A May Make

I did some sewing at the weekend. It’s been a while. But I fancied making something out of some fabric that I impulsively bought a few months ago.

I’m a big fan of black & white – well, this is more ivory than white, but I’m down with that too. I really love the random splotchiness of the pattern. I got it from Pound Fabrics, but I can’t see it on their website now. It’s a double knit of some kind. It’s got two layers, lightly attached to each other, so it’s quite warm. The wrong side is plain black. It has a small amount of stretch across the width of the fabric.

I reached for my Simple Sew Shannon pattern – its simple lines are great for showcasing a fabric like this. By now my Shannon has morphed quite considerably from the original design. I’ve ditched the neck and sleeve bands, because they make a dress look t-shirt-y, whereas I usually want my dresses to look a smidge more formal. I often lengthen the dress, although I do have some short versions. I added 18cm to this one. I also narrow the skirt a bit – the original pattern is quite A-line, and that uses more fabric, but also I like the straighter silhouette. I narrow the neckline a bit, because even with the neckband, it’s wider than I like, and it would show my bra straps. In this one, I took the neckline in by 1cm each side. Finally, I added a sleeve piece, so that I can make dresses and tops that are more wearable in cool weather. I’ve usually kept the sleeves to 3/4 length, because I don’t like sleeves flapping around my wrists, I inevitably push long sleeves up my arm.

I think that’s it for Shannons, for a while at least (famous last words!). Me Made May has provided some inspiration for other styles of dress that I fancy trying out, and other patterns to try out (more on that when I do my MMM learning roundup). However, I’ve still got 2.45m of this fabric left over, so you’ll be seeing more of it, one way or another.

Me Made May continues apace. I’ve worn me-mades every day, I’ve posted my outfit every day so far on Instagram, I’ve commented on lots of people’s #MeMadeMay2021 posts, and #MeMadeMayPlus posts, as well as liking hundreds more.

Ah, go on, one last Christmas make!

It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m on my own at home, and not knowing what to do with myself (all presents wrapped and handed over, all food shopping done), I picked up the Purple Velvet Shannon that’s been on my WIP pile for aaaages. This one is at least a year old, because I started it with the intention of it being a possible Christmas dress last year.

This is one of my hacked Simple Sew Shannon Collection dresses. I used a gorgeous stretch velvet that I’d originally bought for dance costume making purposes. I used my sleeve extension pattern piece, which I trialled with my Massive Roses dress, to make the otherwise sleeveless Shannon winter-wearable. I cut it long and quite straight to make it a more elegant line. I originally cut it out and sewed it together during OWOP 2019, as I was on a Shannon with sleeves bender! And then I didn’t get around to doing the hemming. I wanted to hem it with a nice satin bias binding, and I’d got as far as sewing that on, and pinning it in place. All it needed was the hemming. But as I’d missed my Christmas deadline, I sort of forgot about it. Then Covid happened, and my sewjo took a nosedive. I didn’t feel any urge to do anything for months, so this dress sat in the WIP pile. When I occasionally summoned up the courage to look at the pile, it would look back at me, accusingly! “It’s just hemming,” it would say, “you can do that while you’re watching the telly. It won’t take you more than one evening”.

So one evening back in November, I took it out and did that hemming. “Yippee!” I thought, “I’ve got a nice party dress, for all those parties I’m not going to”. Then I tried it on and decided it wasn’t working at all. Firstly the bias binding was making the hem bell out a bit, which was not a look I wanted. It worked fine for the neckline and sleeve hems, but not at the bottom. Secondly, it just didn’t look right long. I took various pictures of me wearing the dress with the hem hoiked up to different levels. From a well-below-the-knee level, I decided it needed to go to mini length.

I decided no 5 was the right length, no 6 is a smidge too far!

And back onto the pile it went…

This afternoon, I decided it could still be a Christmas Dress, so I pulled it out again, and cut a chunk off the bottom. I used a fairly deep herringbone stitch for the hemming. The velvet is quite bouncy, so I thought it would help to keep the hem flat. It would also allow for the stretchiness of the fabric. It takes longer than a basic hemming stitch, but I didn’t have anything else to do particularly.

