Spring Sewing Swap

I was so excited to participate in the Spring Sewing Swap this year organised by the lovely Kerry from Kestrel Makes.  It's one of the things I really loved when I first got into the world of sewing blogs.

I was paired up with Emma Jayne from Clipped Curves.  if you don't already follow her blog, you should as she makes excellently fitted garments (check her sailor trousers!) with a nautical flair.  Basically I want to be her when I grow up!

She also lives quite close to me so we are hoping for a meet up for coffee and sewing chat some time soon!

Here's the lovely bundle she sent me:

Navy twill
a lightweight bird print cotton
navy twill tape
cute stripy buttons

plus this excellent vintage A-line skirt/ culottes pattern (with pockets!  I love pockets!)

Hop over to Emma Jayne's blog to see what was in the parcel I sent her (being much more organised than me, she has already blogged about it here!).

Thanks for organising Kerry - roll on next year!

The Minerva Crafts Meet-Up!

Have you heard about the fantastic event happening at the Minerva Craft Centre on Saturday 14th July?

Vicki and the Minerva team were voted Best Sewing Blog in the Sew Magazine awards and to celebrate have organised a great day of events, tutorials and talks from some of our favourite bloggers and pattern designers. 

You can meet me and lots of the other members of the Minerva Blogger Network including Clare, Amy, Marie, Nicole, Emmie, Kathryn and Katie, and I know some other great bloggers are planning to go including Claire, Alison and Sally.  And the lovely Velosewer a.k.a. Maria is coming all the way from Aus!

Come along, it's going to be so much fun!

Highlights are:

Karen from Did You make That doing a speech and Q&A
Claire-Louise from Thrifty Stitcher and Sewing Bee doing a workshop
Mystery contestants from the Sewing Bee (they have naughtily included a picture of Patrick, but I don't think he's stopping by unfortunately!)
A Day in the Life of the By Hand London girls
Lots of craft demonstrations and workshops

And of course there is the lure of the fantastic centre itself, which looks to be an Aladdin's cave of fabric and other craft supplies (I fully intend to come home with a few more hobbies and my bodyweight in fabric!).

All the details are here.

Minerva have helpfully suggested things for non-crafty partners/ friends to do in the area while you craft and chat to your heart's content!  You can find it here.

I hope you can make it - let me know if you are planning to come along!

Sew Blue February

A blogger's godsend - a vintage car!

If you are on Twitter you will know that there are monthly sewalongs and every other month is a colour theme.  I made this dress for Red October, skipped Green December (my colour palettes will show that I never wear green!) and here's Blue February (oops, bit late in posting).  This was a total no brainer - another look at my colour palettes will show that I wear blue a lot.

I was a little tight for time this month as I was finishing hubby's jacket and making a dress for N but luckily my planned garments already included a couple of blue items (no surprise there!).

Both fabrics were bought extremely cheaply from Norman Lyons, a fabric shop that doesn't look like a fabric shop not far from my work in Central London.  I think both were £2 a metre!

I am always in need of more long sleeved T-shirts so the striped jersey was destined to be another Renfrew.  I have made this pattern before (here and here) and apart from a bit of lengthening it fits great out of the packet.  I made the round neck variation again.  Given that the stripe is so dominant I made my first real attempt at stripe matching, using this tip from Lauren at Rosie Wednesday to line up the underarm points on the same stripe.  I think it worked pretty well on the side seams and underarms but maybe I should have paid more attention on the sleeves.  Or is it not possible to match across a sleeve head?

Matchy matchy!

 I lined up the cuffs and waistband on the same stripe so they are consistent and cut the neckband on the broad navy stripe.  Not perfect but I'm pretty chuffed with it.  Should perhaps have used my walking foot to make sure the fabric didn't shift but I'm still getting used to having one!

The second garment is a Megan Nielsen Kelly skirt.  Again a pattern I have used before (here and an unblogged version) but this one is a bit different in that I omitted the button closure on the front.  This is really simple to do.

Instead of the buttons you'll need a zip and a side closure (I used leftover buttons from my Blackberry dress but you could use a skirt hook instead).  I used an 7" zip from my stash but to be honest it could be longer, so 9" might work better!

