All's Well that Ends Well.

It started in Devon where I was looking for some denim to make some trousers and visited Malbers Fabrics.  I came across exactly the fabric I wanted but, woe, there was only 80 cm left on the roll.  However the retailer offered me a good price to take that remaining fabric so how could I resist?  I did not intend to make anything with it immediately but an attempt to draft a skirt for use with a particular fabric did not work out so I was wanting a quick make as a form of solace and set about thinking how I could use that denim.
I had a pattern that I had hacked many times, very simple - just 2 pieces- back and front and 2 darts to each piece.  I also had a splendid open-ended zip, silver with flashes of pink, green and yellow, just begging to be show-cased somehow.  That's why I thought of making a slim skirt with a zip front.  Easy! easy!- just add a grown-on facing to the centre front of the skirt and insert the zip down the front, instead of a short zip at the left side as I usually did.  So I just squeezed the adapted pattern on to the available fabric and cut it out.
When I had sewn the darts I realised that I had adapted the back instead of the front- the pieces look so similar and my writing in pencil on the pattern pieces had faded from age and use (as had my eyesight).  I thought "Why not have the zip at the Back?"  Because it is not comfortable to sit on and might break under stress from my fidgety backside, that's why.  Why not have a centre back seam and cut out another front piece? Because I only had scraps left, that's why.
However, from the waist down, again due to fading with age, my front and back are not too dissimilar in shape.  I thought I could get away with wearing the skirt back to front, the only problem being that the back darts  were not quite right at their tip if worn as the front of the skirt.  If only I could disguise the dart tips in some way....

Pockets!  Jiggling around with the remaining scraps I managed to cut out 2 small pockets, just big enough to get my hand into.  However plain pockets seemed to be rather boring and I wanted a quick, simple embellishment.  Recently Ana of Coco Wawa Crafts generously had given me a lovely enamel pin as a present for the tiny bit of help I gave her with a knitting project. I love it and it made me think that a pink heart would be a ideal motif, especially because the zip has hints of pink in it.

Doesn't the pin look good?  I love the idea of proclaiming your allegiance to a craft via a pin.

I had some Gutterman thread in varying shades of pink so I used this to decorate the pockets and to top stitch along the zip sides and at the hem line.  However I do fear that the skirt may run in future washes, though I did pre-wash it, and the pink stitching may be obscured by blue dye then.  Time, and the washing machine, will tell.

Instead of a separate waistband or a facing I simply applied curved petersham to the top of the skirt.  This meant that, before I sewed up the side seams, I could gauge the diameter of my waist simply by looping the petersham around myself, marking where the waist band should begin and end.  I could  see then if I needed to take in or let out the side seam allowances for the skirt to fit at the waist before I sewed up the side seams.  The zip comes up to the top of the waist and to make the fastening doubly secure I extended the petersham on the left hand side and placed a snap fastener to prevent the zip opening accidentally if it came under stress.

 I am so pleased with this skirt, especially when I realised how well it went with the cowl-necked Freya top that I made last year from Tilly and the Buttons book "Stretch".  I may look grim in the photo below but really I am very satisfied.

Once upon a time in Jaipur ... A Dabu jacket- Part 1.

This is the story of how this jacket came into being.

Actually the tale begins four years ago in Myanmar in this weaving shed.

Having been trekking in the hills in the North where there was no time or opportunity to wash my clothes- any water requirements meant a trek to the village pump-

so my rucksack contained only dirty laundry and I longed for something clean to wear.  Hence my purchase there of this rather boring looking hand woven top.

It has been my constant travelling companion ever since.  It can be worn as a blouse (loose and cool in hot countries) or layered over a t-shirt or wool sweater (depending on how cold the weather gets), has pockets and doesn't show the dirt.  I have been meaning to copy it for some time and the recent Club "Trace your favourite garment" Sewalong gave me the impetus to do so.  I used tips from this video  by Ana of CocoWawa Crafts on Youtube.  Watching it really helped me to approach copying in an organised manner, especially the advice to make a list of all the pieces you need to trace before you start.  I used my current favourite tracing material, horticultural fleece, to trace off the pieces; I describe my method on this blog previously here .  Using this method I could pin the pattern pieces together after tracing and check the fit and whether the seams were true.  Right first time!- Thanks Ana.
The story now moves to Jaipur, March 2017, where I joined a delightful group on one of the textile holidays organised by Jamie Malden of Colouricious
This holiday focused on Block Printing using traditional carved wooden pattern blocks.

 We enjoyed a number of workshops at different venues trying out block printing methods.  One of these was dabu, a mud-resist form of printing that has been in existence since at least the 7th century A.D.  A thin paste is made from a mixture of mud, gum, lime and wheat chaff and the wooden pattern block dipped into this and applied to the prepared fabric- just like this:

Next sawdust, of which there is plenty from the making of the wooden printing blocks, is sprinkled over the printed fabric and it adheres to the wet sticky paste.

The fabric is then left to dry in the sun.

Once dry it is taken to the indigo vat for dyeing.

 The area covered by paste and sawdust resists the indigo dye.  You can see the areas of resist clearly on these cloths that have just been removed from the vat and spread to dry.  The dabu still remains on the cloth.

Subsequently the cloth is washed to remove the paste and reveal the lighter design.  This is a simplified explanation of the technique (much more complicated designs can be achieved with multiple dyeing) but this is exactly how I made the cloth for my jacket.

Coming in Part 2- the making of the jacket.  In the meantime I leave you with some pictures of fellow sewists in the village where we went to do this type of printing.
A tailor making a shirt :

A woman stitching a quilt: