Keeping it simple

I have had this piece of multi-coloured plaid cotton sateen out on my cutting table for several days trying to decide what to make from it. It was an on-line purchase, so I didn't really see that it had an unbalanced plaid until I received the fabric and spread it out - had I realised this I would have bought more fabric because it would have made things far easier! I tried so many combinations of different dresses, shirts and skirts to get that dominant blue line equally balanced on both sides, and then I tried a simple shape but on the bias which also didn't work due to lack of fabric.

So in the end I decided to keep the pattern simple, and just make another dress with a plain bodice with a gathered skirt - less need for pattern matching that way. This is Burda 07/2015 #115, which I made just a few weeks ago from another cotton sateen. It's a simple pattern and easy to wear, so is a winner in my books.

I was really disappointed in the quality of this fabric. This cotton sateen from Nerida Hansen is quite thin and more like cotton lawn or poplin to me, which actually is quite perfect for this style of dress. I've since discovered that  the term 'sateen' refers to the weave and shine, and not the fabric weight, it's just that cotton sateen I've purchased from other stores are quite thick and stretchy that can be used for tailored pants and jackets etc which this fabric definitely could not. 

However what I most disappointed about was that this fabric was printed quite off grain which made it even more difficult to pattern match. At first I thought it might just be that the tight weave at the selvage might be causing the stripes to skew, because it was mainly at the edges that the stripes didn't line up. So I clipped the seams and tried to stream and stretch it straight which didn't really help.

In the end I cut the fabrics out single layer and ignored the grain lines, instead preferring to have the stripes lined up. A massive sewing crime I know, but the skirt and bodice seems to sit well enough and getting those stripes horizontal was more important to me.

Luckily this pattern doesn't have a centre back seam, so no pattern matching was required there, and for the skirt I used the full 150cm width so there's only one side seam which again reduces the need for pattern matching.

I probably should have cut out the fabric a bit more carefully so that the dark blue stripe is at my waistline and the dark green vertical stripe at the centre front continued through the skirt but now I'm probably overthinking it all. If this was a RTW dress I probably wouldn't be this picky at all! 

Anyway, after all that whinging I actually like this dress. It's light and simple to wear since it literally just slips on over my head with no zippers, buttons etc and the gathered skirt means it's not too tight or restrictive which is important after all these months of wearing stretchy sweat pants! And while the fabric quality is annoying, especially since this isn't the cheapest of fabrics, it is going to help me reduce my fabric purchases in future because I don't think I'll purchase any more fabric from this seller. So there is a silver lining in almost everything!

Suns out, dresses are on: Burda 07/2015 #115

It's only the beginning of spring here in Sydney, yet we hit 30 degrees (84F) here today - that doesn't bode well for when summer actually rolls around. Despite my love for sewing summer dresses I do not like the heat at all, but clearly I'm living in the wrong country!

After the last failure of a dress I decided to make a super simple dress that I've made before and I knew would fit with minimal effort. The real star in this project is the fabric - a bold graphic print cotton sateen from Nerida Hansen Fabrics. I'm not too impressed with the fabric though - it's rather thin and more like a cotton poplin or lawn than a sateen and it lost the sheen after the very first wash and the navy blue parts of the fabric look a bit worn out already. It works fine for this casual dress, but previous fabric I've bought from Nerida Hansen have been better quality than this, so it's a bit disappointing and I hope it's just this batch.

The pattern is Burda 07/2015 #115, which I made back in 2015 when I was doing my Burda of the month challenge. I still wear that dress, so I knew this one would work out fine.

There's not much to say about this dress - it has a boat neckline with a facing, cap sleeves, a gathered skirt with elastic waist and a simple bodice with a bust dart. I picked this pattern not only because it is simple, but because I didn't want too many seam lines to avoid breaking up that large scale print. I deliberately placed the waistline at the dark stripe to avoid the stitching being too obvious.

The back is similar to the front, just without the bust dart.

 

And it has the all important pockets in the side seams. I'm not a fan of pockets in fitted dress because it adds bulk and they usually gape open, but in gathered skirts like this they are just right.

So all in all a great project - perfect match of fabric and pattern. I can see this dress getting a lot of wear this coming summer.

Just another lovely dress: Burda 8/2015 #123

If you follow me on instagram (@kristysewsalot) you'll know that this year I am trying to sew up all the fabrics that I bought in 2019 that are still sitting in my stash. I'm also trying to finish up at 16 of my UFOs for good measure. This mini challenge follows the success of last year's efforts to sew all the fabrics I bought last year - fingers crossed I can do this too!

