My attempt to arrange another sewing weekend failed, but I did get half a day in. That was enough to try a new pattern. Well, an old pattern but new to me.
It only went up to size 12, so I traced it and extrapolated the size enlargement for 16, thinking that would be plenty. I was going to do a test version but with time short and expecting it to be a bit big I decided not to. The fabric was rayon offcuts from an op shop anyway so no big deal if it failed. Well, the seam allowance was 15mm, and when I tried it on I was surprised to find it a bit small. There are no bust darts and by the picture it’s clearly meant to be loose-fitting. To get a bit more drape I moved the side seams, sleeve seams and arm seams out by about 5mm, which seemed to work.
Overall, I’m not delighted with it. It sits oddly. There is something strange about the arm-to-front seam (which you can’t see here because the mannequin has no arms). A bit like when you try on pants and the crotch just looks wrong. Maybe it’s because the pattern is from the 80s and there’s supposed to be shoulder pads. Maybe because I’m not used to wearing this kind of top. Maybe I’m the wrong body shape for it.
But I’m glad I tried it. It’s all practise. Not every sewing project is going to result in a garment I love.
Halfway through Summer, I’ve noticed that I’m wearing light pants more often than skirts, and that one of my favourite pairs is probably nearing the end of its life. Anticipating replacing it, I liked the idea of making the Style Arc Loddon pants again, but in a lighter neutral-coloured striped cotton fabric.
So when a friend and I did our usual check of the discard room at IKEA, a single bed sheet set caught my eye. It was wonderfully soft as well as meeting all my other requirements, and was on sale for just $14:50. The fact that I had a well-worn item of clothing in my wardrobe that it would replace overcame my determination to not buy more material. (Ok, there was also a white single bed linen sheet set for $49, which I failed at resisting buying, but who can pass up a fabric bargain that good?)
It being an item I’d wear right now, and feeling a bit guilty about adding to the stash, I decided that if I finished the I Heart My Sandhill Sling on Saturday, I would make the pants on Sunday.
And so I did.
Funny thing about stripes… I can never quite anticipate how they’ll look when sewn up. Thankfully, these look fine. I’d have preferred not to have the orangey lines between the stripe sections of blue and brown, but I don’t dislike them. Pattern matching wasn’t too hard because there was so much fabric. However, I recalled how fiddly the waistband was and made my life SO much easier by cutting the fabric along the stripes instead of across them. (I wear tops over pants these days so it wouldn’t be seen anyway.)
While I have enough fabric left to make another pair, what appeals more is a top of some kind. Maybe a long-sleeved shirt. I don’t have many of those. But there are other things I’d like to make first, and it might be a few weeks before I have time to sew giving me plenty of time to change my mind.
Back in 2010 I bought a bag at Supanova featuring an anatomical heart, from a new shop called Jubly Umph. I loved that bag, and made the fatal mistake of only using it for special occasions, because after a decade or so the main fabric disintegrated. Sad to be throwing it away, I cut out the heart design and lining in the hopes of reusing them in something.
Fourteen years later, while looking through old bits of salvaged bags, I found the heart scrap and lining (including inner pockets) and realised both were just the right size to use in another Sandhill Sling. I also had a salvaged double ended bag zip and matching pocket zip, and a red velvet knitting bag that I’d been looking for a new use for, and some black destash denim.
So last weekend I got snipping, ironing, cutting and sewing and came up with this:
Which I am totally in love with. The cat-themed version is still high in my affections and a more practical colour for day use, but this one came together faster (thanks to practice and the lining having the original inner pockets), looks fabulous and feels so luxurious.
And totally justifies me hoarding old bits and pieces in case they come in handy one day.
I bought this pattern by Noodlehead in early December as a treat for myself, after having wanted it for probably a few years now. International postage isn’t kind these days, but I figured that if I was still keen after all this time it wasn’t a passing fad. Also, I had a bag made from the same pattern, and while I liked it the colour (red) didn’t match the majority of my clothing).
Whereas this cat themed canvas with a black background definitely would.
Christmas and New Year distracted me for a while, but last weekend I finally got around to making it. It took me about a day to sew: an hour or two cutting the pieces out on Saturday, then from morning tea to late afternoon sewing it up.
I could have bought the pdf, but I needed to get the webbing, zippers and hardware anyway so I bought the paper version. There’s a series of ‘sew-along’ tutorial videos that are packed with extra tips and tricks, that made following the instructions easier.