And all for the sake of this blog, I’ve I’ve even bothered to slap a bit of makeup on, and wear a bra (it’s been a jimjams kind of a day till now), so that you can see the nice dress all finished off…

Unfinished Object now definitely finished – ka-ching!

When the partying starts up again, I’ll be ready!

 

A Coatigan and more…

Radio silence for months, then two posts in a row… As I mentioned in my previous post, I had a visit from the inspiration fairy, who doesn’t normally come calling in the Autumn and Winter. While I was planning  my sweatshirt dress I received an email from the Sew In Brighton School (I’m on their mailing list, they didn’t just spam me! They wouldn’t do anything of the sort) about the courses they were running. And one of them was to make a coatigan in a day. This was appealing enough with my Winter Sewjo in full flow, but then I realised there was a massive discount on the workshop price. That sealed the deal for me, it was the kind of discount that would be rude not take up!

My main difficulty was that I wasn’t sure about the sizing of the coat. The details on the website talked about the sizing going up to a generous Medium, but I’m definitely a large, and I’m even more large across the front. I emailed the Sew In Brighton team, and the lovely Kat (Sew in Brighton’s owner) was super-understanding, and was able to grade the pattern to a large size for me (and for future plus size sewers).

I didn’t have any fabric in my stash that was suitable, so I looked around for possible options. The information about the fabric needs suggested 2m80 of boiled wool or sweatshirting. I know that the first make of a pattern isn’t always my best version, so I wasn’t going to spend £25 per metre on boiled wool, just in case it was a disaster. So I searched for sweatshirting instead. But then I came across this gorgeous black and white fleece-backed knit from The Textile Centre, and I was hooked. I wasn’t sure if I’d need extra fabric, beyond what the course information said, what with the extra width of a larger pattern, and with the possible need to pattern-match, so I went ahead and ordered 4 metres, just in case. I figured that would be plenty, and if I was able to be frugal with my cutting, I could do something with the leftovers.

This is a mahoosive check – each square is 8cm x 8cm!

The workshop was on the Sunday after Lockdown 2.0 was announced, so I was really grateful that we had the chance for one nice thing before we all have to stay home for weeks on end! The studio was well set up for social distancing, and we wore masks whenever we were moving around. It all felt very safe. 

The teacher was Jo, who was great. She was able to explain really clearly the techniques we were using to get the shawl collar of the coatigan, so you knew what you were doing, but also why you were doing it. I was giving her an extra headache, with my pattern-matching. But again, she was able to explain it really well, and make it make total sense to me. I’m definitely going to be practising this more.

The morning part of the session was all about tracing off the pattern, and cutting and marking the pattern pieces. The afternoon part was for the sewing. Sure enough, we all had our brand new coatigans ready by the end of the afternoon. I wore mine on my way back to the car.

I managed to organise myself to take pictures while it was still daylight

This coatigan is SO COSY!!!!

I have to be honest, the effect of the cosiness, together with the big checks, and the unlikeliness of being out and about much this winter is leading me to think this might become more of a dressing gown than a coat!

I was thinking about how I could reuse this pattern, and I’m half thinking of adding a triangle side panel to make the shape a bit more swingy, get a slightly 40s vibe to it. 

 

… And as I intimated above, I did indeed cut frugally, and even with the pattern-matching, I was left with about 1m 20 of the fabric to make something else with. It wasn’t that much to play with (especially with the pattern-matching again), but I thought I could make some sort of boxy sweater. I turned to my trusty Simple Sew Shannon pattern. I’d drafted a sleeve pattern for it about a year ago, to make the top/dress winter-wearable. I gave my pattern pieces an extra centimetre of width, to make the top a bit looser, and take into account the thickness of the fabric. I created a wider neckband, and made the top slightly longer (because no-one wants a chill on their kidneys).

I practised my pattern-matching a bit,

And here’s my new favourite jumper:

It’s got a slightly sixties vibe, don’t you think?

