A Trio of Travelling Trousers

I had planned to post these three two months ago. I made them all to take on a trip to Western Australia and was going to take pictures of me wearing them on beaches and bushwalks, but didn't end up getting usable action shots. So instead they went into the wardrobe until I pulled them out today.

First is a pair of very bright summer shorts. The fabric is from Spotlight, and I'm really not sure what it is or what it's meant to be for. It's fairly loosely woven and frays like crazy. Because of that I decided my normal thing of doing French seams wouldn't be enough. So instead I covered over each seam with bias binding, stitched in at the seamline, then folded over and stitched down at the edge of the seam allowance. I still don't think they'll last very long, though, because the fabric doesn't really stand up to much.

Both these shorts and the next ones were made using Burda young 7050. The pattern seems to now be out of print, but it's a pants pattern that's fitted to just below the knees and then flares out. Obviously I altered the pattern for the shorts. For these bright yellow ones I traced the top of the pattern to mid-thigh on newspaper, then slashed and spread to make them looser. These shorts were for lazing on the beach in Broome, although it ended up raining despite it being the dry season, so no beach photos for these shorts.

The second pair of shorts are just practical, dark khaki/green bushwalking shorts. On my holiday I did a tour from Broome to Perth, with lots of time spent in national parks, particularly Karijini in the Pilbara. It's a beautiful area, but hot even when it's technically only just spring. So shorts are best for walking there, especially when you get to gorges where you need to wade through knee-deep water!

I again used the Burda young 7050 pattern, and also widened it slightly from the original so they'd be more practical to wear. As you can see these are also longer, again for practicality's sake. They aren't the most exciting thing I've ever made, but they fit the bill for what I needed.

Thirdly, I made these slim fitting cargo pants. The pattern is Simplicity 2261, which is also out of print. I made the in a solid cotton drill in a stone colour. I picked this fabric up in Cabramatta when some of the Sydney Spoolettes had a shopping day. The pants are still relatively slim fitting, but are loose enough to climb on rocks and along steep tracks, so they are fit for purpose.

 This pattern is relatively straightforward, as far as pants go. I needed to read the instructions of how to insert a fly about three times before I knew what to do, but I got there in the end. I'm mostly happy with how they turned out, apart from the press studs for the pockets. I thought they'd be a more practical choice of closure for pants to wear while bushwalking, but one of them pulled off the fabric when I tried to unsnap it. I think I'll practice on some scrap fabric before I use press studs again!

 Lastly, although this is a sewing blog I had to include just a couple of photos to start and end this post with some of the amazing scenery in WA. The top photo is Joffre Gorge in Karijini National Park. That's at the top of a track that goes almost vertically down those cliffs, not a walk for the faint hearted (or the sore jointed!). Below is sunset at Pardoo Station. Both places are a long way from civilisation, and both are simply breathtaking. If you ever get the opportunity to see that part of the world, take it!

Leopard Bow Blouse

And another blouse.

The pattern is from the Japanese pattern book Les Couleurs Francaises. I'd post a link, but can't find anything other than a handful of blog posts. Which is unfortunate, because it's quite a nice pattern book. It's mother-daughter patterns, with lots of matching or similar styles. They're all fairly safely classic and feminine, so they're unlikely to become too obviously dated. It's worth picking up if you ever see it.

Now about the fabric. I do like my kitsch animal fabrics. I'm not particularly excited by standard animal print fabrics, but fabrics with animals on them? Those are great, and I've made clothes from quite a few animal fabrics. So how could I not buy this leopard fabric?

The fabric is a poly with a nice drape. I bought it on a trip to Cabramatta with the Sydney Spoolettes. I think it cost $5 for a metre, which is actually mid-price range for Cabra. The number of fabric stores there make it well worth a visit. The quality of fabrics is variable, but given you can get things as cheap as $2 a metre that isn't surprising. And most of the fabric is pretty good quality.

 As I said the pattern is from the Japanese sewing book Les Couleurs Francaises. It's pattern W, a tunic style pussy bow blouse with elbow length sleeves and front and back yokes. It's one of the patterns that made me buy the book about five years ago, but this is the first time I've made it. In the book they've made it with a broderie-edged cotton, and I'd always thought I'd do something similar. But a fabric printed with a member of the feline family is obviously the perfect choice for a pussy bow blouse.

Being poly the fabric is easy to care for and doesn't seem to crease. However it can fray, so as usual I did French seams to give it a cleaner finish. I also stitched down the yoke seams, both to keep it neat and flat and to highlight the yoke. I didn't have much of the off-white thread I used as topstitching left so all the inside stitching was done in white At first I worried that the topstitching thread might still be a bit too white, but in the end it doesn't stand out much, just enough to accentuate the seam but not so much that you look at the line.

