Metallic Print Batik Tank

As soon as I finished my latest pair of shorts. I knew that I wanted to make a new shirt to go with it. 

These shorts have a strong feature based around the waistband  and most of the shirts I own just hang over the top so you can't see it. So I wanted to make a slightly cropped shirt to wear with them.

I had the perfect fabric left over from my fidget quilt in the form of a blue and purple cotton, over printed with gold metallic leaves.  I had just enough left to make this shirt.

This was a basic sew.  I used the pattern that I created for this top back in 2017.

The only real change I made was to lower the bust dart by about 1.5 inches.  I noticed that it was a bit high back when I made the original shirt and now that I'm no longer wearing underwire bras my bust tend to sit a bit lower (ahh the joys of getting older) so it was really out of place. 

The shoulder and side seams were french seamed and I used the same finishing techniques as the original shirt - facings on the armholes that are then turned under and top stitched in place, and a binding around the front and back necklines, though this time I made the binding a a lot smaller.  I again top stitched the cross over in place and just turned up the hem twice and stitched it in place.

Nice and net on the inside.

I love this shirt as much as I love the original.  Cool and easy to wear, and matched beautifully with my new shorts....not to mention my new hair colour.

Sailor Front Shorts

Rummaging through my fabric stash the other day I found a piece of fabric that I had totally forgotten about.  A beautiful navy but slightly brighter blue linen.  Yes it's just what I needed to make another pair of shorts - my wardrobe still needs more shorts in it - none of my old shorts fit so I really just have the two pairs I made earlier this year.

I wanted to do something slightly different this time around though.  I wanted to try a pair of shorts with the sailor front - you know where you have the two buttoned flaps on either side.  I wasn't sure how a pair of shorts like that would work with my body - probably with a lot of gaping, but I figured I wanted to try as least.

I started by cutting my fabric using the new pattern that I created.  To start with with I just cut the two front and two back pieces as I wanted to play with fit a bit before I went onto design.  I basted them together.  One of my fit issues with this pattern was the front crotch area - to eliminate the extra fabric there I modified the front crotch curve,  making more of an L, bringing the fabric together more further down the seam and then going straight across the crotch point.  This worked nicely and I'm happy with this now.  The next issue was the leg width.   I wanted to bring that in a bit so I tapered the outside seam in from the hip line down, plus also took in the inner seam making that more curved. 

Once I was happy with those changes I got to work on the front opening. I wanted to keep the pockets of course so I would need to open the short into the pocket.  I started by choosing an angle for the pocket/front opening then cut a back and front pocket pieces out of my fabric.  The only thing I did differently when sewing the shorts together was to not sew the front and back pocket pieces together for about 4 inches from the top. 

To finish those edges I just turned the fabric under twice and top stitched.  All other seams were finished on the overlocker.

Next I had to add the waistband.  I knew I wanted a nice big waistband on these shorts and cut strips of fabric 6"wide.  I started with the front section cutting a strip of my waistband just slightly longer than my front section, basted it to shorts and pressed it into shape I then extended the angle of the front pocket up onto the waistband and finished off the ends of the waistband.  Added some iron on interfacing and finished it off.

 Next the back waistband.  I cut the back waistband in three sections with a back seam and a seam at each side seam.  After basting one edge to the shorts I then tried them on to determine the amount I needed to take out at the top of each seam to get a nicely fitted waistband.  Once I had determined that I sewed the waistband together  - instead of using any interfacing in the waistband I instead took some 1.5"wide elastic and tacked it inside the waistband at each end.  I cut the elastic about 1" shorter than the actual length of the waistband so it provides just a little bit of extra  grip to the waist.  I find that since my waist and hip measurements are about the same and the weight just moves around, even using a contoured waistband I struggle to keep pants up, so anytime I can add elastic to the waist I do it.

I still am not sure why but when I put the waistband on it changed my perfectly fitting pants at the back to have that little pucker.  I think I need to bring my back seam in a little at the top (or deepen my darts a little) to try and get rid of that.