I’m getting better at pattern matching – I’m shocked!

I’ve got quite a few scraps left over, I’m thinking I could maybe make some mittens…

Winter Shannons for OWOP

Wow, that’s quite a long blogging break… I did do some sewing in the second half of 2019, I promise! To be honest, it was mostly some more Simple Sew Shannon Collection dresses. It was partly to do with the Simple Sew blogging, and partly to do with OWOP.

One Week One Pattern (OWOP) seems to have been a little later than usual in 2019. In the past, I’ve been able to use a transitional style of wardrobe to get through it, but when Sheona announced it was going to be 23-29 November, I realised it would be well chilly, and I would need a full-on Winter-wearable pattern. The things I had the most of (that I haven’t used before for OWOP) were the Simple Sew Shannon Collection dresses & tops. But it’s a sleeveless/cap-sleeved dress/top pattern, so they were all quite summery. The tops I had could be layered, so that was a start. But I decided that if I was going to use this pattern, then I would need to work out how to add a sleeve, so as to use it for the cooler weather.

I was scheduled to do a “#SewthisisChristmas” make for the Simple Sew Blog for mid-November, so I decided that I would test out my sleeve hack idea with that. If it worked, then I could make myself a couple of tops and maybe even another dress, and I’d be able to get through the week, with only one or two repeats.

As it turned out, the pattern lent itself very well to an extension to the short/cap sleeve, and I was thrilled with my (Not Just For) Christmas Shannon. I got this fabulous rose print ponte at a fabric swap last year, and couldn’t believe my luck – it was just so me! I’m really happy that I’ve been able to get this lovely dress made with it.

This meant I started OWOP week with two short-sleeved tops that would work as layers, plus this one new dress (which wasn’t going to be an easy one to repeat-wear, as it’s quite “noticeable”!) plus plans to make more using my newly hacked sleeve pattern. I was very late to the game, but I did manage to make those two tops and one dress, which meant I only had one repeat wear during the week. For the full line-up of my OWOP outfits, go to my Simple Sew Blog Post on my Week of Winter Shannons.

The first top I made was made from a cute cactus print jersey I got in France a year and a half ago. It’s got some kind of elastane/lycra content, because it’s got good stretch and recovery. I’m not sure why I went for the cactus print, because I’m not normally a novelty prints kind of a gal, but it works well for this top, and I’m happy with how it came out.

The second top was from a plain white cotton jersey, which has no elastane at all, and doesn’t really have a lot of stretch. I decided that it was just TOO plain, and it needed something extra to make it more me. So I cannibalised an old lilac t-shirt that I haven’t worn in years, that had the same sort of weight and drape as my white jersey, and I used that for the neckband and sleeve bands. I was pushed for time (I was sewing it on the morning of day 7, before going to work wearing it!), so I didn’t do anything more than necessary to it. But I had a fair bit of the lilac left over, so I’ve decided it can be used for some appliqué embellishment, once I’ve decided what I think I can do with it.

The dress was my favourite of the OWOP makes. I didn’t have particular expectations but it came out just perfect. I’d kept the structure simple, and it was straighter than my previous Shannon dresses, because my fabric was narrower. I just love it!

I even got another dress cut out and started, though I didn’t finish it in time for OWOP. It’s still waiting to be finished off (really need to buckle down to that, it’s just hemming, for heaven’s sake!).

I’m still not finished with my Winter Shannons. Now that I’ve got my sleeve hack sorted out, I can see another couple of dresses happening in the near future!

A post from the Past

If I’d been more active on here, I would have noticed before today, that this draft post from August (AUGUST!!!!) had not actually gone live.

In the interests of keeping everyone up to date with what I made, and remembering happy summer holiday days, here it is:

 

Well I got some of my prep done for all the holiday crafting, before I left for France. It wasn’t exactly what I had planned but I had enough to be getting on with, so it was all good!