 The pattern was a very straightforward make. Although it has both yokes and ties, it doesn't have anything that's difficult to do. It's loose fitting, so there's no buttons or zippers to worry about. Setting sleeves always requires patience, and a bit of attention is required to get both the keyhole neckline neat - both having the yoke pieces just overlap and stitching the tie to the neckline - but it isn't hard to do. It's probably a good pattern for someone who knows all the basics and either wants to try out Japanese patterns for the first time or just wants to slightly challenge their skills.

 In the pattern book this top is worn untucked, but in most of the photos I've worn it tucked. I think it works better for this fabric, and as a blouse to wear at work I think tucked in is neater too. Although it possibly could stand to be an inch longer, or I could wear it with higher waisted trousers or skirt. But overall, I'm really happy with this blouse and think it will get lots of wear.

70s/80s blouses for the 21st Century

A couple of new blouses today, although one of them was actually made six months ago. But being a short-sleeved blouse it hasn't been warm enough to photograph. Both patterns qualify as vintage, although I'm slightly loath to call the sleeveless one 'vintage' given it's from the 1980s and actually a year younger than me.

First up is my newest finished make, a loose-fitting sleeveless blouse.  The pattern is Butterick 6583, a loose fitting girls' blouse pattern from 1984. Apparently children's size blouses work pretty well for me. It has options of dropped sleeves or sleeveless, I decided to go for the latter. It also has no darts, but instead has dropped shoulder seams with the bodice slightly gathered at the seam.

When I posted it on Instagram when I'd just finished it I wasn't 100% on it because it was looser than I expected.But that was a week ago, just before we were due to have our first hot day of the season on Monday (34°C). One comment on my Instagram pic suggested I'd be very happy with it in the heat on Monday, and Mel, you were right.

The fabric is surprisingly cool to wear. It's a fabric I got earlier in the year when the Sydney Spoolettes held a fabric swap, so I'm not sure of its origins. But it's a polyester yet has a nice drape, good softness, and more breathability than many polyesters do. So I was pleasantly surprised by that. The only thing that I needed to do at all different was to do French seams because the fabric gets that matted fraying that polyester tends to do very easily. But I do a lot of French seams anyway, so that wasn't a problem.

This second blouse is one a made way back on the Easter long weekend. The pattern is the same as my Perfect Blouse Pattern, but made with a basic short sleeve. It's made in a cotton from The Fabric Store, and is offwhite with a peach/mauve floral paisley print. The print is quite pale, but can been seen in the close up in the last picture.

I think part of the reason I hadn't posted this blouse before is because it's not exactly exciting. It's a nice pattern, and the back darts give a good shaping, but it is still just a straighforward work appropriate blouse. And honestly it's a little hard to think of anything else to say about it given I've already reviewed the pattern when I used it previously.

Anyway, so those are my two blouses to wear as the weather warms.  And hopefully I can get this blog back on to a more regular schedule too!

Tessuti Cut Out Lace LBD

First post in a month! And this dress almost didn't even make it.
This dress was made as an entry for Tessuti's cut out lace competition. Even though I'd bought the fabric a day or two after the competition was announced (perks/dangers of working a less than ten minute walk from Tessuti's Surry Hills store) there were quite a few things that almost got in the way of the dress being made.

The first thing that delayed this dress was a holiday, and some holiday sewing of shorts and cargo pants to wear while bushwalking in Western Australian national parks. Because of this, I didn't have time to start on my competition entry until I got back from holiday a week and a half into September. But the bigger problem was that I just couldn't seem to get my make to look how I wanted it to look.

I'd decided as soon as I saw the lace in store that I wanted to do as little as possible to it, and just let the fabric speak for itself. I decided to buy a single panel so I wouldn't be tempted to do anything too fussy. I also wanted to use the half flower piece at the centre top of the panel as my neckline, so I thought a simple fitted sheath dress would be the go, and started pinning and draping on my mannequin.

It didn't quite go according to plan. First, I needed to do the centre pack seam and insert the zipper. I had been going to use an open ended zip, but when I got the black open ended zipper I had out, it wasn't long enough. Given this was last weekend and entries closed yesterday, I decided I didn't have time to go searching for a long enough open ended zip and instead searched through for other options. 

Initially I went for a normal black zip about 45 centimetres long. I pinned it in, folding the fabric in further as it got down to the waist. I stitched the zipper in, and then for the lower half of the seam eased the seam back out from the waist to the hip and then straight down to the bottom. I then folded in some double pointed darts to fit the bust and waist, putting in two long darts and four short darts - two near the centre front, two close to the sides. I made sure they fit my mannequin, sewed them up, trimmed out the neckline, stitched the shoulders together, and cut out some of the lace for armholes.

Then I tried it on and it looked terrible.