There were two other fabrics in my stash that I was considering using. I have webbing, zippers and hardware for two more bags, but I don’t really need four sling bags. However, I would like a hip bag. The classic crescent bum bag has always bugged me because it’s not a great shape for stowing the sort of things I want to carry in it, so I’m thinking I might adapt the Sandhill Sling by cropping away the bottom half to make a smaller bag, or turning the bag 90º, and attaching the strap to the top corner of each side instead.
I’ve also located some lining I saved from a couple of handbags that fell apart, which already comes with zippers and pockets attached. Stash busting and recycling combined.
My motto for the year was “Make it Easier”. It seemed like half of what I did to make life easier was hard work. We should reap the benefits in the future, though. And it was a good habit to stop and think: “will this make life easier?” or “is there an easier way?” when faced with a task, rather than my usual habit of sprinting down a path without considering my limits.
January
The second month of the Summer of Quilts, in which I attempted to use up all the strips of flannelette I cut to weave floor rugs out of four years ago by sewing quilts. It was like a madness came over me.
It wasn’t all quilting, though. A return to crocheting in the previous year led to me making the Granny Square Jumper from stash and (of course) yarn I purchased in order to complete it. I love it and was wearing it as I typed the early version of this post.
February
Though I’d decided this quilting obsession had to stop at the end of summer, I knew that I couldn’t possibly get all the quilts done, so I prioritised finishing the tops. Binding and topstitching would have to happen later, maybe one quilt a month. For that reason, I have no finished projects to show for February even though there was feverish making of quilt tops.
March
The Blue Quilt, which was the hardest and biggest, was finished.
And the Purple Quilt.
And then I got around to doing what I’d intended to do when the quilting thing started: sewing clothes. First, the Cascade Skirt.
April
Then lots of knits.
May
Then the Colour-Blocked Corduroy Jacket.
And crocheting continued with the Gradient Slouchy Hat
June
No projects were finished in June, because I was reorganising three and a half rooms of our house in order to reinstate the guest room and divide my hobbies into a room for textiles and a room for art. And was THAT a project. Utterly exhausting, but worth it.
July
But in July I finished three quilts First the Rainbow Cat Quilt.
Then the Art Quilt.
And finally the last quilt, the Cats In Squares Quilt.
I was introduced to slow stitching.
And I wove off the dishcloths on the Jane.
August
Another month of no finished projects, but I did start two big slow stitch ones. Slow means longer gaps between finished objects, which is probably why I bought some kits at the Craft & Quilt Show and was suddenly very inspired by small project tutorials online.
September
I hand stitched a cute pentagon bag.
And made fabric birds.
And made a triangle bag.
I made microwave bowl cosies.
And a pencil case.
By then I’d finished one of the big projects: a kawandi made from old men’s shirts.
October
I sewed some pinstripe pants.
And a harvest apron/bag from cotton canvas scraps.
November
I made (or covered) some sewing tools.
And I made a shirt from some very old organic cotton remnants.
December
When a friend wanted the Desperately Seeking Susan jacket I’d put together fifteen years before, I decided to attach the collar properly and fix up a few things on the back.
That inspired a new jacket transformation, the Moon Raven Jacket.
Also…
It was a year of quitting. First Instagram, after I couldn’t sign in to my Creative Fidget account any more, then Twitter, which I’d barely touched in years. I also stopped my Sketchbox subscription. It was fun for the year I had it, and I still enjoy using the mediums I discovered through it, but there are only so many kinds of art supplies and they were bound to start repeating themselves.
It was also the year I got hooked on YouTube, watching art, sewing and thrifting videos. At its best it’s informative and inspiring, at its worst it’s a distraction. I’d rather be making art or sewing, but both require a certain amount of alertness and energy, and sometimes I have neither. And now I remember that slow stitching was meant to be my ‘dull brain’ activity.
In the next year I plan to keep on making art, sewing and slow stitching. I’m sure there’ll be other creative rabbit holes to explore, or revisiting of familiar territories, but (to keep the analogy going) no I have no destination in mind and will dawdle along at whatever pace suits.
As I said in the last post, the Desperately Seeking Susan jacket gave me a whole lot of ideas for embellishing other jackets. At first, I thought I would do an op shop search to find the jacket, but I really don’t need more jackets. Then I pondered whether any of my exisiting jackets would be suitable, and immediately I thought of this one:
It’s a vintage velvet jacket that I re-lined with beautiful blue damask satin several years ago, which I liked but wasn’t that excited about any more. Immediately I knew the main colour of the back embellishment needed to be blue, and I knew there were some large pieces of blue felt in my stash that used to be yarn bins. I’d sewn most of the DDS jacket pieces onto red felt, so I would do the same with the blue.
