Category Archives: Indie Patterns
Anna Dresses BHL
Here is the promised post on my Anna dresses, neither are completely finished but both are beautiful in their own way.
The first one is a viscose (rayon) which is very slippery and after the last time I worked with viscose I swore I would never do so again, but this was cheap and pretty…..
Those by Hand London girls sure draft for some very tall Ladies, I loped 7 inches off the skirt before I even started. The other changes I made was to do a small bust adjustment and to bring the neckline up an inch, I tend to find that deep V necklines do nothing for me and they gape something terrible.
I did French seams on the skirt and overlocked the top mainly because I wan’t 100% on french seaming the underarm.
It still needs ironing and hemming, over all I’m quite pleased with it. I will admit though I wimped out on the thigh high split.
I used a small bit of interfacing where the zip is, not my idea I read it somewhere when I was researching the Anna Dress.
The Second Anna is made out of a Robert Kauffman London Calling Lawn fabric, I bought in the Craftsy fabric sale before christmas, It is very nice and light and floaty.
here are the full length photos.
Birkin Jeans – Baste and Gather
Hi, I’m having a busy year so far, I’ve made a lot of things but not finished them, if you read this blog I think that you will find this is a recurring theme, However I do have something to show you that is finished.
My first pair of Jeans, and they look lovely, I cheated top-stitching wise, my fabric is Black and so is my top-stitching but never fear I’ve started on a new pair which are dark blue with red top stitching, a photo at the end of this post.
I do have two sewing machines which make assembling this pattern a lot easier, my usual machine is set up with the normal thread and my older machine with the Top-stitching thread.
I bought the fabric from eBay, it was the cheapest 10 oz denim I could find, when it arrived, I wasn’t too sure about it, it was quite stiff, but after washing it, the fabric softened up a lot.
This is the first PDF pattern that I have downloaded that you can pick which sizes to download, this is genius everyone should do it. It makes it easier to to grade between sizes and you don’t get all the confusing bits where all sizes congregate in one spot. I printed 26 and 27, in the end I just made a straight 26, I took 3 1/2 inches out of the length, looking at the sizes I should have taken out 4 inches but I’d rather they were too long after the next wash than too short. With shop bought jeans I sometimes find they keep shrinking into the second and third washes.
The instructions were brilliant and I would say that as long as you know your way round a sewing machine, you should have no trouble making a pair of jeans whatever your skill level.
The back goes together first, I put a couple of lines of stitching on the back pocket, just to give it that ‘authentic’ jeans feel
The fabric is a lot blacker than it looks here, but at least the highlights are showing off the stitching.
after this you start working on the fly, I would say that the instructions for this is better than the instructions for the Sewaholic Thurlows, but it does use a lot more photos.
one thing this fabric does do is attract the cat hair :-(, here are some photos of the front made up.
I am very pleased at how they have turned out, the only bit I am slightly disappointed in myself is that there is a tiny bit of pocket lining showing on the curve of the pockets, but that’s what a black sharpie is for.
As promised a shot of the pair I am working on now.
I decided against patterning the pocket as I thought it might be too much red, but now I sort of wished I had.
I used a different foot for the top-stitching the first one was done with a 1/4 inch quilting foot the second pair of jeans I decided to use the stitch guide foot, which I’m finding a lot more accurate.
bye for now…
2016 is shaping up to be the year of the indie pattern
Usually I stick with the big four, well actually two, Butterick and Vogue I have occasionally gone to Newlook, to be honest I’m a bit confused as to why they are called the big four as they all appear to be now owned by McCalls but who am I to question why.
This year I’m going Indie, I already have By Hand Londons Anna Dress, Pinup Girls Bra pattern and what seems to be half of Sewaholics pattern line – Davie Dress, Gabriola skirt, Cambie dress, Thurlow Trousers, Hollyburn Skirt, Belcarra Blouse and Granville Shirt. I have added the Birkin Jeans from Baste and Gather and two patterns from Hey June Handmade, Cheyenne tunic and Lane Raglan.
I have always fancied making Jeans but the pattern that seems to be most talked about is the Ginger Jeans, to be honest I haven’t worn Skinny Jeans since the last time they were in, and mostly I remember not being very comfortable especially while sitting down, I know they have bought out a bootcut addon pack but I still find them a bit meh. The Birkin Flares however I love, love all the photos I’ve seen of them and all the reviews seem very favourable.
Of course while I was checking up on the Jeans I came across the Cheyenne Tunic, which is quite close in style to the FatFace Popovers I’ve been buying (in the sale) so I thought why not. I have some very nice stash fabric I can use for it hopefully before I go to Olympia 4th March. I need to stash bust pretty darned quick 🙂
Sewaholic Davie dress
Hi, since my brief look at knit fabrics I have been looking to complete Sewaholics Davie Dress, when I ordered it I hadn’t realised that it was made in a stretch fabric, but I was willing to give it a go. I had some fabric bought from eBay that I wasn’t all that keen on once I had it delivered so it was ideal for my test run.
My first problem is that I’m not a pear shape which is the shape that Sewaholic favours, at 33 27 37 I was alright for waist and bust with a US 6 but my hips are a US 2, what I have done before in this position is just cut a straight US 6 but I have ended up with too much fabric at the hip and it has looked just plain wrong, so I decide to grade down from the waist to the hip size, I used my new hip curve and was very happy with the results.
