Two pairs of shorts and a crochet hat

I've noticed that, more often than not this summer, when I get up in the morning I've been reaching for one of my short skirt Sallie jumpsuit hacks here and here- they're just so comfortable.  The only problem is that, with the short skirt any time I sit down (especially in public) I have to really think about what I'm doing so I don't flash anyone. So I've found that whilst they're great for lounging around the house - when I go out I want shorts to wear.

Unfortunately I still only have a couple of pairs of shorts that fit me this year - the pair I made here plus the sort of wearable muslin - so up next on my sewing list was more shorts.

First off the press was a yoked, pleated pair in black eyelet lace.  The inspiration for this pattern was the Paprika Patterns amber trousers.  I really love the yoke on those pants and wanted to try something similar.  I took my basic pants pattern and retraced it and incorporated the waistband into the main pattern pieces.  I then drew a V from each of the side seams down to points at the front and back and cut the pattern along these lines creating a yoke pattern.  The remainder of the pattern pieces I slashed down the middle and added 2.5"  to add a pleat into the shorts.  I wasn't sure if I wanted pleats at both the front and back - or just at the back, but in the end I went with both.

As far as material goes I was actually inspired by a recent trip to LL Bean.  It's been an awfully long time since I last went clothes shopping but when my in-laws were here last month they wanted to go to LL Bean so I took them for a trip to our local store.  Whilst they were doing their thing I had a bit of a browse around the store - now LL Bean is really not my style of clothing so there wasn't really a lot there that interested me, but one thing that did catch my eye was a little blouse made from eyelet lace.  I went over to have a look and found next to it a pair of shorts made from the same material.  I've always loved eyelet lace but I never wear it since I don't do blouses so the idea of using it for shorts really caught my attention, so the next time I was at the fabric store, when I saw the eyelet lace in black I knew I had to have it.  Of course a material with holes all over it is not great to use by itself for shorts so I went through my stash and found a piece of plain blue cotton that I could line it with - this way you get little pops of blue at each of the holes.  I cut all the pattern pieces out of both fabrics and then basted the two pieces of each pattern together to form a single fabric and sewed the shorts up from there.

I decided to go for a side zipper in these shorts as I didn't want to ruin the line of the yoke.  I had a zipper in the same colour as my blue under pieces so inserted that on the right hand side of my shorts. I did have plans to put pockets in the shorts but with the side zipper and the angled yoke it just ended up being way too hard.  I'm sure I could have figured it out if I really wanted to, but by the time I got around to it I was sick of sewing and just decided to leave them out and finish them up so I had something wearable.

To finish off the yoke I cut extra pieces of the yoke pattern in the black eyelet material and sewed it on at the top edge.  I then sewed clear elastic into this seam to make sure the shorts do in fact stay up (that the biggest problem with having a waist the same size as your hips - keeping your pants on without creating a muffin top look).  The lower edge of the inner yoke was turned under 1/4" and then top stitched in place for a clean finish inside.

I ended up cutting about 2 inches off the length of the shorts as I found that with the pleats in front and back it just looked too voluminous when they were longer but I'm happy with how they turned out.  They're a totally different shape to what I normally wear and I'm not sure how flattering they really are, but they're cute and comfortable so to me they are a win.

The second pair of shorts I made were made from a pattern that I've had in my stash for quite some time.  I actually took it from my mum's pattern stash.  The pattern is a Hot Ones by McCall's pattern 2800 Its a 1970's pair of hot shorts.

I've always loved the look of that pattern, and I've seen photos of mum wearing shorts she made from this pattern back in the day and she looked way cool, but I've always been put off by the sizing.  The pattern I have is for a 25.5" waist and a 35" hip.  That's a good 6" too small around the hips and 10 inches too small around the waist.  Still I decided to give it a try.

I laid the pattern pieces on a sheet of paper and traced around them.  I then put my shorts pattern over the top, lining up the inner crotch point and found that the crotch curve and inner leg seams very nearly matched and the side seam was a very similar shape, just 1" wider.  I so redrew the side seam 1" out from the original pattern, cut the pieces out and basted them together.  I ignored the darts from the original pattern as I don't need much waist shaping - and it was actually a pretty good fit.  I did have to redraft the waistband facing to account for the extra width and the removed darts but I tried to keep everything else the same.  