I pinned the waistband together and tried it on and it was just as I had feared.  Those pockets gape! 

OK so the fasteners will need to be used to stop that. 

I knew I wanted snaps - I have a real dislike for actual buttons - such a pain to do up and undo. I placed a snap every 1.5" from the top of the waistband down the edge of the pocket.  There is still a little gaping between snaps but its not too bad.   However that does mean that using the front pockets becomes  a lot more difficult.  Unfortunately as the back side of the snap is through just a single layer of fabric I'm a bit wary about snapping those open and closed a lot, they feel a bit flimsy. 

So assuming that I would probably rarely use these pockets I decided to add back patch pockets as well - nice easily accessible pockets.  I just made these up as I went along no detailing included and just top stitched on with one line of stitching.

So the final thoughts whilst I like these I doubt I'll make this pattern again just due to the gaping. I will however add the fit changes I made to these to my basic pants pattern.

Otherwise they are comfy and something slightly different from the norm so I really like them.

A fidget quilt for my Mum

A number of years ago now ( is it sad that I can't remember how many) Mum was diagnosed with Dementia.  Living half a world away I didn't really see the slow decline in her memory I saw it more in big jumps - each time we'd go back to Australia she would be worse and worse, and last years trip back it was by far the biggest change I've seen.  It's such a terrible disease - not just for her, but for those closest to her - especially Dad.  I talk to Dad at least three times a week these days - Mum is often there too but it's really quite impossible to talk to her over Skype - I'm not even sure if she knows I'm there most of the time.  But one thing that's comes up with Dad a lot recently is that Mum just can't sit still - she's always fidgeting with things, getting up and rearranging stuff, putting away stuff so you can never find it again - so one day when I was browsing the internet and saw fidget blankets for people with Alzheime's  I thought that one of those may be good for Mum.  And then I thought about the weighted blankets that I had seen used to try and get kids with ADHD and Autism to settle down and thought - you know I could probably combine those two ideas and make a blanket for Mum that's both weighted and good for fidgeting.  And so the idea for this quilt was born.

As usual the first thing I did was some internet research - what sort of things go onto fidget blankets.  Zippers, buttons, clasps, beads but every blanket I saw was just so ......utilitarian.  ( I was going to say ugly but didn't want to hurt anyones feeling who may have made one of these).  I wanted something pretty, that you want to have lying around your living room.

So I knew now what I didn't want, but what did I want my quilt to look like?  Among all the ugly quilts I did find a couple that I liked. 

What I liked about these quilts was that rather than just having things thrown on randomly all the fidget bits were used to create a big picture.  I knew that that was what I wanted to do.  Now I just needed a picture.  I'm a big fan of Peacocks so I decided to go with that as a theme and found this picture as an inspiration.

For the body of the peacock I wanted to use the sequins that when you rub them in one direction are one colour when when you rub your hand in the opposite direction they change colour.  Those sequins are so fun to play with - I know I could spend hours making patterns and then rubbing them out.  Luckily when I went into Michaels in search of the sequins they just happened to have them in two perfect colour ways.  One is blue sequins that turn to gold and the other has blue'y green sequins that turn to black.

I used the blue sequins to make the body of the peackock.  The sequins came in strips 5 3/8" wide which was not quite wide enough for the bottom of the peacock so I had to sew a strip onto either side.  I did this by abutting the two pieces of fabric and hand stitching them in place. I tried sewing extra sequins over the join but it didn't work very well so the seam is more noticable than I hoped but oh well.

I then used the green sequins as a sort of halo behind the peacock - the base of his feathers.  Again I had to piece a couple of strips together but I was able to hide at least one of the joins.  I sewed the green sequins onto the blue in the same way to create one big piece of sequin fabric.

For the fabrics for the quilts I took a trip to my local discount fabric store where I found a beautiful piece of blue cotton fabric with just 5% lycra in it that I wanted to use as the background for my peacock, plus a bought a number of piece of metallic print batik fabrics in multi colours that I wanted to use for the feathers.  I then bought a coordinating blue flannel fabric for the back of the quilt.