 - Cut the back and waistband as per the pattern.  Instead of cutting 2 fronts, line up the fold of the fabric with the placket fold line market on the pattern and cut in one single piece.
- Mark the pleats and staystitch them as normal.
- Mark the length of the zip on the left side seam and sew it up to this point and the right side seam as normal.
- Sew in the zip with your preferred method.  I sewed it by machine.
- Attach the waistband with the front edge overhanging the zip edge by 5/8".  The back edge will stick out further past the back zip edge but don't worry -  this is where you will put the closure/ buttons.
- Finish attaching and top stitching the waistband and hem as per the pattern instructions.
- Make the buttonholes in the front waistband and sew buttons to back waistband (or attach your closure) and you are done!

These are 2 bargain items - £7.50 in total for fabric and stashed buttons and zip.  I had both patterns already.  Love it when sewing actually saves you money for a change!  And it matches my square necked Alma perfectly!

Sew Dolly Clackett - Are you in?

As I'm sure everyone has heard by now, the latest fun sewalong in town is Sew Dolly Clackett, organised by the lovely Sarah in honour of the impending nuptuals of Roisin and her partner Nic.

I have had the pleasure of meeting them both, and they are one of the nicest couples you could ever hope to meet, as evidenced by the amount of love floating around the blogosphere for them.

The challenge as outlined here is to make up a Dolly Clackett style dress before 23rd April and post it to the Flickr group.  Roisin herself will judge and award a range of fab prizes, from vouchers for fabric to patterns.

I've been thinking about the patterns I could use.  I've made up Simplicity 2444 and By Hand London Anna before, and have plans for Christine Haynes Emery and Gather's Mortmain.  If I can get a good fit on the Emery I will probably use that as it's a great blank canvas for the key thing which is the fabric!

Roisin is known for her fabulous novelty prints - it wouldn't be a true Dolly Clackett dress without at least a polka dot!  I'm looking for something that fits my wardrobe (no way to I have time to sew up things I don't wear!) and I'm not sure I can pull off pin-up girls or cowgirls on a daily basis.  Nautical? Paris-themed? Maybe!

In an attempt to actually narrow down all the fabulous prints available I have started a Pinterest board here.

These are the front runners at the moment but I'll probably change my mind a million times before I decide!

Makeower Washday in Blue (Source Rainbow Silks)

Henley Studio Birds on Clouds (Source Hawthorn Threads)

Hmm, clearly there's a cloud thing going on in my head!  Other possibles are retro geometric prints like these 2 - both from the Art Galley Carnaby Street collection, both from Hawthorn Threads.  Perhaps less Dolly Clackett but more me?

Carnaby St 60s Waves in Midnight

Carnaby Street Retro Pop in Mint

Are you joining in?  Have you picked your fabric/ pattern?  Let me know in the comments!  Any favourite prints I should look at?

The Original Pattern Pyramid comes to town!

I was lucky enough to be the next stop on the Pattern Pyramid!  This is the original one started by Karen from Did You Make That when she was generously gifted a trove of vintage patterns from one of her blog readers.

You can read the original post here.

I got these patterns when Marie from A Stitching Odyssey hosted it recently and it's a great stash!

There are vintage dresses galore:

Vintage separates:

A host of 1970s goodness:

Some 1980s and modern patterns:

We get to choose a pattern to keep.  I chose this gorgeous 1950s pattern which Marie added.  I fell in love with the neckline, and although I might have to do a bit of grading down, it'll be worth it!

Damn you Blogger for the sideways pic!

In return we have to add a pattern.  As there was a bit of a shortage of mid-sized patterns in there, I added these 3 from my stash:

If you would like to be the next stop for the Pattern Pyramid and have the chance to choose one of these for yourself, here are the rules:

• Any blogger with an active blog can enter.  You can live anywhere - these patterns are pretty well-travelled!
• You can keep one pattern for yourself, and then you have to host your own giveaway!  You must be happy to post internationally if you win.
• Most bloggers have added more patterns to the mix to keep it fresh (but it's not essential)

Want to be part of it?

Comment below by 12th March (midnight GMT), I'll draw a winner by random number and the patterns could be winging their way to you!

You know what day it is today?

It's Great British Sewing Bee Day!  (if you are in the UK, of course!).

At 8pm tonight Twitter will no doubt be on fire with sewcialists discussing the new contestants.

And unless you are living under a rock, you will know that the company who makes the programme, Love Productions, are looking for contestants for series 3.  As there have been a lot of complaints on Twitter about the lack of sewing bloggers in this series, let's get a few into the next series, OK?  Closing date is midnight on 16th March - to find out more get in touch with them:

sewing@loveproductions.co.uk

See you on Twitter tonight!