 I even went so far as to make my own sew in interfacing that the pattern called for.  I thought about just interfacing the inner waistband facing piece, but I decided I wanted to stay as true to the pattern as possible so I ironed interfacing onto an old thin cotton sheet and then used that as the sew in interfacing and it worked perfectly.

I had some major problems following the instructions for the installation of the zipper in the front, and in the end I just ignored the instructions and made it up as I went along.   I then took the pearl look buttons that I removed from my Beatles shirt when I refashioned it and used those as the buttons on the front of the shorts - I think they go perfectly.

The material that I used for these shorts is a Robert Kaufman corduroy fabric that I picked up during my first Pattern Review Meetup at Quilters Way.  I only just had enough material for the shorts after using a lot of it to make a pair of shorts for L.  There is now just one tiny piece left which I'm hoping is big enough to make a new pair of shoes out of!

I decided early on that I did want pockets in these shorts so drafted a pocket pattern to fit in the side seams. But I really don't like how it turned out.  They have a bad tendency to gape at the sides and it really ruins the look of these shorts, but I'm probably too lazy to take them out now.

Even though I basted all the pieces together and tried them on to make sure the fit was OK before sewing the shorts properly, I still had to do a few fitting adjustments once the shorts were finished I ended up having to take the lower outside leg seam in about 5/8" and the center back seam about 1/2" at the top.

My other issue with these shorts is the length - I love the look of this length but they have a bad tendency to ride up between the thighs when you walk so I spend a lot of time tugging them back down.  So unfortunately all in all this is not my favourite pair of shorts - I'm sure they'll get worn occasionally though as the material is just so beautiful I can't resist it.

And finally just a quick word about the hat.  I think I've tried crocheting a hat every year for the past 3-4 years and never get it quite right.  This years trial is the best I've done so far.  I crocheted this hat using this pattern as a basis.  I originally found this pattern and planned on following it properly, but then  I decided that I wanted to use some black nylon yarn that I had in my stash.  Unfortunately this yarn was a lot thinner than that specified by the pattern and required a much smaller crochet hook than specified as well so I had to make a few modifications as I went along.   I followed the pattern to make the star on top of the hat.  By the time you finish the star the pattern has you start working on the band and then moving onto the brim, but when I finished my star the hat was still quite small.  So I continued working in a similar pattern until the crown of the hat fit nicely on my head.  I then picked up the pattern again and followed along, though I had a lot more stitches than required by now.  The rest of the hat followed the pattern pretty closely, with just the occasional extra row here and there when I thought it was necessary.  To get the brim to sit out nicely I took a basic piece of wire that I had lying around the garage and twisted the ends together - using duct tape over the ends to they didn't stick out and then crocheted the last round around the wire.  I've worn the hat a number of times this summer and it's stayed on my head beautifully, and is still nice and cool to wear so I call it a success.

A new Bikini

I had almost forgotten just how hard it is to get sewing done during the summer when the kids are out of school - there's just so much other fun stuff to do that it gets shunted aside.  I was having some sewing withdrawals for a while so, as I didn't have any knitting to do I actually spent a couple of evenings sewing last week.  I still can't decide if I like sewing in the evenings or not - Its definitely not my preferred sewing time, but I did enjoy it for a change of pace. (I reckon my husband didn't mind having full control of the television for a couple of nights either).

So what did I make - a new bikini.  I wanted to try out the new bra pattern again (the Bravo Bella Bravo Bra #2) and I've been wanting to make a new bikini top for a while so I decided to combine the two.

My plan for the bikini top was to use the basic bridge and band pattern from the bra and then draft a single piece cup to go with it - I thought if I used all the little pieces it would look too bra like - plus with the stretch material all those pieces weren't really necessary.

The material I used was a poly lycra in a blue and purple peacock type print.

They had this fabric in a couple of different colour ways when I bought it - but I figured that these were my colours so I had to go for this one.

I cut out the bridge and band as per the pattern and then it took only two tries to get a cup shape that I liked.  To make the straps I cut them first out of the swimsuit fabric and then out of nylon tricot cut so the stretch runs across the strap rather than along it and basted the two fabrics together.  I sewed the strap as one and turned it inside out and sewed it onto the top of the cups.

For the lower elastic band I used 1" wide knit elastic. and then I used 3/8" wide knit elastic for the bra edges.  I took apart another old bra for the underwires and inserted them in tricot casing as per the instructions.  I cut a second lot of all the bra pieces and full lined the entire bra to give extra support.

