A year in Review!

Its that time of the year again - time to take a look at what I've been sewing and see whats been working and what hasn't.

Based on my pie chart I've done a bit of everything this year - a total of 45 items sewed - well at least that's whats made it to the blog.  There was some other sewing projects - mainly things for my sewing classes and a few other projects for presents but as far as sewing for myself goes here's a quick round up of what has worked and what hasn't

First up - my most prolific category this year was cardigans and sweaters.

I made a total of 5 cardigans and 2 sweaters - 2 of which were knitted rather than sewn.  The most worn out of these is strangely enough the boucle (middle bottom) cardigan.  Whilst it was technically a muslin for the houndstooth cardigan it actually gets worn more - I find it warmer and it also matches better with the majority of my wardrobe.  A close second is the grey hooded cardigan.
Out of my two knitted sweaters Whilst I love the teal and purple cardigan I find myself reaching for the rainbow sweater more often.  The coral cardigan and the Lilian top have been worn a few time but they are not top tier.

Next up is tops.  Whilst these all get worn there is definitely a clear winner here - the simple green top (bottom right)  - If it's not on me it's in the wash.  The rest of these are just a bit Meh - I wear them but none of them excite me.  The batwing (top right)  is probably in second place but it tends to strangle me a bit - I'd like to revisit this pattern and see what I can do with it.

I struggled with pants fitting a bit this year.  The peacock Jeans are by far the winner in this category and are worn on a regular basis.  The rest not so much. 

The wool pants (center top) have been recycled - they shrunk in the wash quite a bit - to the point that I handed them down to my son - at which point they accidentally ended up in the dryer and that was then end of those. The blue stripe joggers (top left) are worn a bit but the purple(bottom left) and striped wool (center bottom) are often found languishing in the back of the wardrobe.

I made a total of 4 jumpsuits this year and they have all been worn quite a bit.  My favourite is the black and white butterflies and this is probably the most worn.  I love the blue jungle print sirocco but the unfortunately placement of the yellow just bumps these into second place.  The green panels Sally jumpsuit is great but a bit low cut for some occasions.  The winterized Sirocco is good, now that I've remade the top, but a it inconvenient now that I need a sweater every day.

Dresses - Clear winner is my rainbow zipper dress.  I love this dress and have worn it quite a bit.  I really love the chiffon dress but as it was made at the end of the summer it hasn't had more than one outing - I'll see how it goes next year.  The gold Keilo I don't love as much as I thought I would - it just doesn't fit as nicely as my first Keilo.  The Red dress is great - but I just haven't found many occasions to wear it.

Coats - I really love making coats and I love all three of these.  But unfortunately I find that I'm not wearing the first one as much as I would have expected.  It's just too heavy to be practical.  The black and yellow is well worn and well loved and I don't think I've taken the blue coat off since I finished it, so those two are definitely winners.

I spent quite some time this year working on active wear patterns.  Not sure I've got it yet.  These are all OK, but none of them are great.  The red roses leggings are definitenly my favourite and also the most worn but that's based purely on fabric not on pattern.

I don't know if its just the season but I'm just not really interested in wearing either of these - even in the hot gym - I'll see how they go in summer.

And finally there is the miscellaneous category.

The bras are all well loved - there is actually one more that I never got around to blogging that is actually my favourite - made using the same pattern as the blue and green but with slightly more supportive fabric it's my go to anytime it's clean.

The swimmers I love and wear anytime I'm near a pool. And the bag is in constant use day to day.  The shoes were worn plenty when the weather allowed to the point where they are just about worn out - will need to make new ones next spring.

So overall a pretty successful year.  I think my biggest take away is I need to do more work fitting pants. I feel like every time I think I've got it something changes (usually my weight) and I have to start all over again.  I think I'd also like to see more brightly coloured tops - but as per usual finding the right fabric is the problem.

You may have noticed that most of my makes this year were cold weather gear - I took a trip back to Australia during the summer months this year so went from Winter to Spring to Australian winter, came back and had one month of Summer and then it was Autumn again and back to Winter so I really didn't have time for much summer sewing - hopefully next year!