The Vintage Pattern Pledge

Do you have a lot of vintage patterns that you haven't sewn up?  But they are so tempting and so pretty right?  But then they get bumped for a new indie pattern all the coolkids are sewing up.

This is exactly what I am like and Marie from A Stitching Odyssey feels the same!

She has started the Vintage Pattern Pledge here and I am joining in!

During 2014, I, Joanne, will sew up at least five garments from vintage patterns.

I haven't gone for 5 patterns as I am not sure if that will work for me - if i find ones that work well, I may make more than one version!  But I'll probably choose at least 5 patterns to give myself a choice.

I'll be posting over the next few days with the patterns I am planning to use.  And if you are up for this challenge, stay tuned for the Pattern Pyramid and you can grab yourself a choice of more vintage patterns!

Are you in?   

My top 5 inspirations from 2013

And we're in the home stretch of Top 5s!  Just this and 2014 goals to go!

Inspirations is a toughie!  When I first bought a cheap sewing machine, my plan was to do machine embroidery and maybe make a few bits and pieces for N.  I had no plans to start sewing garments for myself.  However stumbling on the world of sewing blogs changed that!  I realised that you didn't have to have been sewing since you were a child to be able to make beautiful, great fitting clothes.

I've picked a few areas where I feel really inspired, by bloggers and others.

1) Pattern designers

By that I don't mean established pattern companies like Colette or Sewaholic.  But some of my favourite bloggers have released their own patterns this year, both free and paid for.  I can't get my head around the process of doing this and how complicated it must be, but how cool to see people making, wearing and loving something you have designed!

Source: House of Pinheiro

 Rachel's Brasilia dress

Melissa's workout/ running gear

Erin's Presidio handbag

The lovely Katie from What Katie Sews also mentioned recently she was working on releasing a pattern she had designed - can't wait to see!

2) Refashioning

Source: Charity Shop Chic

When I arrived at the epic blogger meet up back in April, I almost squealed to see a dress I recognised and loved that I had just been reading about - Sally's fabulous Mad Men shirt dress!  And no post about refashioning would be complete without a mention for this talented lady.  She totally inspires me to have a go at refashioning.  I just need to find some time for scouring charity shops - I'm sure I don't have her vision of what the most unpromising items could become!

3) Sewcial media

 Some bloggers have such a skill for bringing people together.  From the top 5 posts you are reading now, started by Gillian from Crafting a Rainbow, to the blogger meet ups and swaps organised by Rachel, Claire, Marie & Kat and many many more, and the Spoolettes spearheaded by Clare, sewing people love to get together and chat together!  Especially if there is fabric shopping involved.  Or drinking.  Or both!

Whether it is online or in real life, a lot of people spend a lot of time and effort coming up with great ideas to spread the sewing love and that is pretty inspiring.  A few mentions (I couldn't possibly cover everyone so please don't be offended if I have missed you off!):

the aforementioned Gillian from Crafting a Rainbow

Rachel from House of Pinheiro

Claire from Sew Incidentally

Marie from A Stitching Odyssey

Kat from A Krafty Kat

Kerry from Kestrel Makes

Joost from Make my Pattern and creator of the Sewcialist logo and Firehose

Leila from Three Dresses Project

Lady Katza from Peanut Butter Macrame

Heather from Handmade by Heather B

Katie from KatieKadiddlehopper

StephC from 3 Hours past and Cake Patterns

Clare from Sew Dixie Lou

Tilly from Tilly and the Buttons

4) Beautiful photography

I've seen some recent blog posts talking about sewing blogs turning into fashion blogs and being all about photography and less about sewing. These are not the blogs I read. I want to read about sewing but I don't see why you can't have clear pics and great interesting photography. OK, so all we really need is daylight and non blurry photos but it's hopefully more interesting when I manage to get pics somewhere other than my back garden being photobombed by a 5 year old and a grumpy cat! 

I know I appreciate it when bloggers work hard with pics (as long as i can see the clothes obviously!).

Some honourable mentions:

Rachel from House of Pinheiro (is there anything this girl can't do?)

