A skirt toile

I wanted to try out this Lekala pattern 5687 and use up one of my stash fabrics. Just a quick and dirty project without expectation that I would be able to wear this. That's why I picked the fabric in the first place - pattern matching of the curved pieces to the dotted fabric is pretty much impossible.

I have worn this skirt a few times, but I am fully aware that the pattern distribution isn't the greatest. I'm not sure how often I'll wear it in future. In the garden certainly!  Not so much where people can see it though...

This is the skirt I ended up with:

The pattern is for a high-low skirt, like this:

This style is not for me, I didn't like the way it looked on me. The pattern website made the high-low contrast look quite minimal, that's not what the design is like.

How did I like the pattern?
I love the jigsaw puzzle element of this pattern, I think this could give a really interesting effect with unicoloured fabric and top-stitched pieces.  Not sure if you could stash-bust more easily because the smaller pieces could be cut out of odd shapes if you use remnants.

I didn't realise that these pieces would assemble a flat front and flat back piece. I expected this to make some kind of bell shape and was disappointed when it didn't.  I wonder if I could draft something like that?  Doing this with curved pieces would be tricky.  But that's a thought for another day.

If I had looked at the paper pattern pieces a bit closer I might have realised how much higher the front is in contrast with the back. I don't like this style, and feel it looks really dated.

If I make this again I am going to redraft the front to be longer, and suppress the low hem at the back to make both pieces the same length - and longer than my skirt when I chopped it off across.

It was a good project because I could figure out what the pattern is like "in real" and I used up the stash fabric that I didn't know what else to do with. That's a win-win in my book.

What have you sewn that turned out rather differently than you expected?  Do you have a garment that's very much of its time style-wise, did you change it in any way?  Please let us know in the comments!

A quick blue top

I wanted to make a really quick top to see if I could sew this over one weekend (TLDR: I didn't. It took me almost three weeks which is fast for me so I'm still happy).

I thought a sleeveless top would be faster.  But I hadn't counted on the various design elements taking longer. Also, why did I think a transparent fabric with polycotton underlining was a good idea if I wanted to go for speed?  That did not help, but it was the colour that most spoke to me of all my stash fabrics.

 

 

At first I was inclined to treat fashion fabric and underlining fabric as two layers (basically line it with the polycotton), but I quickly realised that you would be able to see the darts and pleats through the top fabric and going the underlining route was just better all round.

If you haven't come across the term: underlining is when you deal with two fabrics as if they were one layer.  You pin, pleat and dart them both together. It does make for a better appearance when the top layer is translucent or see-through, like mine.

It was all going quite swimmingly when I discovered that I had for some unknown reason sewn the longer outer curve of my back neckline band as if it was the outer curve of a collar. Except it isn't and this longer curve needs to be sewn into the back bodice piece. Outch.

The first picture shows the problem:

I'm a bit of a lazy sort, I did most certainly not want to re-cut the whole neckband thing (after I already did for a different reason: I cut one part wrong, oops. So I wasn't going to cut this out a third time), so I stitched the correct side shut, picked the longer side open and basted the fabrics on just one side, like so:

I made sure to pin the two layers of the back bodice so they wouldn't slip out of alignment and stuck the basted part of the neckband over the raw edge, basting it down. I felt it would take longer to press the band fold (from when I'd sewn the wrong side) back open, pin to the raw edge, stitch and press back flat.

Instead I top-stitched the band to the bodice (I know that's not how you're meant to do this), when I should have sewn this together at right side of tabric together first and top-stitched after that. Well, sue me, not doing it.

I think that emergency manoeuvre worked quite well:

The central part of the bodice is a touch puckered, but not too badly. I think I can get away with that. I have a very small pucker on the inside, who cares.

Because the top-stitching from the right side did not catch the second band layer, I then hand-sewed that layer down.  I used to loathe hand sewing but I've come to quite enjoy it. You can sit and think about pleasant things (or listen to a podcast or what have you) and enjoy the time to yourself.  I recommend a nice quiet hand sewing session, it's peaceful.

Then I pulled the basting stitches back out and called it done. Marvellous!

 

I also hand stiched the armhole facings down on the inside, into just the underlining layer, that was a touch tricky:

I sewed the front neckline shut a bit and now feel that it pulls a little. Next time I'll raise the neckline even more than I already did. This is pattern 2104 from Lekala that didn't look like the V-neck would end lower than the bust point - the image on the website definitely shows it even with the bust darts, but nope: the pattern that I taped together has a decolleté that plunges to about your navel. 

Not to worry, easy enough to raise that. Which I did. Twice. Still not high enough. I'll know for next time.