The straps I left free at the back so they can be tied as a halter and to finish off the back of the bra I cut the band about half way and finished off the edges neatly, then sewed two strips of 1" wide knit elastic at the top and bottom of one side of the band and snaps on the other side to close it.

I'm really quite happy with how this turned out.

For the bottoms I used the bottom half of the pattern I used for this swimsuit, but lengthened the crotch pattern section a bit to raise the pants up the leg.  Again I cut two pieces of each pattern piece so the pants are fully lined.  The leg openings were sewed together inside out then turned right side out and a piece of fold over elastic was sewed around each opening.  The top edge was finished with a piece of 2" wide knit elastic.

The pants ended up a bit skimpier in the backside than I had intended but otherwise  I like them.

I tried out this swimsuit at the pool this afternoon.  The top works fantastically, but the bottoms are way too loose. I need to take in a good 1/2 off each side seam and take the waist band elastic in at least 2 inches.

Update:  I did the changes I suggested above this morning and wore the suit to the beach all day today and the bottoms worked perfectly.  But I've decided on one further change - rather than tying the straps as a halter I'm going to have to sew them in at the back - probably crossed over.  The pressure on the base of my neck gave me a low grade headache all day today - no more halters for me!

A Beatles vintage T

A couple of months ago as my weekly sit and knit group, one of the other knitters told us about a yard sale going on just around the corner with boxes and boxes of old patterns.  Of course I couldn't resist so on my way home I took a quick detour.  Well she wasn't joking when she said there were boxes and boxes of patterns - and they were selling them cheap - like a whole box for $3.  What's a girl to do I ask you?  I thought about jut grabbing a box to two, but I've been trying to reduce my stash of junk lately and didn't want to add too much, so instead I sat there for probably close to an hour going through each of the patterns to see what I would like.  I ended up finding probably 20 patterns or so that I really liked and that might even fit and left it at that.  A pretty good haul for $3.

One of the patterns I found was a Carefree Pattern from McCall's 4488.

View C is what I bought this pattern for.  The pattern is in a size medium 14-16 which is probably the closest size to my bust size though still too small in the waist and hips, but that should be easy enough to rework. However since I had no idea jut how the size would work I wanted to try it with some "not precious" material.  I went through my stash and couldn't really find anything I was willing to waste so went to my to be recycled box of old clothes that no longer get worn but I can't throw out.

What I found was an old shirt that I bought many years ago - probably some time back in the 90's.  The shirt is long sleeved and button up but made from a very light weight fabric so  I could never find an time to wear it.  However the print on the fabric is fabulous - a psychedelic Beatles theme.  I decided it was about time I remade the shirt.

I cut the shirt apart at all the seams and started laying out the pattern pieces.  The back pattern piece fitted onto the back piece of fabric fairly well - the only adjustments I made were taking 5" out of the length  (which I would have done anyway as at 5'1" all patterns are too long for me) and removing the seam down the back putting the pattern on the existing back fold.

I did not have enough fabric to make the big puffy sleeves so I went for the sleeves on view E instead.  I cut these out of the top of the existing sleeve pieces and that left enough to get the bust piece out of the remaining sleeve fabric.  The problem came from getting the lower front piece out of the existing shirt front pieces.  I had to put an extra seam down the center front, but I also did not have enough width so ended up having to piece an extra strip down the side of the front piece to make it work.

It's a bit hard to see the seam lines in all that pattern! 

The top half of the original front pieces were then used for the facings with just a little left over.

Once the front pieces were sewn together I followed all instructions from the pattern with the exception of putting the sleeves in flat then sewing the side seams rather than doing the side seams first the setting in the sleeves.

At the very end there was just one more little variation - I had cut the front and back pieces with the existing hem on the bottom - with the exception of  a 5/8" wide section on one side of the center front.  To disguise this I took the center front seam up about 2 inches and then cut on an angle till the piece that was missing was no longer an issue creating a triangular vent at center front, this was turned under and top stitched.

The final verdict - I like it but there are a few issues that I would change if I were to make this pattern again.

