt then this Scout is the perfect warm weather top.

Now you'd think having made a practice version of this top everything would go swimmingly. Well, for the most part it did. Where things went awry was at the neckline. I chose a cotton lawn I had in my stash for this Scout and it was obviously a lot more stretchy on the bias than the poly-cotton I used for my test version. This resulted in a neckline that does not lay perfectly flat. It's not so bad that I can't live with it but it will probably bug me every time I wear the damn thing.

I feel a bit 'early stages of pregnancy' in it, but again not enough to actually put me off wearing it. With all this glorious sunshine and heat we are enjoying I imagine it will be getting quite a lot of wear in the next few weeks.

Light on photos today. Combination of really bright sunshine and less-than-cooperative 12yo photographer!