A Winter Coat

I had no actual plans to make a new winter coat this year - I always WANT a new coat but I figured that at this point I probably didn't NEED a new one....But then one day I walked into the fabric store and right there in front of me was this fabric. 

Now I had made a deal with myself.  I had to go to the fabric store to pick up some zippers and fabric for my sewing class but I wasn't going to buy anything for me....I wasn't......But the minute I saw this fabric that went out the window.  I didn't even hesitate - I had to have this fabric.

So we may as well talk fabric.  This is an upholstery fabric - I always seem to gravitate to upholstery fabric for my coats.The background fabric has a really soft brushed flannel like feel - I have no idea of the actual content but its woven in a two toned beige twill pattern.  Over the top is this beautiful embroidery in black white and blue.  Its a stunning pattern - very graphic - flowers but not florally if that makes sense.

Obviously I had no idea what I was going to do with the fabric - just that I needed it - so I bought up big - I think I got 5 or 6 meters just in case I decided on using a full length flared coat pattern.  The fabric was 60"wide, but there were big panels down each side that didn't have embroidery on them so I'm happy I bought the extra.

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Long boring post about my design and drafting process  - if you just want photos of the finished product feel free to skip to the end.

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The fabric then sat in my stash for about a month whilst I decided just what I wanted to do with it.

I knew it was going to be a coat, but what style - what pattern?

My first thought was of McCalls 7478 which I had used to make a coat for my friend.  But I just made a new full length fit and flared coat in January so decided I probably did't need another one - especially as I haven't found myself reaching for that coat as much as I expected.

But I do like my winter coat to be at least 3/4 length - OK so I have my length determined - somewhere around the knee.  Now onto pattern.  I started trawling through patterns.

I found the burda style 6596 pattern.  The longer version looked similar to what I was looking for. slightly flared skirt, hood zipper up the front, knee length.

 I also found Simplicity 8482 .  I really like the front waist seam on this pattern how it curves down in the front and also the shape of the sleeves on the version on the left.

Then there was Burda Bouclé Coat 138 | 09/16.  I love the back of this coat with the pleats.

I can't make a decision I want all of these features, but a pattern with all these features doesn't exist so I decided that once again I was going to have to draft a new pattern.

I sat down and started sketching and came up with this:

Now to figure out how to make it.

For the bodice I decided to start with my rainbow zipper dress pattern.  This is basically the shape I wanted but with zero ease.  Now I had to figure out how much ease I wanted to add.

I went through my closet to look at what works and doesn't in my existing coats.  I find that I'm not reaching for my fitted coats - I like the ones that are much more loose fitting.  In the ended I decided to add about 4.5 - 5 inches of ease.

To do this I used this website.  I started by rotating about 1/2"out of the princess seam at the arm hole.  The dropped the armhole down by 1" and out by 0.75" and then add 1" down each of the side seams.

On the center back seam I added about 1/8" at the lower edge tapering to nothing at the neckline and in the front I added about 1/4" to the center front seam.

I lowered the waistline at the back by about 2 inches (It's still probably an inch too high - if I were make it again I think I'd lower it more).  In the front I lowered the waistline 2" at the side seams and about 4" at the center front joining the two points with a straight line to give the V shape to the waistline at the front.

I then had to figure out the sleeves.  I wanted to make sure that they were wide enough so that the coat slips on easily and comfortably so I redrew my sleeve pattern adding width to account for the lowered arm hole and also the entire way down the sleeve.  I added a sleeve dart at the back of the sleeve for a bit better shaping of the sleeve.

Next up the hood.  This only needed a little tweaking from the zipper dress pattern.  The zipper dress pattern had the hood starting a good 2 or so inches down the front neckline but for this coat I wanted the neckline extended up all the way so I raised the neckline by about 1-1.5"  and took the corresponding amount out of the front hood piece.

I cut this pattern out of some old left over fabric I was donated by our local town hall (and very appropriate to the season) - Its about the right weight and I wont miss it.  I was pleasantly surprised at how well this bodice fitted.  It went on and off easily enough without being too oversized.