• The fit around the waist and hips is fine even though it should be too tight according to all the measurements, 
•  It could probably do with a large bust adjustment as the angled seam at front does not sit right under the bust but rather about 1/4 of the way up the bust.  
• The sleeves are a smidge too tight and could do with an extra 1/4-1/2 inch around the bicep. 
•  Finally there is a bit of pooling in the lower back but if I just put in the back seam like I was supposed to that would disappear.

Simple Summer Basics

I've been trying to do a bit of wardrobe building lately, churning out some simple pieces that were needed by each of us. L got two new pairs of shorts and a jumpsuit.  J one new pair of shorts and a tank top and I got a simple dress for wearing to the pool.

L's first pair of shorts were made from an old pair of my pants. The pants were still good they never got a lot of wear as I didn't like the colour on me and I never had anything to wear them with.  Plus they were a smidge small when I bought them and I've put on weight since then.  So I turned them  into shorts for L.

I cut the pants down each seam leaving all pockets in place and cut each piece down to the size required.  The only problem that I had was that the back pockets were in the wrong place and ended up being chopped off on the final product.

Oh well I doubt she would have ever used them.  I cut off and cut down the existing waist band, elastic ad drawstring and was able to reuse that as well.

The only thing I did wrong was forget to straighten off the legs for the hem so when I went to turn up the hems I had a problem.

L's second pair of pants were something I've been thinking about for a quite some time.  A while ago I was asked  by a friend to make some pillows for her yoga studio.  They wanted half of them in a teal green and half in a purple.  I found some beautiful linen to make them out of and when I cut the triangular pillows out I ended up with quite a few right angle triangles left over.  Not enough material to make anything out of by them selves, but I figured it'd be great to patch work the two colours together and make something and that's what I did here.

I cut a bunch of 4" square and sewed them together in alternating colours then used the resulting fabric to cut out a pair of shorts.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the waistband so in the end I just ended up sewing a piece of 2" wide black elastic as a waist band.   All seams were finished on the overlocker to avoid the seams fraying.

 A very simple pair of shorts,  but quite striking.  I really love this pair of shorts.

L's jumpsuit was made using the Closet Case File Sallie jumpsuit pattern.

I started with the size 0 pattern, took about 3/8" off the width of the both the top and shorts.  I also raised the V neckline quite a bit so that I could eradicate the back tie - I figured that would be too hard to a 8 year old to do up.  I puled the elastic a bit too tight along the neckline which has resulted in some puckering but at least it stays on her shoulders.  The shoulder width was bought in by about 1" and tapered to the underarm.  The pants were cut off to shorts length - with about a 4.5" inseam length and I cut down the size of the pockets a bit to make sure they fit within the smaller shorts.  I'm very happy with how this turned out and L loves it.

J's shorts were made out of three cushion covers.  I was given these cushions, covered in corduroy in bright primary colours, quite some time ago, but I don't generally like having cushions on my couch so the covers were resigned to my "to be remade into something else" pile.  I finally got around to reusing them.  There wasn't quite enough fabric to make the shorts out of a single colour.  I thought about doing front and back in different colours but decided that would look a little weird and decided to go with stripes of all three colours instead.  They turned out a but too big, but J will grow into them.

The tank top pattern for J was taken from L's tank top pattern and modified to look a bit more boyish.

 Unfortunately I didn't do a good job on the armhole and neckline binding and the top half of it looks all puckered now.

I thought about taking the bindings off and redoing them, but that would mean getting J to take it off which has proved to be a problem so far - he loves this shirt which is very flattering - maybe I'll just make him a second one!

Finally for myself I made a new dress.

This is now the third attempt to use this material.  It began it's life as a pale yellow knit fabric.  I used it some of it to make L a shirt a couple of years ago but it was never a good colour.  Always looked washed out and showed stains really easily so last year when I wanted to make a pool dress I decided to take the rest of the material and use it up.  I made a dress using no pattern.  I cut a hole in the middle for my head, added elastic around the waist and to gather up the shoulders, a small bust dart to give some shaping to the garment and I was done.  But still the colour looked terrible.  So I threw it in  bucket of purple dye.  The  colour took pretty well, except around the gathers at waist and shoulder where I got more of a tie dye look.  I wore the dress to the pool for a season, but never really loved it so I decided to remake it again this year.

I went back and pulled out my Sallie jumpsuit pattern with short skirt.  There ended up being less material available than I originally thought there would be, but I managed to cut the kimono top pattern out of the existing skirt and had just enough in the original bodice to make a skirt if I put a seam up center front and center back.  The left overs were then rummaged through to find pieces just big enough to make the pockets.