First up, before leaving, I created a skirt and top set in the dark violet jersey I had used for the flower decoration on the chartreuse dress. I used my trusty Simple Sew Shannon pattern for a t-shirt style top. As I’ve done in the past, I skipped the neck and arm bands for a cleaner line, and to make it look less t-shirty.

For the skirt I used my self drafted straight pull-on skirt pattern, and it’s pretty much a direct copy of my royal blue one. The only difference is that this purple one was going to be hemmed by hand, rather than adding an overlocked band.

All I needed to do was get on with the hand hemming… There were a few distractions at the start of the holiday (all 3 of my sisters being there, along with nieces and nephews, and a mahoosive cousins party) but it got done eventually.

Yes, it’s another Shannon!

I also got some work done on my 100 Day Dress so now I’m on Day 75.

&

The progress report is that I’ve got about a third of the front still to embellish, and then I need to sew it all together. I’m still debating with myself what my options are for sewing together, but I reckon it’s all feasible within the 25 days I’ve got remaining. If it looks like it may need more time, then I’ll just have to be picky about using days where I’ve got nothing else to do!
For the full gen on this dress, it has its own Instagram account.

Sadly the knitting remains unknitted. But the Granny Squares blanket that I started last summer continues apace, with over 2/3 of the squares done. I even started putting them together. I learned a new technique for that, so yay for youtube:

I also visited the fabric shop in Les Sables again, and came away with a couple of jerseys, and some super-cute sunflower buttons.

I’m very happy with that little haul.

Summer Sew-jo

It’s taken a while, but the sew-jo seems to be back in force. This summer I’m really feeling the love for dresses, rather than separates.

It started with the Heliotrope Silk Instagram Takeover Dress, that I made for the Simple Sew Blog. Well, I made it because I wanted to make it, for me, but I was blogging it there. It has been an utter delight to wear, because it’s such a gorgeous fabric. It’s a silk jersey (from the world famous Man Outside Sainsburys, Walthamstow) and it’s almost like wearing nothing at all! It feels so light on. Which is perfect for hot weather.

I finished this on holiday in France

It was another Shannon Collection dress. They sew up in a jiffy and if I hadn’t decided to pretty it up with a sort of couched embroidery/appliqué edging, it would have been done in a day.

I should have learned that lesson with my next Shannon dress.

I’d just splurged on fabric, twice over – a couple of weeks ago with the FC Fabric Studio sale and again last weekend, at the Sewisfaction Big Summer Stitch Up. So I decided I had to get on with some actual sewing in order to justify having bought so much (total 9 new pieces added to the stash!). There was a smallish piece of chartreuse jersey from FC that whispered “I’d make a lovely Shannon dress” at me. “That’ll be quick and easy!” I thought. I got the dress cut out and stitched together on the Sunday morning after the Stitch Up.

Pattern alterations – I made it quite a bit longer than usual, 7½” longer, as I had enough fabric to do so, and you don’t want to be seeing my knees all the time. I also ditched the neck and sleeve bands because I didn’t want this dress to look too t-shirty.

I was meeting a friend to see the Frida Kahlo exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, that afternoon, so I took the dress with me to hem on the train, and because my friend’s journey was rather more fraught than mine, I got quite a lot done, while I was waiting for her. I wholeheartedly recommend the exhibition, by the way. It personalises Kahlo in such an immediate way. And it’s a delight for sewists, to see her outfits. And there are instructions on the V&A website on making your own Huipil (Mexican sleeveless tunic), should you be inspired to do so.

So I had that dress made up and ready to wear in just one day – Boom! But I am such an idiot, I couldn’t just let it be. Part of the massive FC Fabric haul had been a deep violet jersey that was just begging to be put with the chartreuse. I knew I had to bring some of that violet into the dress, somehow. I didn’t know how, exactly, and it took the Monday to think about it and work out what I was going to do. My friend and I had been discussing the forthcoming Mary Quant exhibition at the V&A and I’m fairly sure that’s how I ended up opting for gigantic MQ style flowers.

They’re about 8 inches across

On further reflection, this design idea goes back to 2013 in my consciousness. Fortunately, there were only six of them, and they didn’t take too long to sew on by hand.