I'm off to a fairly decent start - of the 23 fabrics I need to sew this year and the 16 UFOs I want to finish I've already sewn 4 pieces and 4 UFOs (just my blogging hasn't kept up). My latest project is fabric no.4 from that pile - a fairly thick cotton duck like fabric in a gorgeous green with a flower print. I bought this from an online fabric store called Daily Like which has since sadly closed down.

My trusty back catalogue of Burda has come through with the perfect pattern - 8/2015 #123 which is a fairly simple dress:

Because my fabric is quite thick and without much drape, my version has turned out far more a-line than the beautiful white version modelled in the pattern photo. The pattern does recommend using wool or wool blend fabrics, which would make the skirt fall more closely to the body than my version.

Despite this, I still really like this. The high waist hits me at my slimmest point, and the pleated skirt means I can have a big lunch and not feel restricted like a normal sheath dress! This was also really easy to fit because I didn't have to grade from a size 34 at the bust to a 38 at the waist to a 42 at the hips - I just cut the skirt in the bigger size and made those waist pleats a little deeper to match the waist size.

The skirt at the back is just plain so it sits flat against the body. Thanks to the width of the skirt at the hemline there was no need for a walking vent, so it was really quick and easy to hem this dress.

Unfortunately I didn't have enough fabric to make those elbow length sleeves with the contrasting bands, which is a pity because I do love that lengthy of sleeve and the sleeve bands to match the neck band would have looked nice. But since this is made from a cotton fabric the cap sleeves work well to make it a summer dress instead. 

The neckband is essential a facing that is sewn to the inside and flipped out instead of the normal way of sewing it to the outside and flipping it in. This is cut from some scrap black cotton sateen and topstitched down.  

Overall I really like this pattern, and I would like to make it again in a wool crepe with elbow length sleeves for a winter dress. I didn't line this dress because I wanted it to be a summer dress and the thick cotton fabric isn't clingy at all, but a wool (or similarly drapey fabric) would require a lining.

I can highly recommend this pattern if you're looking for something quick, simple but just plain lovely. Luckily you can still download this pattern from the Burda Style website if you don't have a hoard of Burda magazines from the last decade or so like I do!

Things sewn in 2020: pants

 After more than 20 years of sewing, pants remain my nemesis. Sure they are fairly easy to make, but we all know that getting them to fit well is very difficult. Every time I make a fresh pair I make slight adjustments and I feel I am slowly getting there! Last year I made six pairs of pants, with varying degrees of success.

My favourite pants that I made last year is a wide leg pant from a a pattern that I have made a few times previously: Burda 10/2016 #113.

I made a pair in a blush pink medium weight linen that I made as per the pattern with the wide legs and the sewn on pockets on the front. I also made a black pair from wool suiting, that I narrowed the leg and left off the pockets.

I find that the wide leg style mostly gets rid of those annoying drag lines I usually get on the back of the thigh. When I narrowed the leg for the black pair they came back slightly, but it seems this pair has a good crotch curve for me. After doing Sarah Veblen's course on pant fitting over at patternreview.com I have discovered I need to have a long back crotch and to scoop it quite low to provide enough space for my ample and low hanging derriere.

My next favourite pair from last year are a pair that I haven't worn as yet (because they are work pants), but I love the shape and look even though I would never have thought I would wear pleat front pants ever again! This pattern has a v-shaped yoke at the front, which means that the pleats start lower on my stomach and the fabric is flat over the roundest part of my waist which makes it more flattering. There are a few wrinkles on the back leg but less than I usually get, so I can live with how these look.

These pants are made from a navy blue wool suiting, using Burda 4/2014 #110.

I made another pair of wide leg pants early in 2020 from a printed linen that has been in my stash for a long time. I wore these quite a few times to work with a blue blazer and the chartruse one in the photo below, and casually with a black or white tshirt. The colour has faded after so many washes, but these are still great pants. This is another Burda pattern of course, this time 2/2010 #110:

Finally, my least two favourite pairs made last year. I bought some lovely dark teal linen to make a suit, but the pants didn't turn out great. The pants are a bit high waisted, and since linen grows after wearing it for a while these pants have a tendency to slide down and look saggy. After wearing them a few times I decided I couldn't live with them as they were, and I've actually got these pants in my repair pile with the waistband pulled off. I'm going to take them in slight at the side seams and put some elastic in the back waist to help keep them up where they belong.

Apart from that they are ok, but not great. I found the welt pocket at the back gaped open, so I added a little tortoiseshell button to help keep it closed. There are wrinkles on the back leg as usual, indicating the crotch curve needs some more work on this pattern.

The pattern is Burda 12/2013 #106:

Finally I get to my least favourite pair but funnily enough I still frequently wear these because they are casual and lightweight and just what I need these days. These are Burda 4/2016 #117 and I like the pocket flaps and the hem cuffs, but the fit on these turned out just awful. Whiskers across the front, wrinkles on the back leg and a weird length - if the cuff is down it looks accidentally too short so I wear them turned up to look deliberately cropped.

