Patrones skirt and top

These pictures were taken a couple of weeks ago before the weather cooled down here. I used patterns from Patrones magazine to make this outfit, which I wore many times throughout the summer.

The top is this wrap style, No. 28, from Patrones Magazine 29 (2013). In typical Patrones style, the clothes are rather difficult to see:

The skirt is No. 8 from Patrones Magazine 24:

Yes, that is the same pattern I'm using to make my little French  jacket and no, I haven't finished it yet! But I am nearly finished. Pictures soon...

Anyway, back to the outfit at hand. The top is made from a remnant of drapey, woven polyester from Textile traders. I had had rather a busy morning this day and the fabric unfortunately got a bit crumpled. The top is edged with hand-made bias binding. I left off the tie at the front and chose to close the top with a press stud at the empire seam. The neckline is stitched closed.

The top does tend to blow open in the wind, so I am wearing a camisole underneath for these pictures. If it does happen to blow open, the yoke detail of the skirt is visible!

The skirt is made from a linen sample from a curtaining catalogue and the yoke is made with the wrong side of some dark grey denim. I added a folded strip of the denim, right side out as piping between the skirt and yoke. I changed the front fly to a side zip and the skirt is lined with white cotton.

The top has slightly cut away armholes, and should really be worn with a racer back bra!

This is a lovely, cool outfit for summer and another bargain creation costing less than $5 in total.

My handmade Christmas Prezzies 2013

I was very busy sewing this Christmas, mostly for my youngest niece who is 18 months old.

I made her a runway collection!

This consisted of:
Blue tank top, flowered and green pants/shorts and flowered cross-over top (flower fabric from Spotlight) - Butterick 3846, size L;
Pink dress - The Warhol dress, free pattern from MADE with an added ruffle at the hemline;
Flower print sun jacket - Kwik Sew 2596, View C, with added sleeves, no peplum and altered at the front so it is open and cool;
Ruched leggings - also Kwik Sew 2596 with a piece of elastic stretched and sewn at the lower outside seam to create the ruching.

Here she is in some of the pieces:

Kwik Sew 2596 (altered)

Kwik Sew 2596 (altered)

Butterick 3846

Butterick 3846

The Warhol dress- MADE

I also made owl cushions for both nieces. I looked at Google images and came up with my own design. I can't find the photo I took of the finished cushions, but here is Miss 18 months unwrapping hers (yes, she is always the centre of attention!):

and again later at home

For my older niece, I made this dress from light and airy, blue patterned cotton. I used Patrones magazine 30 (a recent edition full of children's patterns), dress No. 2. I had purchased the fabric for me, but thought it would be perfect for Miss 8, which it was. I raced back to Textile Traders for some more at the first opportunity!

The neckline and armholes are bound with a strip of lycra, folded in half, stitched to the inside of the dress first and then folded over the edge and stitched again, a variation on this method. The same turquoise lycra is used for the ruching.

I also made a skirt for my sister (not photographed) and these shoe bags for my (hard to buy for) brother-in-law.

Everyone seemed very happy with their meggipeg prezzies and the hard work was all made worthwhile (actually it made my year) when I received this letter from my niece with a picture of her wearing the blue dress and hi-top sneakers I also got for her.

Little French Jacket Progress Report 2

When I left you at the end of Progress Report 1, I had quilted the lining to all the jacket pieces, tied squillions of loose threads and was ready to sew the jacket together. The pieces are first basted together with a machine stitch, so fitting adjustments can be made. In my case, the adjustments were necessary to match the stripes in the fabric, which were just not lining up after sewing. It helped a lot to use lots of pins (above) and to sew slowly with the walking foot in place. You can also see that the lining has been pinned into a little parcel to keep it well away from the seam stitching.

The seam allowances are still kept very large at this stage to allow for fitting and fraying of the fabric.

This is the outside of the jacket with my labels still in place to make sure I sewed the pieces in the correct order! The fronts are not yet sewn on in the picture above. Once they were basted in place, I sewed the peplum pieces together and attached the peplum to the jacket bodice as one piece. The shoulder seams were then pinned together to check for fit.

A rare glimpse into the chaos that is my beloved sewing room. Please don't look too closely at the mess, most of which is cropped out of the photo!

Next up was the sleeves, which had not even been cut out at this stage. The muslin sleeves were pinned in place on the jacket and lines were marked (pencil lines just visible below) where the stripes of the fabric met the sleeve. Obviously not all stripes can be matched due to the shape of the sleeve. It is up to the sewer to decide which ones to match, usually those on the upper sleeve are chosen. I chose to match the main pink stripe on the upper sleeve, front and back, as this was the most obvious.

The muslin was then placed on the boucle fabric and the stripes matched up with the pencil lines before cutting. The other sleeve piece(s) were then matched to the first to keep those stripes as perfect as possible. Then it was back to hand stitching the sleeve outline on the boucle and quilting lining to all the sleeve pieces before matching the stripes (below) and basting the sleeve together.

Then it was time to pin the sleeves in place and try on the jacket! This was awkward as it felt so fragile and still had raw edges, huge seam allowances and the lining pinned away from seams. Still, it was an exciting moment after all the work.

Bear in mind that the inside was very bulky so the jacket does look a bit strange in these pictures. However, from what I could tell, the fit was pretty good, so it was on to the next stage - coming soon!

Please refer to my First French Jacket post for information and links to the fantastic sewalong I am following to make this jacket.