And here’s the finished dress…

This one is going to be a bit eye-catching, I suspect

I’ve got two more Simple Sew makes in the offing, and I’ve got some more plans that I feel excited about making, so hopefully, there I won’t need to feel so guilty about boosting the stash, and there will be a few more posts coming up this summer.

 

 

I made a thing!

Time to get rid of all this tumbleweed! I made a thing:

Tada!

but it’s a Simple Sew Blog make, so all the juicy details are over there. Who knows? Now that I’ve actually posted something, I might add some extra information here in a few days.

There’s all the Me Made May information to process, too… I’d better get writing!

A 100 Day Dress

I decided a while ago that I wanted to start a long term project, something that I could do a little at a time, each day. I’ve seen people’s 100 day projects on Instagram, and I liked that as a structure for my project. My first thought, inspired strongly by Tiny*Stitches*Miri, was embroidery on a garment. I thought about upcycling/refashioning, but in the end I settled on an Alabama Chanin inspired new make, though I’m not going to claim it’s proper AC style. I want it to have some embroidery, some appliqué, some reverse appliqué, some beading/sequinning. I don’t imagine for one moment that it will be elegantly stylish, because it’s going to have so many bits of everything, and it will all be a bit random. But hopefully the colour scheme will pull everything together, and it will be interesting to look at.

I’ll be using the pale blue jersey from FC Fabric Studio which I bought in the Spring, and the Shannon dress pattern, as I didn’t want to have to mess about with a new pattern. I’ve bought a number of embroidery silks for this project, but everything else will be from stash (there are a LOT of blue beads in the massive bead/sequin stash).

Blues

This all starts at the weekend, on Saturday. If I’ve done my maths right, the 100 days will be up on 31st December.

I’ve set up a dedicated instagram account for this make, with the idea being to record every day’s progress.

The Jardin Fleuri dress

If you’ve been keeping track, you’ll remember that I returned from my holiday with three new pieces of fabric, and I was determined to get them sewn up as soon as possible, as they are too pretty to not be wearing. This lovely jersey was top of the list.

Ain’t she purty?

It was a panel, 1m long, and 150cm wide, and in my head it was always going to be a sleeveless sundress. It’s therefore a bit unfortunate that we’ve scarcely seen any sun since I got back from France!

I had had plenty of time to mull over my design ideas, and I’d decided to try a Shannon dress/shell top mash-up. I like the simplicity of the Shannon shape, and it fits well into a short length of jersey like this one. But my attempt to make it sleeveless, with the Hillbilly dress, was not a complete success. I thought the Shell top pattern could sort out the armhole/shoulder shaping more effectively.

I could have done it all by tracing the patterns together, but I was impatient and lazy, and marked the shell pattern straight onto the fabric. In fact I made the neckline a little lower, because this is supposed to be a sundress, right? I needed to blend the underarm a bit, but overall I think it’s turned out ok.

I used a Frixion iron-off pen

I knew I would need to have some binding for the neckline and armholes, but I wanted it to be hidden binding, rather than the on-view binding of a t-shirt, like the Shannons I’ve done so far. I carefully cut the selvedges of the jersey, where there was no printing, to create 2 metres of cream binding. It was about 1½cm wide, which was pretty much what I needed.

It was enough, but only just!

Because I wasn’t using a t-shirt band finish for the neck and armholes, I didn’t need to use the altered construction sequence, the way I had done with my other Shannons, so from here it was a simple case of sewing the shoulder and side seams, then attaching the bindings. I hand stitched them down.

Adding the binding

I did the tiniest hem I possibly could, and then waited for some sunshine for photography purposes.

Which came along this weekend – hooray! I went for a picnic with the ex gentleman friend, and got a bit of crocheting done (I’m up to 28 squares now). And I made him take some photos for me.

Picnic at Thundry Meadows

We also met these lovely creatures.