But they are comfortable, and since they are made from a light cotton sateen they have been perfect for this cool and rainy summer we have been having here in Sydney this year.

 

This isn't the end of my pants fitting journey - I've given up making muslins because all I end up with are a bunch of poorly fitting calico pants that can't be worn anywhere! Instead, I'll keep on making slight adjustments until I reach my holy grail - a pair of slim leg pants with no wrinkles on the back leg.....

Things sewn in 2020: jackets

My love for sewing jackets, especially tailored jackets, continued this year despite having no real reason to wear one because I wasn't in the office for most of the year. I made 8 jackets last year, of which 5 are definitely corporate wear and 3 are more relaxed.

My most worn jackets last year are two bomber jackets both made from the same pattern but in very different fabrics. The first version is made from wool in black and white gingham, lined in black bemsilk lining. I didn't have any black ribbing, but used some black ponte fabric which has worked really well. The other version is made from a very lightweight cotton voile that I lined with a crisp cotton poplin not only to give it enough body but also to give some depth to the pale pink and pale green fern print. I used some grey ribbing from the stash. Both have been worn a lot last year and this year already (even the wool one because so far it's been a cold summer).

The pattern is from a 2014 Burda Easy magazine that I picked up at a Sydney Spoolettes fabric swap, and the pattern is indeed quite easy. Even the instructions for the welt pockets are pretty good for Burda.

My second favourite and semi-casual jacket is a linen kimono sleeved jacket made from a chartreuse heavy weight linen. This is made from a 2002 Burda magazine and I love the turned up cuffed sleeves and the slight stand up collar. I wore this a few times last year - both to the office with pants and casually with jeans.

My third favourite jacket made last year is a vibrant emerald green wool tweed jacket heavily inspired by a jacket that Peggy wore in Mad Men. I had no reason to make this other than I loved the fabric! But I will definitely wear it to work when things get back to normal. Again I used an older Burda pattern - 4/2014 #103 which I made no size modifications to despite using a firm woven fabric with no stretch even though the pattern calls for jersey or soft wool. I hand stitched the navy blue grosgrain ribbon around the collar which really hurt my fingers but it was worth it - I love the curved front hem and the neat fit from the princess seams. I plan a few more jackets from this pattern in the future.

Another work jacket that I made very early in the year and actually wore to the office a few times in February and early March is a blazer from Burda 9/2016 #108. I made this pattern a few years ago in a light pink soft wool crepe which I still wear frequently so I knew the pattern was good. This version is made in a teal heavy weight linen, lined in a glorious green silk. I made the matching pants that you can just see in this photo but they need some rework because they bag out quickly and get too big after about 2 hours of wear.

I have narrow shoulders and one of my obsessions is getting a neat fit around the shoulders - I'm always doing a narrow shoulder and a forward shoulder adjustment, and will re-sew a sleeve head multiple times until it's pucker free. So I don't know what I was thinking making a jacket with a quirky square sleeve head with a big pleat at the shoulder! I used a beautiful sage green wool suiting fabric that I picked up from a charity shop and thought it would look great in a fashion forward kind of way. Luckily I was able to re-cut the sleeve into a standard shape and resew it because it looked ridiculously pointy and just wrong. This is New Look 6013, and aside from those quirky sleeves it's a great looking jacket:

I do like jackets with a cool collar or some sort of design twist, and this asymmetrical wrap jacket from an old New Look 6619 pattern fit the bill perfectly. The front was actually meant to be asymmetrical - it just turned out that way when I positioned the button in the best place to fit my bust and shoulders! I actually prefer the way it looks like this. This is made from a white blue and pink tweed jacket, lined in a pale blue bemsilk from the stash (I was really big on using stash fabric last year).

 

Finally, my most recent and least favourite is a gorgeous fuchsia wool suiting that I tortured into a tailored jacket. The fabric is quite lightweight and drapey, which I picked because the collar of the jacket I tried to make is a scarf style in a shawl neckline. The pattern is Burda 7286 view A. Well that backfired because the collar would not properly at all when folded over on itself and I got so annoyed with it that I eventually ripped the collar off and made it a collarless jacket.

I even went to the effort of making welt pockets with flaps and a bound button hole, but this fabric just wasn't right for this style of jacket. I used light interfacing to block fuse the body pieces, but the more I steam pressed the jacket the more it bubbly and stretched out. It looks ok in photos, and while I probably won't wear it in person, someone clever on my IG suggested wearing it for video calls because the imperfections won't be noticeable! So that's my plan, because I don't want to waste this fabric.