I had sewn this pattern twice before: once as a wearable toile, then in a patterned green fabric I really like. I do wear both. I thought I had made all the changes I wanted to make but found that I want to adjust this pattern some more if I made it again:

As I mentioned I'll raise the bottom of the V-neck another inch or inch and a half.  I also want to change the angle of the bust dart - I feel that the horizontal line looks okay as far as it goes, but I think an angle would make this more flattering. That will take more fabric, so I'll need to keep that in mind.  I haven't quite made up my mind if I want an angle from lower down in the side seam, or even one down from the armhole. It will also depend on the fabric I'll want to use.

Now this top is almost done, the only thing I forgot was that I wanted to stitch two double-pointed darts into the back to take it in a bit at the waist. I can easily add this later. When I get my sewjo back.

Long story short: I made life a bit more difficult with my choice of fabric (but I so love the colour so it was worth it), the hem didn't quite work out because I overlocked it too early - I should have waited until I stitched everything else. The top fashion fabric layer turned out to be a little bigger than the underlining fabric but better that than the other way around. When I folded up the hem I let the top fabric sit a touch longer to even things out. It worked out, that's the important thing.

Another project

 I'm quite pleased with how this blouse turned out.

I had wanted to use one of my sleeve drafts and I also had this lovely Rose and Hubble fabric (this is the black and white colourway, I also bought some in the blue and white).

I should have paid more attention to which blouse pattern I picked - I had to adjust the shoulders too much on this one because this started out as a sleeveless top with those silly cap sleeves.  They look horrible on me, just make me look like a prize boxer: huge shoulders, it's totally the wrong proportion on me.

I finally managed to fit my sleeve template into the newly adjusted armhole, phew.

The sleeve is meant to have a peaked cuff.  The cuff is only attached at the bottom and was supposed to stand away from the sleeve at the peak.  I did adapt the pattern to give the cuff more room at the peak by slashing it and pulling the two pieces apart at the top (hinge at the hem/bottom) - leaving a gap of 3-4 mm. I didn't realise that this wouldn't be enough.  Because the cuff sits on top of the lower sleeve layer, it just doesn't leave any gap. Ah right, I'll know for next time.

This is a not very good photo of the sleeve:

I found some great buttons that go well with this:

I sewed the V-neck down from the right side by edge-stitching at about an inch, to make sure that the facings would stay down.

Little girl's dress - Burda 9420

I made a child's garment for the first time.

Burda 9420.  This pattern was easy to make:

I made version B because I didn't have enough of the blue fabric for version A (longer, without the ruffle).  I would have liked to angle the pockets inwards a touch more and would do that if I did this with two pockets again.

The top of the pocket folds in.  Depending on what the revers of a fabric looks like, I could also fold this out and under a little, and sew across before attaching to the dress. It is fine like this though.

I started out with two even sides along the back slit. By the time I was done, the left-hand side was a touch longer.  This has happened to me before and I don't quite understand it.  Perhaps I did slightly different seam allowances on either side when attaching the facing? Otherwise this is very odd indeed.

The little black button is perhaps not a little girl colour but I like the pretty texture of it. It was also the size I was looking for. I made the loop on the left-hand side with embroidery thread in its full six strands. That came together very quickly which I really appreciated. The button is just sewed to the side of the vent so it sits nicely centred when closed.

I sewed the ruffle down with suitably pink yarn.  That was not in the instructions but I thought it would make it hang nicely. Don't know if sewing this down is a good thing once this gets washed and needs to be pressed. I'll ask the little girl's mum to tell me so I'll know for next time.

I enjoyed making this a lot and think that it will make a great repeat pattern. I might use the binding on the armholes next time - I didn't have enough of the blue fabric so I went for a baby hem which unfortunately twists outwards a bit in the tightest under-arm area.

I will keep an eye out for a fun, bright and colourful 'kids' fabric for the next one. I can't remember if I heard mum say that her daughter doesn't like pink? Hopefully this shade is okay but that's something to keep in mind too.

I'm already wondering if I can use up some fat quarters and colour block it: use a fabric for the "bodice" part and at least one other fabric for the "skirt" part. And if a fat quarter isn't wide enough then maybe in pieced vertical stripes with a third fabric?

It would also be nice if I could draw sleeves for this. Short ones would be enough. I should be able to Frankenpattern this from somewhere else - the downside is that I wasn't exactly planning on starting a stash of kids patterns! Oh well, it might help me use up fabrics.

A great project and I can recommend the pattern!  You don't have to do a zip so this would be suitable for slightly more advanced beginners than complete new-to-sewing starters. If you are looking for a small and first project: do a gathered skirt made from two rectangles like Simplicity 9938.