Next, the skirt. I started by cutting a full width of fabric about 29" long.  I folded it in half and then cut the same angle at the center front as is on my bodice.  I started pinning my fabric at the front and worked my way around to the back and then had to figure out what to do with the extra fabric.

I tried a number of different pleat combinations before deciding on just one big inverted box pleat.  I had originally planned to put side seams in the skirt but having done the skirt this way I was quite happy with the way it looked and decided to stick with this method.  This meant I wouldn't be able to do side seam pockets but I was sure I'd figure out something else.

Last but not least was the front closure.  I knew I wanted a zipper and was able to find a separating zipper in my stash in an off white colour that matched and was long enough. I then decided I would like a placket over my zipper such as found in the Waffle Patterns Peppernoot coat.

They actually have a tutorial for installing this so I followed it, but found that doing it this way I ended up with a non symmetrical front.  The placket has one edge on the center line but then the rest of it is off to one side.  I could probably figure out mathematically how much I would have to take off one side and add to the other to get the placket in the center, but then the zipper wouldn't be centered...plus I was feeling lazy so I tried a different arrangement with the front so that zipper is inserted between two panels and then the placket extends from the outside of one panel to the outside of the other.  I was much happier with this - I means everything is nice and symmetrical.

At this point I decided I was ready to start on the real thing.  I cut out all my pieces and still have quite a bit of fabric left over - I'm thinking birthday present for my Mum next year!

For future reference all seams were sewn with a 3/8" seam allowance except for the arm scythe with is 1/2" and the zipper where the edge of the seam is aligned with the edge of the zipper and stitched as close to the teeth as possible.

The only slightly tricky part was the front zipper. I had to remove some width across the front to account for the width of the zipper panels. 

Before I put the zipper placket on I interfaced it with a medium weight interfacing and inserted white snaps on the underside aligning with snaps on one of the zipper panels so I can snap the placket closed but there are no snaps visible from the front of the garment.

When I went to pleat the skirt at the back I found that I actually had a bit more fabric than I had had with my muslin - my actual fabric was wider than my muslin material so after again trying a number of different pleat combination I finally decided to go for one inverted box pleat in the center and then another pleat off to each side.  I stitched all of the pleas down for about 2" from the top just to keep them in place as I found that pressing wasn't doing all that much with this fabric it was too spongy.

The next step was to add pockets.  My original thought was that I would add welt pockets where the welt was angled to match the front seam but I just wasn't sure about how comfortable those pockets would be and after much experimenting I decided to add patch pockets.  The shape of the patch pocket is based on the top hood patterns piece (I forgot I only need 1 of each hood piece and cut the double layer so I had an extra piece hanging around when I went to make the pockets).

The neckline is now the pocket opening and the top curve is the outside of the pocket.  I trimmed the sides of the hood piece down so the angle along the top of the pocket matched the angle of the front waist seam and the other side of the hood was trimmed so that it is now vertical with the ground.  I lined each pocket with some stash Rayon cut 1/8" smaller than the main pocket piece  so that when its turned inside right the rayon doesn't show around the edges, and then hand stitched the pockets in place so that there is no visible top stitching.

I knew from the start that I wanted to line my hood with some of the left over cotton velvet I have in stash so I cut out those pieces and sewed them together and onto the hood.  I decided at this point that I didn't want any visible top stitching on my coat so the hood lining was simply attached at the front seam and pressed under.  I then decided to also use the velvet as a facing and cut a facing 3" wide to go down the front of the coat and around the neckline, this attaches directly to the zipper so there are no zipper panels on the inside of the garment.

The problem now was that I didn't have anything suitable for a lining.   So back to the fabric store I went.  Now I usually got for brightly patterned and colour fabric for a lining, but with the strong pattern on the outside of this coat I decided to go for a plain bright aqua blue silk for the lining.