They were very friendly and gentle and quite fluffy

Getting up close & personal

What do I love about this dress? It’s so pretty!!!! And it’s making my tan look even stronger. Also, it’s been really low waste. I’ve got one long scrap that’s about 15cm wide, and I’m keeping this to use as a t-shirt neck band for a future refashioning project.

Would I do anything differently next time? Get a time machine, make this dress before my holidays and seriously mess with the space-time continuum.

My Holiday Shannon Collection

I went a bit bonkers on the Simple Sew Shannon collection for my summer holiday wardrobe. It was just perfect for what I wanted, namely some quick and easy lightweight throw-on tops and dresses. It really was a no-brainer.

I was shopping my stash and since I seem to have developed a craving for more blue in my wardrobe this year, I wanted to use the remainder of the royal blue jersey I’d got from FC Fabric Studio (and used for this skirt). However before proceeding with the dress, I wanted to try it out with the t-shirt version first and hopefully have a wearable toile for the hols. The blue grey jersey I had bought at the same time as the royal blue had the same amount of stretch and it tied in perfectly with my holiday wardrobe plans so I went ahead with the that first.

I made the t-shirt using the largest size and trusted that the elastane in the Jersey would be sufficiently forgiving. And yippee – it was! I also lengthened it by about 5 inches or so.

I did change the order of construction so that I could insert the bands at the neckline and sleeves in the flat. My post on the Simple Sew Blog sets this out more fully. I really wanted to make sure the bands were sufficiently stretched so that they wouldn’t gape, and I feel I have more control over this when I’m inserting them flat. I left the hemming to be done on holiday and moved swiftly on to the dress.

Here’s the t-shirt in its holiday environment, once I’d herringboned the hem to keep it good and stretchy.

Goes brilliantly with the Paisley Leftovers skirt

And also the Grey Birds skirt

Having worked on the T-shirt as a toile, I knew exactly what I was doing and I was able to make the dress up quickly. I lowered the front neckline so that it would be more sun-dress-y, and used the same construction as I’d done for the top.

The main feature was the Lace border at the bottom. I’d had this lace in my stash for a while, having bought it at Tiger (because it was so cheap it was rude not to). I hadn’t had any ideas about how to use it until now. Once I put these two stash items together it really was a match made in Heaven. The colours popped like popcorn! I really love it! I’ll be wearing this dress for the rest of the summer (whether or not there’s any more actual summer in England!).

Here’s the dress, though you’ve seen it before…

This is my sister’s house

Whoops! This is the messy view!

 

I’m a firm believer in making the patterns that work for you, *really* work for you, so I made one more Shannon dress using this denim/lace patchwork print jersey from my costume-making stash. I originally bought this at Fabricland, a few years ago and I wasn’t sure about the elastane content but it seemed close enough to what I’d been working with, though its a bit thinner.

I altered the armscye to make it sleeveless and the neckline to be slightly more boaty, sewed it up and again left the hemming as a holiday sewing project.

Here’s the denim and lace Shannon dress, or as I’m now thinking of it, the Hillbilly Dress in its first incarnation.

Not quite right

 

 

However, I wasn’t 100% happy with how I’d shaped the shoulder and the armscye, there was too much fabric in front of my armpit. I thought it needed re-cutting and re-banding, to bring the curve in more. I figured I’d do something about it when I got back home. But I wanted to be able to wear it in France – after all that was the whole point of this dress, its raison d’etre, if you will. So I needed a quick hand-sewable fix. I gathered the shoulder seams to narrow them, making sure I didn’t catch the neck or sleeve bands, and hey presto! Fixed!

 

I’ll be honest, I should perhaps have considered pattern placement more thoroughly. While it was laid out flat it seemed OK, but this jersey is very stretchy, so this dress is not quite as flattering as I could wish for, but I’m happy enough to to wear it for holidays. I won’t be wearing this one to work like the lace dress, though. 

I’ve got one more Shannon dress planned for when I get home*. Although technically not a holiday dress, it will be from fabric bought on holiday so it will still be part of the collection!

* Because I’m posting this on rather dodgy data roaming direct from my holidays. The time it’s taken to upload these photos, you wouldn’t believe!