The darts sat too low, leaving a weird billowy gaping at the bust, and the zipper at the back didn't sit flat either. The neckline was the only thing I was fairly happy with. Even the lace at the armholes was droopy at the back. That was going to be an easy fix, it would just need the extra pieces cut out once everything else was done, but the rest required going right back to the start. 

The first change I made was to rip the zipper out and redo it. I decided that I'd just put the zip in straight, rather than playing around trying to get it to fit in to the waist. I also decided to change over to an invisible zip, although I'm not entirely sure why as it's a shorter zipper. So I unpicked all my darts from the front, put small shoulder pleats in at the back to make sure the neckline was even, and draped it back over my mannequin.

My thought then was maybe I could make the dress so it was fitted at the front but hung loose at the back. So I did a first run of pinning the front in again, and tried it on. Unsurprisingly, it didn't really work. I had pinned the front darts in higher so it was better fitted, but there wasn't enough fabric for it to give the loose effect I wanted at the back. And honestly, I'm not sure this idea could have worked, because trying to keep one half loose while the other half is tight is just too complicated. I'd contemplated using ribbon ties from the underarm to the back, but I really don't think it would have sat evenly at all.

I hadn't sewn anything for that second arrangement, so there wasn't any more unpicking to do, but by this stage it was Thursday night and I was a bit at a loss of what to do. My next thought was to make separates, with a cropped top and high waisted skirt. The lace at the bodice would be long enough to work as a cropped top, but I decided against this idea because I really don't think I'd wear the top. And given the neckline was the first decision I'd made when I saw the fabric and was the one element I was happy with, I didn't want to lose that on a garment I wouldn't wear. So I discarded that idea.

Then I finally worked out what to do.

It's an obvious realisation, but if your mannequin doesn't have the exact same measurements as you then pinning and draping a fitted dress completely on the mannequin isn't going to end up fitting properly. The answer, of course, was to pin the dress directly onto myself. So I put it on and folded in two darts for the front and two for the back and pinned them in place. I stitched them down, leaving them open at the bottom so they have a soft pleated effect. And after all of that messing around, mid-morning yesterday I finally had the dress I'd pictured in my head.

Then it was just a case of taking some pictures and sending them in as my entry. 

And so that's the saga of my lace LBD. With persistence, sometimes you can manage to pull of the image in your head. Now I just need a reason to wear it!

Magical Merino

Both of these makes have been finished for a while, and have had multiple wears. Both the top and cardigan are made with New Zealand merino jersey from The Fabric Store.  I'm finally getting them posted before winter disappears completely. The cardigan might get all-seasons wear, but the long sleeve top is definitely a cooler weather item.

First, the cardigan, although this was sewn second. It's actually an edited version of the Gather Blouse from Japanese pattern book She has a mannish style. I've made the blouse before, so when I was looking for a pattern to base a loose and drapey cardigan on, it seemed like a good choice. To make it more of a cardigan I narrowed the lower back piece so it isn't quite so gathered, and lengthened and tapered the sleeves to be full length. I went through my buttons to find some to use for the closure, but ended up deciding the shape of the cardi works better without a closure.

The one other thing I did for the cardigan was cover all the seams in bias binding. Given it's a loose cardigan and I'd decided against adding buttons, I wanted to make sure the insides looked nice because the could be seen. I'm largely happy with how they turned out, other than the collar not laying flat. The sienna satin binding stands out a bit more than I'd realised it would., and also is a little bulkier where the seams joined than I wanted, but that's only a minor quibble.

So on to the top. It's also merino, in a very pale shade of pink which unfortunately doesn't quite show up in the pictures. Unlike the cardigan, this top is self drafted. I used my bust and waist measurements to then draw up the front and back pieces. I did put the shoulder seam a bit too wide and ideally would have pulled it in about 1.5cm. However I decided it wasn't too far off that it was worth redoing, so I'll just put up with sleeves that sit a smidgen off my shoulder.

The collar and cuffs were designed to be slightly ruffled, and I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. I used the left over merino from the body of the top and cut curved pieces. The cuffs were easy, because they aren't too large, but I only just had enough room to cut a piece for the collar. Initially it didn't look like it was going to show any sort of ruffle, but finishing the raw edge with a rolled hem stretched it out just enough that it self ruffled. It's not over the top, just enough to give it a bit of interest and difference from a plain top.

 Also, the photos for once are with a nice background! That's thanks to a couple of the Sydney Spoolettes wanting to get some photos done, so we met in Hyde Park on Thursday lunchtime to take pictures for each other (thanks Susan for taking mine!). Makes a nice change from the retaining wall above our pool!