Whilst I was at the store I wanted to look for something to interline it with as well.  I originally thought fleece like my original big coat but through it might end up too bulky, so then thought of warm and natural cotton batting, but then had the brilliant idea of interlining with a suit weight wool.  Its light, but warm and breathable - sounds like a plan now to  find the right one.  My fabric store has a whole table full of wool offcuts at $2.99/yard but I wasn't sure which pieces were 100% wool and which were poly.  Thankfully the lady working that day is really nice and not only did she cut me a swatch to do a burn test on and lent me a lighter to do the burn test but also came out with me to help me light it.  The first three fabrics I tried ended up being more poly than wool, but then I found this beautiful light weight blue wool and that one burned beautifully to ash - not a plastic edge in sight - I had my winner - and hey blue it matches beautifully - even if no one but me will ever know.

Now to finish of my coat.  I remade the whole coat minus the hood out of the blue wool and basted in in place down the front edges and around the neckline.  No photos of this as its totally enclosed - I forgot to take photos as I went.

Then I moved onto the lining.  I was feeling lazy at this point and rather than remake my pattern pieces with out the facings I decided to just put the whole pattern piece on and cut the fabric along the facing line marked - it wasn't pretty but it worked well enough.  I added a 1" wide ease pleat at center back.

Because the lining fabric was a lot narrower than the main fabric I had to use one and a half lengths of the fabric for the skirt which ended up being wider than main skirt - which wasn't a problem until I came to hem the skirt - more on that later.  As the lining was a much lighter weight fabric I decided to go for 7 smaller darts on either side of the center line rather than one big dart like I did with the wool interlining.

I wanted piping between the lining and the facing but I had forgotten to buy any - rather than taking another trip back to the fabric store I picked up some cording whilst I was out and made my own using a black  poly satin I had in stash cut into bias strips.

I attached my facing to my lining and then finally my facing to the outer coat along the zipper and to the hood lining around the neckline.

Now how to finish the sleeves.  My original drawing had little straps around the cuff and I was originally planning on adding these, but in the end I decided with all the pattern they'd probably just get lost anyway and left them off.  I did however decided to line the bottom of the sleeve with a velvet facing and cut and sewed that to the outer edge of the cuff before finishing the sleeve by trimming the sleeve lining down by about 1.5" (I wanted to keep some extra length in the lining to allow the sleeve lining to fall back down over the seam and provide ease). and then sewing it to the velvet lining.

Last but not least was the hem.  I had originally cut the skirt 29" long wich put the coat about mid calf on me.  I like this length at the back but it was a little too long at the front so I cut the bottom of the skirt to the length of the zipper in the front tapering out to full length at the back of the skirt.  I seem to have a real liking for the curved high low hem at the moment - a lot of my clothes are featuring that.

I bagged the hem of the coat - again cutting about 1" off the length of the lining but turning the hem up 2" so that there is ease for the lining to fall back down over the hem seam.

And I was done.......but not quite.....since I had chosen to do no topstitching a lot of the linings were peaking out and none of the seams would hold a nice crease in this fabric so I settled myself in front of the TV with a needle and tread and pick stitched along all the relevant seams from both sides so that none of the stitches were visible but everything was held in place.

Can you see any stitches - Nope neither can I - but they are there!

It took quite some time.  I did along the zipper on both sides, along the edge of the facing, along the neckline, the main seam around the front of the hood plus the seam at the top of the hood, the edge of the sleeves and the facing of the sleeves and finally the bottom hem.

Can you see any stitches - Nope neither can I - but they are there!

It was well worth the time and effort though - the stitches all disappeared nicely and everything is now held securely in place.

So what do I think of my final coat  I love it - absolutely love it. It was 20F when I took there photos and apart from my fingers I was toasty warm so it works as it's supposed to.  Form, Function and Comfort - What more could a girl want?

Grey Curved Hooded Cardigan

After making my warm fuzzy grey leggings I had a fair bit of material left over.  I knew I wanted to make a cardigan out of it but I wasn't sure what pattern to use. 

I liked the pattern I used for my last cardigan, but I decided I wanted to make a few modifications.  First I wanted this one to be a bit sportier and casual - so I decided to add a hood. 