I did a quick pin to my dress form and it looked alright
My second problem is that I’m short 5ft 2in and I do usually have a problem with princess seam but I’ll cover that a bit later.
Who wants to see the first attempt at the dress.
I would like to say it looks a lot better on the dress form than it did on me and also by this point I had already raised the shoulder seams about an inch. The dress was just too big all over, except on the hip, the other problem was that without raising the shoulder seam by an inch the bust part of the princess seam was way too low, and even with the inch taken out it still wasn’t sitting properly.
Because of the amount of excess I had at the waist and bust I decided to try a straight size 2, after all there are 8 seams so I could quite happily ‘steal’ back 2 inches from the seam allowance. Also by going for a size 2 you already lost 3/4 inch from the shoulder.
What I didn’t realise was how rollyupy the already cut pieces were going to be and ironing them didn’t help 😦 however what I did find was that if I laid it on the ironing board it stuck to the cover like fuzzy felt, I managed to keep it flat enough to cut the new pieces out.
The dress went together very nicely, I used a normal straight stitch as this was only a test dress, zigzag is so hard to unpick, also I don’t like the way it looks on the outside. I might just use my overlocker in future.
Here is the dress with the basic seams put in it fits loads better.
There is something squiffy going on with the back, but I’m not sure if it is how I standing, the shoulder seam could do with coming up slightly which will might fix this and will bring the bust point of the dress up to the correct position.
I made the longer length which comes just below my knees, I’m not sure if the shorter one might be just out of my comfort zone.
I’ll be back with the finished article soon, also I like the fabric made up a lot more than just laying in the drawer so this might by my first dress for Florida.
It is a medium weight stretch fabric with a nice amount of body, I used my walking foot which is brilliant and my sewing machine didn’t try to eat it once, bonus!
Also on my cutting table is By Hand London Anna dress, more about that soon.
Thurlow Trousers part 2
I cut out and put together my second pair of Thurlow Trousers before Christmas, the reason I haven’t blogged about them it that I made a bit of a hash of the back pockets, and I was sulking. There were a couple of other issues with them as well but that was the main one.
I cut too far on the pocket slit, I’ve done bound buttonholes before so I had no excuse. The welts lie very nicely unfortunately I have a bit of fraying at the corners.
Since I started this post I have actually completed two pairs of Thurlow Trousers and apart from the welt pockets on the first pair I am quite pleased with them. I stitched further in on the welt pocket sides so now instead of the fraying I have a bit of puckering, as I am never going to use the pockets I have also stitched them up.
The first pair I added 1/4 inch to the front rise, as it seemed to slope down from the back and was quite away from my belly button, the second pair I added in total 1/2 inch I was much happier with the result, oddly enough I had more problems following the instructions for the last two pair of trousers than I did with the ‘muslin’ I think I did too much second guessing.
Here are pictures of the first pair
And pictures of the second pair
I think that they could do with being a smige longer but other wise I’m happy.
Sewaholic Thurlow Trousers
Sewaholic had it’s five year anniversary sale earlier this month and I decided to take advantage of it, especially after seeing the Thurlow trousers, they are almost identical to a pair that I have been wearing for the last few years and to be honest they are getting on a bit.
I bought four patterns, well it was buy one get one free, to be honest I liked the Davie dress before I realised it was stretch fabic and the skirt was there to make up numbers I really wanted the Belcarra blouse but it was unavailable(something to put on my christmas list ).
I read up on Lladybirds sewalong and after measuring my existing pair of trousers decided on a size 2, I’m a waist 26 and hip 37 at the moment. I decided to use some gabardine fabric that I got cheap from ebay, when it arrived I realsed it was horrible, it was quite thick, very frayey and had a slight sheen to it, (no wonder it was going cheap).
After cutting out the first thing you do is make up the front pockets.
and attach them to the front pieces.
I skipped the welt pockets on the back as this was just a test piece for size. I tried to skip the putting in the zip step as well and went straight to stitching the legs together, big mistake, without the zip inserted correctly you can’t judge how the front is going to lay.
I went back and put the zip in, which would probably been a darn sight easier had I not stitched the legs together.
here is a picture of the finished fly (which is the wrong way round)
a picture of the back
which I don’t think looks too bad, even though I fudged putting the waist on, which you can see in the way the seams don’t line up. you can also see from this picture that I didn’t take up the pattern before cutting out, I have taken two inches out of the length I should probably take another half inch out but I do like to wear my trousers long.
I am quite pleased with the fit, I will add 1/4 inch to the front as although the back and sides were good, I wanted the front higher. This is probably not the best photo and I should have got my camera and tripod out.
One note on the fabric once it was made up I liked it a lot better, in fact I’m planning on taking them apart and and putting them together properly.
my comments on the pattern instructions, they aren’t as clear as they could be, I wasn’t always sure if it was right sides together, on top of each other or wrong sides together.
I am going to make this pattern again but once I get the fit exactly right I’ll probably play with the leg, I like a bootcut tighter on the thigh then going out to the flare, but these are very comfortable.
Musings of a Craft Enthusiast 