I didn't want to line the bodice of this dress so instead I used a heap of fashion elastic from Walmart to finish the neckline, armholes and pockets.

 

The bottom hem I didn't bother finishing, but I cut it with a bit of a baseball look scooping up at the side seams and making it slightly longer in the back than in the front.

The resulting dress is ok for the pool but not the best dress in the world

And finally a bra......

For the longest time I've been thinking and planning about making myself a bra.  It's been on my to do list really ever since I got back into this sewing game.  About a year ago I tried to create a soft bra pattern and made my very first bra but it was in no way a success and has sat unworn in my draw ever since.

 About February this year I had another crack at the bra making, taking a free pattern from the internet and trying to work out how it all went together.  I almost got there but it just wasn't great and those last few finishing steps were beyond me and once again the project got sidelined.

During Me Made May I made a pledge to try and create an entire me made wardrobe including bras, I didn't got around to it during May, but about 1 week ago I finally got around to buying a bra pattern. The  BravoBella Bravo Bra #2.

I did all the measurements suggested to figure out what size to use and decided on a 36E.  I printed out all the relevant pattern pieces.  The first thing I noticed about the pattern was that there is no scale.  I printed it out at 100% and hoped that it was to the right scale and started cutting my fabric.

I found some white nylon tricot at my local fabric store and bought it along with some power net.  I cut the cup pieces out of the tricot.  The bridge and band I originally cut out of power net, but after seeing just how much stretch the stuff had I decided to cut them out of tricot as well and decided to use both fabrics sandwiched together.   Looking at the white tricot cups I decided that it was just too boring and cut the second layer of the cups out of some purple satin brocade that I had in my stash.

I followed the pattern instructions to make the straps, then put the cups together and sewed the cups to the bridge.  I don't have any new underwires, just ones out of old bras so I made my own underwire casing out of bias cut satin and sewed them onto the bridge.  The thing that I found most useful in the pattern were the instructions for cutting the elastic to length.  Again I don't have the right plush elastics for bra making but I made do with some basic knit elastics from my stash and sewed them on per instructions.  I sewed on the straps and tried the bra on ......problem......it's way too small.

The band does not come close to meeting at the back - I added a piece of 2" wide elastic at center back just so I could try it on!

and the cups are very much too small (plus one of the cups ended up smaller than the other  not sure how that happened).

So I didn't bother finishing the bra at this point.  I think it was a combination of less stretch in the band due to the tricot and the non stretch satin as well as the elastic I used, plus of course the cup size was just too small.

After taking a day or two off I started all over again. This time I went up to a 38G.  I printed out the band and bridge pattern pieces at a size 38 then modified the bridge so that I kept the height of the 38 but the width of the 36.  The back band I cut at size 38 and the cups I cut at 38G.

I cut the inner cups out of tricot again as well as the band and bridge pieces.  This time for the outer fabric I decided to go with a very stretchy knit fabric that was left over in my stash from this project.

I think I sewed every seam in this bra at least 3 times.  I don't know what was wrong with me, but I kept putting things together wrong and having to rip them out and start again.  but in the end I think the bra ended up well...acceptable.

I made a few other changes to the pattern this time around.  Rather than using 5/8" elastic around the band I decided to go with 2" wide elastic.

 In order to have the back the right width for the  hooks and eyes I cut the back band at and angle from the top of the side seam down to the center back.

I like the way this sits under the arm - no wiring poking up into my arm pit - but it does mean that the bra sits further down my back that a bra usually would.

Everything else was made as per the instructions.  This bra turned out better than the original.  The band is the right size now, but the cups are too big.  Once the entire bra was finished I pinned out a tuck from the top down to just below the bust point and sewed it in so that it fits.  You can just see the seam in the picture below.

This bra is wearable, not the most supportive, but seems to be comfortable.  .

I will definitely try to make this pattern again with the same band size but smaller cup size and a more stable cup fabric.   I don't love the shape of this at the moment - I feel like my boobs are spread out too far but I don't know if that just because the cup size is wrong.   I'll give the pattern one more try before I make up my mind for good.

And in the mean time this bra is definitely wearable and I don't have that "get this bra off me" feeling at 4pm with it that I have with a lot of my store bought ones.