Lastly, sewing with merino was surprisingly easy. I'd been daunted by the prospect, partly because the fabric was very soft and stretchy jersey, partly because it wasn't cheap. But it went through my machine wonderfully, and I never had any problems with dropped stitches. It was a little tricky covering the back seam of the cardigan with bias binding, but that was due to the extra bulk from the gathering, not due to the fabric itself. So in the future, I won't be scared to sew with merino. Instead, I'll relish the opportunity because it is so nice to work with and to wear.

Silver Waves Bowline Sweater

I've said it before, I'm a fan of NZ company Papercut Patterns. I've made a few of Katie's patterns and they're always great. The Ahoy collection was released back in February, and I snapped up three of the patterns. I've already made the Moana Dress, and now here's number two, the Bowline Sweater.

The Bowline Sweater is a raglan sleeve jumper with a folded pleated front. The fabric I used is one I had in my stash, a silver knit I picked up last year at Spotlight because it was on sale. I didn't have a plan for it but bought it because sparkly and shiny are fun, and I knew I'd find something to make with it. It's the thickness of a t-shirt knit, but the metallic thread makes it slightly heavier and slinkier, giving it a different drape to most knits.

Because the Bowline has that pleated front I wanted a fabric that wouldn't look messy with drapes and folds. I've seen quite a few striped versions, which work really well, But I am trying to use my stash more this year (it's not entirely working, but I'm trying), so looked at what I already had that might work. I thought the silver would work well because although it's a plain fabric, light hitting the top would interplay with the folds and drape and bring out the shine, like light playing across waves.

As with all Papercut Patterns, the instructions are well-written and clear. The front is a very confusing-looking pattern piece, but it's actually easy to follow and put together. Although I didn't pay complete attention to the layout for cutting the pattern out, so my front is actually mirror imaged. I've done that before when I was in too much of a rush to get on to my machine. It generally doesn't change the garment at all, but it is a slightly annoying error.

The fit is a bit of a mix, but not in a bad way. The raglan sleeves are relatively fitted, with long cuffs to pull down over your hands (I do that a lot, as you can probably see in the photos). The rest of the jumper is fairly loose. When I first finished it I felt that the front hung down over the waistband a bit too much, so I removed the waistband, cut the front piece on a curve so that the centre was shorter than the sides, then reattached the waistband. It still drapes but no longer overhangs.

I say this with each Papercut Pattern, but I really like this. It's an interesting take on a jumper, and can be made as a casual top or a more fancy one - which isn't easy to find in a jumper. And I'm glad I bought the silver knit last year, because it really was the perfect fabric for this pattern.

Birthday Pants

It's been a few weeks. I have been sewing, but haven't been photographing. But now I have a new make to show.

Today's my birthday, so these are my new cosy birthday pants. It's a very sewist thing to do, isn't it, to have a new creation as a present for yourself? Although these weren't really made to be such, they were just made this week because I needed them.

I made them over the last two nights so that I had something warm to wear in the Antarctic blast Sydney and much of southeastern Australia has experienced these last couple of days. In fact, this morning when I photographed these it was 3C, with an apparent temperature of freezing. But luckily these pants and the (not yet blogged) merino jersey top I had on were warm enough while I took pictures.

The pattern is from the late 1950s or early 1960s. It's Simplicity 4290, and is a highwaisted pant or short pattern with a side zip closure. I've used it before for my casual cotton summer pants. That time I made them looser and lowered the waistband, this time I kept the pattern almost as-is apart from lengthening the legs just slightly so the hem sits at the top of my feet rather than grazing the ankle. I wondered a bit about the high waist at first because it is very high - I'm longwaisted and the waistband sits above my belly button - but apart from it being a silhouette I'm not used to I am liking them.

The fabric was originally bought for a colour blocked dress I was planning to make with some remnant wool I have, but it turned out to be the wrong weight. It's a poly wool blend from My Hung in Hurstville. It's a slightly odd fabric, medium weight but with an almost fleecy underside. It's less scratchy than most medium and heavier weight wools and wool blends are, which makes it nice and comfortable. And it glided through my machine beautifully, which is always a plus.

It's an incredibly simple pattern to make, being just two front and two back pieces, two darts on each, a waistband, with trouser bar and zip to close. It's all very straightforward construction, and generally pretty quick. This pattern is vintage, but a modern pattern with a similar construction would be perfect for a beginner to making pants.

Although I have to admit I did have a little trouble with the waistband the first time around. My first go of stitching it looked terrible. The problem was I sewed it looking at the inside rather than the outside, and when I turned them right way around I discovered my stitching line wandered all over the place. And the one drawback of this fabric was it is terrible to unpick stitching from - the fleeciness makes it so that you basically have to undo each individual stitch, so it takes a bit of time. But once I undid it I was able to sew on the outside of the waistband and it was much better.

I'm not sure how much wear they'll get because they are warm fabric and Sydney generally doesn't get a lot of really cold days. But in today's cold I was very glad I'd made these.