I used the hood pattern that I created for my rainbow zipper dress - which was in turn based on the Jasper Sweater.  It took a bit of finagling to get it to fit onto my neckline and I'm not sure I got it perfect - it does tend to pull the cardigan back on my shoulders a bit.

The next change I made was to eliminate the lower curve in the front princess seam.  I changed it to a straight princess seam and added standard patch pockets on the front. 

I also added a cuff to the bottom of the sleeve using the same material.

I kept the front curve of the cardigan but due to fabric limitations I had to shorten the back by a couple of inches.

All seams in the cardigan were finished with a faux flat fell to create nice neat insides and the edges were finished with one long continuous strip of store bought grey bias tape running from the top of the hood down the front of the cardigan, around the back and back up to the hood.

 I used 4 grey snaps to secure the front of the cardigan.

I really like this cardigan and have found myself reaching for it a lot since I finished it.  Its not quite as warm as as boucle version but it's probably a bit more ....me....

The Evolution of a Panda Pattern

For the last year or so I've been teaching sewing at my local recreation center, a few kids classes and a few adult classes.  Over that time I've created a number of little patterns for use during class.  A pot holder, a zipper pouch, tote bags, shoulder bags, owl pillows, circle skirts.  Most of these are based off of free tutorials on the web.  During one of my latest classes one of the kids said she wanted to make a stuffed panda.  I had a look on the web and couldn't find exactly what I wanted so I decided to create my own pattern.

To start with I searched the internet for a picture of a stuffed panda similar to what I was thinking of and from that sketched out all the different pieces I would need:  White Head, black shoulders and arms, white body, black legs and black ears and eyes.  Next step was to test this pattern, so I needed some fabric.  I went through my stash but the best I could find was some faux fur type fabric in black and white so I decided to use that...bad decision.  This stuff shed like crazy when it was cut and was a real pain to sew - definitely not something that beginner kids could tackle.  I also found that the pattern was just way too small.  I ended up hand sewing the entire thing as it just didn't work trying to get those tiny pieces under the machine.  I didn't bother finishing this guy off - he's basically tacked together and filled with offcut scraps, but still my daughters named him Fluffy and he's been sitting on her bed since I showed him to her.

OK #1 is a failure, lets move on to iteration #2.

I went back and sized up all the pattern pieces.  I also made the ears proportionally larger and legs and arms longer.

For my second test I went back to stash to try and find some better fabrics.  I found a double faced black knit that would work nicely, but nothing in white so in the end I used some zebra stripe fleece.

This guy was quickly named Zeb-Zeb.  This time I actually went and added the whites to his eyes and a nose to try and make him look more finished.

But I still wasn't happy with the proportions.  His body is way too long and not wide enough so I went back to the drawing board again.

By this time I'd gotten to the fabric store and bought both black and white fleece and iteration #3 turned out much better.  Meet Chubby!

He's still not perfect.  I would like to go back and try one more time, but for now he's close enough.....and three Panda friends in the house is more than enough.

At this point I was pretty happy with the pattern but it was just a couple of pieces of scrap paper.

For quite some time now I've been playing with the idea of  learning how to draft patterns on the computer and I thought that this pattern might be a good place to start.

The first question was what program to use.  I wasn't ready to shell out big bucks for a program if I wasn't going to get anywhere so I started with programs where I could get free trials or were free,

The first program I tried was SmartDraw and I did quite well with the software and got the pattern drafted without too many issues, but when I went to print it I couldn't do it without all sorts of watermarks etc - I would need to buy the program to get it to work fully.

I next tried Valentina - but I found that it was a bit too pattern drafting focused and I wanted a bit more control.

I finally ended up at Inkscape.  This one took a bit more learning to figure out how to work it but after a couple of days I finally got it.  This time I drafted the pattern fully and even managed to get the final copy saved in PDF format.

For this project I made three separate drawings each the size of a single Letter sized page.  For my second trial I did try and make one big drawing and then split it up into pages later. I figured out how to do it but its a long convoluted process,  hopefully I can find an easier way to do it if I continue with this experiment.

But the good news is I have a finished pattern and yes my students were able to make their own Pandas out of it and were very pleased with their results so that's a definite win in anyones book.