Lizzy from Sew Busy Lizzy

Sally from Charity Shop Chic

Carolyn from Handmade by Carolyn

Janene from Ooobop

Clare from Sew Dixie Lou

Rochelle from Lucky Lucille

I still have work to do on my blog pics - the winter is hard when you can't incorporate an outdoor photo shoot into a family weekend! I'll never be able to take hundreds of pics to choose from (the 5 year old wouldn't stand for it!) but the ladies above and others inspire me to get better!

5) Dyeing fabric

I used to do a lot of fabric dying, tie dye etc as a student and thought those days were past! But I've become inspired to pick it up again for a few reasons.

Source: Jigidi.com

On holiday in the summer we visited a beautiful shop where the owner created lovely batik scarves and sarongs. I wanted to buy fabric but at upwards of £40 a metre it wasn't going to happen. I really want to try making my own. Imagine the great border prints you could make?  I'd also like to try shibori and other natural dyes like Sally and screen printing like Carolyn.  Sadly these are summer projects unless i want dripping fabric everywhere so I'll need to wait a bit.  

So that's it - my inspirations! 

Only goals to go - just need to work out what they are!

Yet another Amazing Sewing Meet post

Photo by Digpal Singh

Yes, I know, you've read about this a million times! (or probably 45 given that 45 lovely sewing ladies were there!).  I met some fabulous ladies, some I had met before and some for the first time, but all fun, friendly and wearing the most beautiful handmade clothes!  The V&A, Goldhawk Rd and the Cedar Village Bakery Lebanese Restaurant didn't know what had hit them (especially the restaurant as they were expecting more like half that number!  But they coped admirably!).

Me, the adorable Clare from SewDixieLou and the very lovely Handmade Jane (Photo by Digpal Singh)

I recognised at least 2 or 3 people from reading about their dresses on blogs before the meet - I knew Sally from Charity Shop Chic from the back as a result of her fabulous mad Men dress!

Thanks so much to Rachel and Janene for organising and to all the lovely people who made it such a great day.  And Minerva Crafts and Abakhan for providing the goody bags - what a treat!

I had made a shopping plan before getting to Goldhawk Rd and I am happy to say I stuck to it!

Two gorgeous lawns (the blue tulips and the green) for summer dresses.  I was planning a Hazel with a bigger skirt but I'm not convinced is the fabric has enough body, so I'm going to use the tulip print for Simplicity 2444 (sleeveless with no collar):

and see how it behaves.  If I love it maybe I'll make another with the green!  The blue boat print viscose (£3.50/m - couldn't believe it!) is for a rub off of a much loved and worn top I already own.

I also got a couple of plains:

The (rather crumpled sorry!  I have prewashed but not ironed!) turquoise linen is for this Burda dress:

(the other version of the dress in the mag is actually much nicer - this looks pretty bland and worky!  But I'm hoping for something Laurel-esque).  And the blue twill (actually much more of a royal blue but looks quite purple in the pic) is for a Megan Nielsen Kelly skirt with either red or white buttons.
And I did really well in the swap.  There were loads of patterns in my size:

I know one is from Stevie (I think the front left - let me know if you gave in any of the others!).  Lots of people seemed to be trying not to pick up any patterns, hence why I did so well!  But I was a lot more restrained on fabric.  I try not to buy fabric just because I like it - I usually have a project in mind for it.

I got about 1m of each of the blue rose print cotton (maybe a lawn?  lovely and soft anyway!), the red spotty cotton, and I think 1.5m of the green (it's not really that turquoise!) twill.  And I grabbed a couple of spools of thread and zips and some pink ribbons to placate the small person at not having gone via a toy shop as she requested!

What a fab day!  My faith in sewists (and my blogroll) are much fuller for it!

Finished: Milkmaid skirt - another backlog garment!

As soon as I saw the Milkmaid Skirt for Grown Up Girls on Crafterhours, I really liked it.  I totally wanted to stalk Adrianna's striped version in the instructions.  And no pattern needed!

So I set to work.  I struggled to find the right fabric but went for the closest one and in doing so broke what has now become one of my cardinal rules of sewing - if you don't love the fabric, don't bother as you won't love the finished garment.

I worked out all the pattern  pieces from the very clear tutorial, and it went together really easily.  Except when I put it on, it was horrible.  I think the fabric was called Toothpaste stripe and it was as awful as that sounds.  And a kind of shiny canvassy twill.  I think I may have gone temporarily insane at the time of purchase!

