I'm still alive ...

Just when you thought I'd disappeared off the face of the earth ...

I'm back with an emergency version of Vogue 1020 which is probably long OOP.  I've come home with very little clothing, most of which doesn't fit. The rest is still in Hobart.  I needed a dress to wear and I thought making this in a cotton lycra would fit, but it was still baggy.  I need to put some weight on!

I hope to be back to regular sewing soon.  It's been a hectic three months!

More later ...

Potential SWAP addition

I've been a bit stuck with what to sew next as I can't find the fabric I want.  I saw it when I didn't want it and now I can't find it but then with only ONE fabric store in Tasmania, what else can I expect.  If anyone sees matte gold or champagne sequin fabric please let me know.  Even a bronze would work.

These shorts are a real TNT. It's the Burda Ruby shorts that I downloaded free many years ago, pre blog days, in fact.  The fabric is the same.  It's a lovely soft stretch sateen that is leftover from a dress I made to wear to a wedding many years ago.  As I've been slowly packing I keep coming across things that might work for my SWAP, so this keeps with my stashbusting challenge.  The buttons and thread were from stash, too, so these are free.

 

The mirror shots are a little dark but they do fit me, despite the odd wrinkles.  It's hard to photograph yourself in a mirror.

 

Here they are on the floor and below you can see the cute little bound pocket on the front.  This pocket is the perfect size for an ipod or mobile phone, so these make great walking shorts for me.

 Whenever I make these shorts for some reason I always make the button facings and pocket bags a contrast colour.

I don't love the buttons, but I have lots of them in stash and I know I'll stop noticing them soon.

I managed to find a lovely piece of chocolate silk chiffon at a very reasonable price.  Some moron working in Spotlight had clearly mislabelled it but I wasn't going to point it out to them.  I want to make a top to go with these shorts as well as the snake print pants from last time.

If these shorts make it into my SWAP that means I'm five garments down and six to go.  With my move date uncertain, I may find it hard to finish this year but I'm going to persist until the day I drive away from here.

Escape is at hand for the travelling man ...

I've been listening to a lot of the Tragically Hip this week and it's flavoured my mood tonight.

Two weeks ago when I started these jeans I had a plan, not just for my pants, but for my life.  My world has been altered in the past 14 days for reasons that I may share in the coming weeks.  I've had to delay my return home by a few weeks and that comes with mixed feelings.  But back to the jeans ...

These started life as BWOF 05-11-116 skinny jeans, which I made recently in red.  As I mentioned last time, I frankenpatterned the pockets of Burda Anita jeans onto this pattern and this time I also frankenpatterned the crotch curve from my best fitting RTW jeans (Levis Bold Curve).  I took the back seam in by about an inch, but that could be because this sateen is a little stretchier than the one I used last time.

I am quite happy with the fit, although these pictures make me look FAT. These pants are a nice addition to my SWAP.  The pictures aren't great but at least they are on a body.  I'll make sure I get someone to take better shots when SWAP is done.

 

I don't know what I'm making next, I have a few bits of fabric hanging around as possible SWAP additions that will also contribute to my stashbusting.

Sewing and packing ...

Now that I my tenure in Tasmania can be counted in weeks, this long weekend (Hobart gets two more public holidays to NSW) is divided between sewing and packing.  I took a couple of hours out this morning to take Molly down to the waterfront and have a look at the Wooden Boat Festival, but the rest of the weekend has been spent in the house.  Between the horrendous smoke from the fires and the unbelievable wind, it's way more comfortable inside, anyway.  I struggle with static electricity in Hobart at the best of times, but today every bit of thread, dog hair and other assorted flotsam and jetsam are all stuck to me and my sewing.

First of all I finished up this pair of high-waisted skinny, slouchy pants.   Sorry about the crappy mirror shots but I am too lazy and too busy to waste time messing with a tripod.  You'll have to wait for the SWAP shots now! These are BWOF 03-11-119 and are made from the same fabric as the skirt from last week.  The line drawing makes them look more slim than they are but the pictures from the magazine and this one from the website shows that they really are a little more slouchy.  I hated them at first, but I actually quite like them now.

Next up I made this top, which is BWOF 05-10-129.  I love, love, love this top way more than I had expected.  I first made this here and I loved the first version but I felt it could use a few alterations.  I lengthened the bodice by 2.5cm and I lengthened the peplum by a further 2.5cm.  I left the patch pockets off because I hate them and I think the top still works without them.

This is a close up of the fabric that may not show in the other photo.  It's a slightly textured linen with a gold sheen on some of the threads.  This is a record for me; I bought a piece of fabric and sewed it almost immediately!  It was from Spotlight, ironically.  Have I mentioned that the only fabric shop in the WHOLE OF TASMANIA is Spotlight??

 

 

I am rather fond of this fabric, even though I usually dislike wearing linen.  Of course, this top also has one of my mistake design feature mirror image labels.

I even managed a passable mirror shot of the top with the skirt from last week.

 

Back to packing while I decide what to sew next.  I have some animal print ...

SWAP is finally started ...

It seems that no post of mine is complete without a rant about Spotlight.  When I first started planning my SWAP I wanted to use chocolate brown sateen as my base.  I visited Spotlight in Hobart and they had tons of black and every colour known to man - except brown, in fact they told me it didn't come in brown!  I decided to wait until I got home at christmas time and visit one of the stores up there.  Although I couldn't find brown sateen, I did manage to find a really lovely cotton suiting with a little stretch.  I don't know what it is, but it really is lovely with a great hand, great weight and just the right amount of stretch.