What imagery to use? I wrote a list of objects that interested me, and an astronomy theme emerged – a phases of the moon, telescopes, planets, etc. A strong image of a bird with wings spread also stuck in my mind, with batting behind to give it body. Framing everything would be a, well, frame. A quilted gold frame.
I let the ideas sit for a bit, to resolved into something I could see in my mind’s eye. In the meantime, I began gathering fabric, buying some shiny gold satin, then spotting some stretchy iridescent silver stretch dance fabric – which hopefully wouldn’t fray – for the moons. Looking through old fabrics to repurpose, I pulled out a black and silver bustier I’d made in my teens with a pattern that suggested feathers.
I sketched out the design, then got to work. Most of the piece came together over a week or so. The latin phrase was tricky – the internet is both helpful and unhelpful because it suggests a whole lot of phrases but then you find the forums where people discuss latin translations and it turns out everything is wrong and nobody can agree on the proper translation of anything.
However, the probably wrong internet translation of “to the moon and back” fits really neatly on the ribbon shape I’d cut, so I figured I’d just go with that and if any latin experts ever point out it’s wrong I’ll say it’s fake latin.
Once the panel was done I pinned it to the jacket, took photos and shared it with friends. And kept putting off sewing it onto the jacket. Initially because all the hand sewing parts had given me a very sore back. But also because hand sewing felt to velvet without catching the lining was probably not going to be much fun. And it wasn’t, when I finally got around to it. A couple of sewing YouTube videos got me through, and then it was done.
Unfortunately, it is waaaay too hot in Melbourne to be wearing this, even indoors. In the meantime, I have it hanging up where I can admire it.
I would like to add more to it. Something like telescopes and other tools of astronomy overlapping the gold frame. But I don’t intend to embroider them. If I find a nice print fabric featuring them, I might appliqué them on.
Back when I did my Spring wardrobe cull, I included my costumes. I used to have an entire wardrobe’s worth of them, many hand made, but I’ve grown out and culled most of them. In my most recent cull I finally had to acknowledge that I was never going to fit into the Desperately Seeking Susan costume I put together for my 40th birthday.
But what to do with it? On a whim, I posted a picture on FB. A friend immediately asked it she could have it. I was delighted, but also embarrassed. You see, I’d forgotten how impermanent the adaption had been. The text was written with pen and I’d taken a jacket with no collar and tacked one on very loosely over the top in a way that didn’t even distantly resemble real clothing. Yet at the same time, I realised that I now had the skills to attach the collar properly. So when I next saw my friend, I got her to try it on to make sure I wasn’t wasting the effort, and I admit I was excited when it did because I really did want to fix it.
So I got to work – taking off the collar, adding some interfacing, reshaping the neckline and attaching the collar properly. It’s not perfect, but it’s a whole lot better than it was.
When I made it, I had only a very low resolution photo of the design on back to go from. Since then the original jacket has sold at auction there’s now a good photo of it online. I was amused to see that the text on the ribbon had been written with pen (and had blurred with time) just as I had done, so I left that as it was. The text on the pyramid was stitched as part of the quilting, and there was nothing I could do to match that. The writing I’d done had bled into the gold fabric. So I just embroidered over that and dabbed a bit of gold paint on in a few places.
The last big difference between the original and mine was the eye at the top of the pyramid. It had been very obscured in the original reference. I could now see both the design and what it was made from, and decided to completely remake it. I didn’t have any of the gold fabric any more, but I’d bought some for another project inspired by the DDS jacket, so I used that. I also didn’t have any bugle beads like those used for the radiating lines, but I did have the gold embroidery thread I’d used for the chain around the ribbon.
This was never going to be a close duplicate because the original jacket is made a gold and black fabric and the shape isn’t the same, but I’m happy with the update. And I’ve been inspired by it, and a few other decorated jackets I’ve noticed in craft and thrifting videos, to embellish one of my jackets with something entirely my own design.
Recently I got to feeling quite poorly, and after a bit of gritting my teeth and pressing on, I had to admit I was getting worse and needed to stop and recuperate. So I decided to take a week off. A week of not going out (except one quick lunch with Dad) or attempting to get anything done. And since I was too tired and fog-brained to get anything done anyway, it wasn’t hard to enforce.