 So I do have plans for a few more jackets this year, time will tell whether I get to actually wear them all in the office this year though!

White shirt: Burda 10/2008 #113

 

A white shirt may never go out of style, but it can certainly get grubby and stained beyond repair which is why I make a new one at least once a year. I wear a lot of sunscreen, and that tends to turn the cuffs and collars quite brown that even bleach can't remove. Usually I make a simple fitted button up shirt, but this time I decided to try something a little bit different with some cool details. This pattern is from Burda in 2008 when they were still Burda World of Fashion. I've made this shirt once before for my mum, and have been meaning to make myself one for at least the last decade.

This shirt pattern not only ticks all my boxes - three quarter sleeves with a button tab, raglan sleeves, vertical darts for fitting - but it also offers a little bit more with a looped tab down the front covering the button placket. It certainly adds quite a lot of interest to an otherwise simple shirt. The pattern is 10/2008 #113 which I can't see is available for download, but if you ever see this issue for sale I can highly recommend it, there are quite a few good patterns in it.

That looped strip was really quite simple to make - it's essentially just horizontal lines sewn to the shirt halfway between each buttonhole, and then press the fabric downwards towards the hem.

I did mess up the sewing order though - the strip should have been added before the collar, so that the top end of the extra strip would be enclosed within the shirt stand. I added mine after I had sewn the collar on, so I've done a dodgy fix of just topstitching it close to the collar stand seam line - it's clearly visible in the photo below but I doubt anyone else will get close enough to notice.

The fabric I've used is a thick textured white cotton that is probably a bit too stiff for a shirt, but it helps give the looped front and sleeves a bit of structure. It means the back puffs out a bit, which I could fix by making the vertical darts a bit deeper, but I think I'll leave it because it's not too bad.

I also find the way the raglan sleeves meet together as a point on the shoulder very satisfying - it's those little details that people who don't sew will never see but it makes me happy.

I found the sizing of this shirt to be quite generous - I made my usual size 34 at the shoulders and grading out to a size 40 at the hips. There is a lot of excess fabric around the arms - the armscye sits quite low and the sleeves are very wide. I think in a softer fabric with more drape this would be fine but it does feel a bit bunchy in this thicker fabric.

I think this is a fantastic pattern, and I can't believe I waited so many years before I made it! I think the loop strip could be added to almost any shirt pattern, and ribbon could be used instead of the shirt fabric so possibly another one of these style shirts is in my near(ish) future.

Ready for summer - wide leg linen pants

I had absolutely no reason to make a pair of summery linen pants since we've had torrential rain and cold weather lately (which is great, because we need all the rain we can get!). But since I'm at home going nowhere with more clothes than I currently need why not make whatever takes your fancy? Plus I know the warm weather is only just around the corner and this time I'll be ready if I ever go back to working in an office, going out with friends or just doing anything other than working from home.

These are Burda 10/2016 #113, which I first made as one of my Burda of the month challenge projects:

After years of wearing skinny pants, it does feel strange but also freeing to wear wide leg pants. Thankfully these aren't too wide - more just a straight leg from the hips down.

A few years ago I was on a mission to perfect pants fitting and used a whole 10m bolt of calico making multiple muslins and I still didn't make a pair I liked. I've realised that wide leg pants like these suit my lumpy legs best the fabric just hangs straight down, but still every time I make pants I continue to make fitting adjustments.

This time I used the crotch curve of the largest size but the leg and waist sizes in my normal size, and I also increased the height of the back rise by adding a wedge and spreading the dart open to keep the crotch curve correct - I didn't do this properly last time and it made the pants gape open at the back. I've read so many resources on pants fitting I can't remember where I learnt this from, but this is what it looks like:

I do love the wide curved waistband - it's quite comfortable and sits over my mum tum because these are high waist pants (well probably at the natural waistline which feels high to me!).

And how nice is this white top? I bought it from an op shop without even trying it on thinking I could salvage the fabric for a refashion but it turns out it fits perfectly and looks smashing with these pants:

The only thing I'm not sure on is the length of these worn with heels - these days I tend to wear flat shoes most of the time so that's the length I hemmed these to. They are perfect when worn with sneakers and flat sandals, so I guess that's what I'll have to wear with these pants

It's not often that I make pants and like how they look, but this pattern is a winner in my books. I've made these two times previously - firstly in 2016 in a white pinstripe cotton that sadly no longer fit and then again in 2018 in paprika linen which I do still wear frequently.

I never thought I'd be wearing and loving a pair of pale pink linen pants but it turns out that pink is a neutral that goes with just about any colour. As much as I love winter and the cold weather, I'm slightly looking forward to summer now so I can start wearing these pants out more than just the quick dash to the supermarket I did today!