While I was contemplating my SWAP, I changed my mind and decided I would like to use black.  Safe in the knowledge that I had seen plenty of black, I went to Spotlight and guess what I found?  No black.  But they suddenly have a lot of chocolate brown.

As I am going home at the end of this month, I hope I will never have to set foot in Spotlight Hobart again.  Here endeth the rant.

And here starts my SWAP.

This is BWOF 02-11-103, which I made for last years SWAP.  It really is my favourite pencil skirt ever and I've made four versions of it and there will be more.

The picture of the front is overexposed and the spot on the hip is water.  I just happened to leave my failed birthday dress on Vera and this skirt looks good with it.  Maybe I'll shorten it to a top.

The back shot is clearer but the skirt still looks worse than it is in real life.  The reason for this is because I broke my much loved Sunbeam iron.  My friends at home have bought me a gravity feed iron for my milestone birthday, but I told them to hang on to it until I get home.  In the interim I have purchased a cheap iron that is total crap and irons very poorly.

This skirt is lined with a weird shaped bit of stretch charmeuse I got at the op shop for 50c.

The other thing that I've managed to cock up is printing my labels.  Some time ago now Kristy came up with a great idea for using t shirt printing sheets to make labels you can iron onto ribbon.  I've been doing this successfully ever since. That is, until this weekend.  When I printed out the iron on sheet, I forgot to reverse the print so when I ironed it onto the ribbon it was in reverse.  I now have 30 reversed labels.  I'm going to use them all because it makes me laugh.

 

 

I've almost finished a pair of pants from the same fabric, which I hope to photograph better than the skirt!

 

I've also made a hat from a corduroy remnant.  It's V8440 and I've also made this many times.  I've lined it with the last of the stretch charmeuse I used in the skirt.  This is for the Stashbusting Challenge and fits with the February challenge, which is to make something for someone you love.  This is for my best friend, Jo, who travelled down here for my birthday and flew home the very next day, which was her birthday.

So, this is what 50 feels like ...

I had two glasses of wine last night and that's it!

I stupidly didn't take any photos, but I ended up wearing Dress Plan C which was one I made last year and have never worn. I've forgotten the pattern number and I'm too lazy to look it up.

Dress Plan A.  I originally wanted to make V1151 but couldn't find ponte in a colour I liked.  There was boring black, washed out burgundy, dirty grey or cream.  I really wanted purple or orange or something bright, but here in fabric starved Tasmania I was fooling myself.
 I moved to Dress Plan B.

Prior to christmas I had traced BWOF 09-11-104 but never got around to making it, so I decided to give it a go.  I had 3m of poly chiffon that I bought at Spotlight last year for $3 a metre that was perfect.   It's a fairly simple pattern to make, but the double layer of chiffon with pleating and gathering makes it a little time consuming.  I changed the pattern contruction slightly.  For some reason the back skirt is a single layer in the pattern whereas the rest is double.  I made the back skirt double layer too, which means that all the inside seams are concealed and there is no hemming.

You can see from the original picture that the pattern has one sleeve and one silly 'shoulder scarf'.  I ditched the scarf and made two sleeves.  The side seam where the zip goes has one pattern piece cut on the bias and the other on grain, plus the zip goes across the gathered waist band. If you make this, it takes a bit of patience to get these seams to match, particularly as the bias cut front piece leeeeengthens when made in chiffon.

It's not my usual style, but it's cute and fits me well.  It's hard to see in this fabric, but the middle has a lovely draped section cut on the bias.  In hindsight, I would not cut chiffon on the bias, it stretches and hangs too much.  So why didn't I wear it?  It is more of a day dress and not suited to the fancy restaurant I was going to.  The tulip skirt is cute, it's comfortable and will look great with a little pair of flat silver sandals I have.

 

 

I had dinner with the wonderful women from work.  They gave me this lovely marcasite ring, photographed here on my wrinkly 50 year old hand.

 

 

 

I was up at 6.30am to take my friend Jo to the airport, so the birthday glow wore off pretty quickly.  Today I really am going to make a start on my SWAP!

Gifting, stashbusting and bloke sewing ...

I've managed all three of these in one garment.

I had this scant 1 metre of cotton check fabric that's been in my stash for about 15 years.  I bought it for $3 at a sale of remnants and bolt ends from a clothing store in Mullumbimby called Mokea.  I've pulled it out many times, but there just wasn't enough to make any of the things I had envisioned, so it always ended up neatly folded and back in the cupboard.

Somewhere in the middle of the night on Friday I remembered that I owe my friend, Bruce, a birthday gift from December and as he is a smaller guy, I thought I migh just be able to squeeze it out of this fabric.  I've only sewn for Bruce once before (a terry towelling bathrobe that didn't need fitting) and as he is about 2000km away I couldn't measure him, so I guessed.  I used KS3422 a pattern I've sewn for another similarly sized friend so I hope it comes close.  I know Bruce will wear it regardless, because he loves all things hand made.

I cut the outer yoke on the bias, only just managing to fit it into the odd little bits I had. I managed a pocket but there wasn't enough fabric to cut it on the bias, so it blends into the front and is hard to see in the first picture.

I didn't have quite enough fabric, so I cut the inside yoke, collar stand and under collar from a co-ordinating poplin remnant that I also happened to have in my stash.  The buttons are from stash, once again from an All Buttons Great and Small mixed bag and thread was all tail ends of reels leftover from other garments.  I'm really happy with this shirt and glad to have moved more fabric out of the stash cupboard.


This week I will make myself a birthday dress, but I really need to get started on my SWAP.