For the first four days I poked around in tubs of fabric and patterns and enjoyed refreshing my memory on their contents. I vaguely wished I felt well enough to turn some of it into a thing, but it was nice to not be under any pressure to do anything. Simple, quick things like pattern weights and pressing hams were made.
By the fifth day I’d rallied enough to spread out fabric and patterns to check if there was enough of the former to attempt the latter. I made a few new matches and felt a bit excited by that.
By the sixth day I felt like I could possibly start making a garment, but the push and pull between what I was now excited about making and what I needed to be making before Christmas/New Year was paralysing. Eventually I decided to it was better to do something than nothing, so I took some fabric and cut out the pattern pieces for a shirt.
The fabric is weird. It looks like a cotton crepe, but the back appears to have a looser second layer. While it looks like it should have drape, it doesn’t. I’d attempted to make wide-legged pants but they’d looked like two stiff columns so I’d cut them up in the hopes I’d make something else one day. It is organic cotton, which was rare back in the distant shadows of time that I’d bought it, so I resisted tossing it into the recycling.
Almost every idea I’ve had to use it has been abandoned because the offcuts were too small. But I’d stumbled on a shirt pattern during my prostashtination that fit. Just.
On the seventh day, I sewed it up.
It is kinda see through. Which is less of a problem for a shirt than pants.
Ok, so I know I said no more destash sales, but I was helping a friend run a stall at a hard rubbish pickers market. On one of the other stalls I found this for just a few dollars:
The stallholder didn’t know what it was, and was relieved that someone did and took it off their hands. It was, er, naked when I bought it, so I made it covers like it has on the maker’s website – though I’ve seen videos of people using sleeve presses with no covers so I probably didn’t need to.
I decided to use the six butterfly pattern pieces of cotton canvas to make pattern weights.
Then used those when cutting out fabric offcuts to make a pressing ham.
Instructions from Sustainable Style, which I got for my birthday.
I’ve been rewatching The Great British Sewing Bee from the start. I’ve picked up more sewing tips and methods second time around. I think I was more focussed on the results than the method on the first watch.
I couldn’t really comment on the book’s contents yet, because I’d need to try sewing something more complicated than a pressing ham to get a feel for how good it is. But it is nicely presented. While the title suggests it’s all about sustainable clothing or approaches to sewing, not all of the patterns have any obvious ‘eco’ focus. It’s more a collection of projects selected from a couple of seasons, with a few extra patterns and ideas.
This time it was one at the Ashburton library. Along with some nice pieces of fabric and a thimble-cutter-pusher doovy, I bought a mystery bag of fabric. Well, it wasn’t that big of a mystery because you could rifle through them to see what each contained, but I found a piece of quilting cotton with a cat print in the first one so I grabbed that and didn’t bother looking at the rest.
Turns out most of what was inside were canvas/duck cloth rectangles. I’ve only ever used this fabric to make carry bags for paintings, so the challenge to make something useful was quite stimulating for the brain.
I gave half to the friend who took me to the sale, who was going to make them into keyring loops to sell. Once home I washed everything then trimmed all the fraying threads, and boy did they fray even through I’d washed them in lingerie bags. Some of the rectangles had a mostly green leafy pattern that went well with the green dotty one. I had been thinking about making a harvest apron/bag, so I did a search for tutorials and then didn’t follow them. The bag came out well despite this.
The blue dotty fabric goes well with the alpaca one, but I haven’t yet decided what to make with that.
There’s enough of the black fabric with blue and pink flowers that if I patchwork it together it could be the front of a half and half skirt. I only recently culled one of those skirts from my wardrobe because I was tired of the front fabric, and I figured I could replace it with something new. So that’s one for the to-sew list.
I also intend to make some little three-sided pyramid pattern weights and maybe a sunhat from the red flowering gum fabric.
In unrelated news, I also did some refashioning.
And covered a hole I got in my only good black long-sleeve top when I took off a jacket and hadn’t realised the brooch I’d pinned on it had gone through two layers.
All this done over two rare free days. They felt like a luxury after months of working in the garden and chasing tradies. There’s just some wall painting to be done and then we can hibernate through summer. I’m already thinking about big projects to do during the last two weeks of December. Hopefully it won’t lead to anything as crazy as the Summer of Quilts!