The fabric was too stiff and I had made it too A-line.  I was also still losing weight at this point which probably didn't help with the look.  So I did what any self-respecting sewist would do in that situation - threw it in a corner and started on something better!

The next time i was in Fabricland I did spot the right material and nabbed it straight away.  It's a grey and white striped cotton.  I harvested the broad elastic from the waistband in the corner and whittled down the pattern pieces to fit my new smaller size and take out all of the A-line. 

Much better (scuse the horrible wrinkles - I didn't notice on the camera and it's far too cold now to get back outside and retake the pics!):

I really love stripes with florals and wore this outift a lot this summer.

It's a cheap as chips make - only 1m of fabric and you make your own pattern.  And speedy too - I think I might have taken 1.5 hours to sew up once I had the right sized pattern pieces. I think it could make a good winter skirt with tights and boots in a heavier fabric (although I would probably omit the pocket binding as I think that might become a bit bulky - perhaps a separate binding would work better on thicker fabric than the way this is applied)

And I had fun with the stripes on the pockets.  And matchy matchy waistband seams (the first time I have really managed this, but on a straight pattern piece there's no excuse not too!)

A lovely day!

I had a great day on Friday!

Following my pre-order months ago, I was thrilled to arrive at work and find that Amazon had come through with my copy of Gertie's book!

 

I have read it cover to cover and absolutely love it!  It is really inspiring, especially on the subject of tailoring. 

I had never realised all the stabilising and padding and reinforcing that goes in to creating a tailored garment.  But Gertie makes it all seem attainable even to a newbie like me!  I know it will be a long time before I can even think about attempting something like her suit jacket:

but i am sorely in need of tops and there are some gorgeous ones in the book that I can see in my near future!

The Portrait Blouse

The Keyhole Top

And I love the bound buttonholes on the back of the bow tie top:

And the Tiki dress is great!

In fact, maybe i should work through her book in the way she worked through VNBBS at the beginning of her blog!  I espcially love the fact that she models all the clothes.  She looks fantastic throughout!

And to top that off, I met up with Karen and a group of other lovely ladies to drool over the ballgowns at the V&A and talk sewing.  I completely forgot my camera so unfortunately don't have any pictures but it was lovely to talk about sewing and not see people sidling away - or maybe I just have that effect on people!  My particular favourite dresses were the black beaded bias cut dress (top pic, second from the left) and the Holly Fulton one with the Rocky Horror-esque lip print and leather trim (bottom pic on the catwalk).

Source:belleandbunty.co.uk

 

Source: idontwearfashion.blogspot.co.uk

Thanks to Karen for organising such a lovely night.

My blog obsession

Since starting to seriously think about sewing my own clothes, I have
become obsessed by blogs! There are so many talented and creative people
out there making clothes that really inspire me to have a go. And many of
them are incredibly generous with their time and knowledge - putting up
free tutorials for newbies like me to learn from!

The first blog I followed regularly was KitschyCoo, on recommendation of a
friend. Amanda makes and sells lovely kids clothes, patterns and fabric.
She also inspired me to start this blog!

As I love retro and vintage style, I really enjoy Gertie's posts. She has
fantastic style. Also on a vintage tip, Tilly and the Buttons is great - I
can't believe how productive she is in her sewing! Lladybird also seems to
produce a constant stream of lovely things.

It's also great to have some people in the UK who don't know what freezer
paper is or have a local JoAnn's to head to for a seemingly endless supply
of cheap patterns and great fabric - Tilly mentioned above, Miss P, Didyoumakethat?,  and A Sewing Odyssey

And then there's the mummy bloggers who are squeezing in sewing around
their families and jobs - Rae, M is for Make, Kitschy Coo, Made, crafterhours and skirt as top

The thing I like best about blogs is the sense of community - a lot of them
have their own pattern ranges and other bloggers support these independent
pattern makers over the Big 4 (Vogue, Butterick, McCalls, Simplicity). My
favourites are Colette (of course!), KitschyCoo, Victory Patterns, Sewaholic, Salme.

I also really love the events that spread across a number of blogs - One
Week One Pattern, Me Made May etc. I thought I was too much of a newbie
without enough sewn garments behind me to take part, but I have decided to
attempt Colette's Spring Palette Challenge! I'm sure it will take me the
spring and quite a bit of the summer to get many things made, but hopefully
it will inspire me to get on with things and learn lots of new techniques!
Now I just need to get started on that moodboard...