I made it…AND I wore it! 6

A double-whammy this week, I managed to wear a me-made item two days this week. That might be because I had literally just whipped this top up and was SUPER excited to wear it! Above is the top styled for work (quick out of focus shot courtesy of boyfriend – perspective all wrong because he’s taller than me. But at least he agreed to actually take the photo so I’ll stop complaining!).

And then here I am at the ‘in-laws’ this weekend to celebrate my boyfriends mum’s birthday.

As I said, I whipped this top up this week, so I’ll make sure I get some decent photos for you and tell you all about it. It’s probably a bit of an understatement to say that I’m a little bit excited/pleased with it!!

 

P.S. Feel like a may be coming down with the cold (urgh) so next week might be a write-off sewing-wise. Hope not!

12 in 2012: 1 month up-date and who’s joining in

Well we are a month into 2012 so I thought I would do a quick up-date on my progress of my self-made goals for 2012 (see original post here), and also share who else has decided to join me.

It’s only been one month, so I haven’t got an awful lot to show so far – but nonetheless, I would say I am on track (for the moment!)…let’s hope I can keep the momentum up:

12 Pieces of Handmade Clothing:
8.Wildcard!  Pink Curtain Skirt


12 New Sewing Techniques:
4. Hand-picked zip - Pink Curtain Skirt


12 New Sewing Skills:
10. Learn to use an overlocker/serger - first post…getting there!

I actually am well on the way from ticking another goal off each category, which I’m so pleased with, but I’ll officially consider them ‘done’ when I blog about them.

And I was delighted to see that quite a few of you decided to join in and make your own 12 in 2012 goals:

• Anna from Paunnet – her goals are here
• Gina from Fingers Chopsticks and Bobbins – her goals are here
• Clare from Magpie Makes – her goals are here
• Juliette from Sewing and Style Den – her goals are here
• Kate from One Pink Tulip
• Jamie from Flaunt
• ?? from Ololi Makes – sorry, I don’t know your name…please do let me know!
• LsaSpacey from As I Said  - her goals are here
• Kalina from Kalinchen’s Closet - her goals are here
• Renae from Seams Awesome - her goals are here 
• Caffy from Bundana - her goals are here
• Sarah from Fashion Brick Road - her goals are here 
• Lucinda from Sew Wrong - her goals are here

Hope everyone is having fun checking off their goals. I know Anna and Juliette are certainly powering on ahead – you guys will have completed your 12 goals by June if you keep it up!!!

My blog has been a bit quite quiet sewing wise this week – which is ironic considering the amount of time I have spent sewing recently!!! Lots of sewing, but little photographing (except on Twitter)! I’m working on a really great project that I just can’t wait to share with you all…but it involves a fair bit of prep, so stay tuned and hopefully I’ll have it up on the blog for you all in March (ps. I’m not talking about my soon-to-open Etsy shop, although I have been working on that too)! 

 

And I just wanted to leave a wee note to say how really grateful I am of all your support and lovely comments on my blog. I would love to have some friends locally who share my hobby, but unfortunately my friends aren’t really into it so it’s brilliant to have a place to go to share my hobby with like-minded souls - the on-line sewing community is such a fantastic group.

I would have loved to have joined in with the activities that are going on in blog-land this week for Sew Grateful Week, but unfortunately I didn’t know about the deadlines soon enough! Do pop on over to Debi’s lovely blog to check it all out though!

Tuesday’s Tutorial Treat–Refashioned Bow Blouse

Today I’m sharing a really cute tutorial from Nicole of Cola Cola Island. This is such a cute bow neck blouse and a really easy to follow tutorial. She uses ‘yardage’ to make her top, but you could easily refashion a long sleeved shirt to make this. Check it out!

Link HERE

I made it…AND I wore it! 5

I wore my ‘fireworks’ skirt out for a couple of drinks on Thursday evening last week. It was a freezing evening and we were walking to the pub so I have a LOT of layers on (inc. thermal long sleeve vest under my polo neck!! Yep – I’m rockin’ Granny Chic!). Sorry for the repeat photo location – I did get my boyfriend to take a photo of me in the pub, but it was horrific, so I took a couple of snaps when I came back home.

I’m so pleased that I’ve managed to keep this (‘I made it…AND wore it’) up for a whole month. I’ve already had to repeat (this skirt!) which proves I need a heck of a lot more handmade items in my wardrobe – I better get to it!

Ringing up the curtain for 2012!

Well I finally have a finished project for 2012 – and it’s pretty much on schedule for my personal goal to make 12 items this year (see 12 in 2012).

I showed a few sneak-peaks of this make on my Instagram/Twitter account, and more recently on my blog:

 

Although this wasn’t one of the garments I specified on my 12 in 2012 list, I left myself 5 ‘wildcards’ to allow a bit of flexibility throughout the year. This skirt is view A of McCall’s M5591 (the main skirt shown on the front of the pattern in the photo on the left above) and the fabric is actually a piece of curtain remnant that I picked up from my local fabric/curtain making shop (The Spinning Wheel) for about £1.50 (hence the title of this blog post). Being curtain fabric it’s quite heavy duty so I thought pleats would work quite well, and they do.

I made up a very quick muslin of this skirt because for some reason I bought the pattern in sizes 6 – 12, and the measurements for the waist and hips for size 12 was a couple of inches smaller than my own measurements! Luckily, the pattern ran very big (as they often seem to do) and there was a lot of ease…and size 12 made up was a perfect fit for my waist!

View A has really roomy slash pockets (for info views B and C have in-seam pockets) including a very smart pocket binding (erm, not sure what it’s officially called!) which I think could look really good made up in a contrasting fabric (I didn’t do this – but just making a note in case I decide to make this again!). As i said, I was working with a remnant piece so I didn’t really have very much to play with and thought some pieces might have to be made out of another fabric, but with very careful placing, I was able to get every piece out of the same fabric! I even managed to get the pattern running along the same line at the front and the back. They don’t match perfectly at the seams (which, as you know, is something I like to try and do – see this post), but considering what I had to work with I’m actually pretty amazed with how well the pattern does match up!

So, to summarise:

Fabric: Curtain Remnant £1.50

Notions: Regular Zip 60p

Techniques:

• Pleating…Knife pleats and Inverted Box pleats
• Hand-picked Zip (on my 12 in 2012 list!)  - WOW…so easy and looks great – I’m definitely a convert!!
• Bound edge of slash pocket
• Serged seams, and a serged hem turned up once and sewn down – so easy!! I decided to do it that way to keep the thickness of the hem to a minimum (enjoying the perks of the overlocker already!).

Pros: The instructions are very easy to follow and it’s quite a simple skirt to make with no adjustments necessary (whoop!)

Cons: The pleats take a lot of pinning to make sure they are sitting just right. Plus this fabric creases like there is no tomorrow so there is a lot of ironing to do before it looks decent enough to wear!

Make Again: Hmm…ironing pleats is not my favourite thing to do so I won’t be making it again in the near future (plus there are so many other projects on my waiting list!!).

***Top Tip: be careful when pinning through thick fabric – pricking yourself and bleeding onto your garment fabric. Not a good idea!!!***