I cut my blue backing fabric to the size I wanted 1 yard x 1 yard and then used heat n bond, applied to the back of the sequin peacock, to join the peacock to the fabric.  I was a bit worried about melting the sequins but did a test run before hand and it worked nicely.  I don't 100% trust it though so I then went back and hand stitched the peacock down around all edges as well.

The next step was to make the feather "eyes".  I sketched out a template for the shape I wanted and cut a couple of eyes out of each of the batik fabrics and scattered then around.  With L as my sounding board I finally decided to just use two of the fabrics. 

One that is brightly coloured with gold swirls and the second in shades of blue with densely printed gold leaves.  I alternated eyes cut from these two fabrics radiating out from the peacock.

To finish each eye I used two layers of the batik fabric joined together right sides facing then turned  inside out so all edges are finished.  The eyes were then sewn to the blanket using free motion quilting with grey thread.  It's not pretty, but you really can't see it.

The next step was to figure out how to add some gadgets to fidget with.  I knew I wanted zippers.  originally I went with a bunch of different colours, but in the end decided to stick with the green.  Thankfully I had three long ones in just the right colour green - I used two full length and cut the second one in half and added a different zipper pull the the second half to make 4 zippers.  To attach them to the blue fabric I ironed the zipper tape under under by 1/4" and simply top stitched them in place.  For the zipper with the slightly different colour pull I added a little owl charm - something else to play with.

At the peacock edge I just cut the zipper tape off and sealed the end with heat and sewed it down, the other end was tucked inside the eye.

On the front right I added three thin pieces of ribbon that can be braided or otherwise played with.

On the front left side I interfaced both sides of the eye and only attached it at the end and added a button and button hole so the eye can be lifted and buttoned.

On each side of the quilt I attached an eye with a piece of thread with 5 beads.  The beads can slide back on forth on their string.

On the second eye on the right side I added a pouch, this is just half of the second eye sewn on top of the first, with the top edge left free.  I then made a little green felt teddie bear by simply drawing the shape I wanted on paper and then stitching around that and cutting it close to the stitching line.  A little bit of hand enbroidery to make a face and then I used the ribbon to cover the ugly knots at the back of his head. 

In the top right hand corner of the quilt I used snaps to make another fidget.  I made another fully interfaced eye and attached  ribbon to the end of it.  The other end of the ribbon I attached to one of the zipper pulls.  On the extra eye I added a male snap and then I added 4 female snaps to 4 eyes around the zipper.  She can slide the zipper up and down and match the free eye up with different stationary eyes.

I happened to have an actual peacock feather lying around do I decided to add that on top of another eye just to give some additional texture.  I used heat n bond to stick the feather down and then stitched the stem down as well.

The final fidget was the peacocks crown.  For this I used wired ribbon and blue fluffy fabric sewn into small pompoms.  I made the 5 little pom poms out of a blue fluffy fabric I had in stash from making baby blankets.  I then started the ribbon at the top of the head  and played out about 2.5" ribbon then sewed on a pompom, bent the ribbon back down to the head then back up to make second stalk, added a second pompom and continued on till I had 5 pom poms.  I then machine stitched the whole crown down at the top of the head leaving the pom poms ends free and pose-able.

To finish off my picture I added a blue sparkly button as an eye and then added a silver bead as the pupil.  And a beak made out of gold faux leather.  I wasn't sure how I was going to attach it - I originally thought heat n bond but I just melted the gold fabric trying that. Thankfully it turned out it wasn't that hard to just machine stitch it on.

Finally I had to add the stalks to attach my feather eyes to the body of the peacock.  I started  with white embroidery thread and used a back stitch to draw a straight line from the peacock to each eye.  I then used standard thread and a running stitch to add the green feathers to each white stalk.  I wish now that I had done it in green embroidery thread but I wasn't sure I'd have enough so chose the normal thread but even doubled up it's not thick enough to stand out.

Now it was time to turn it into a real blanket.  My original plan was to make it a cover for a weighted blanket, but I discussed it with Dad and Mel and they found a weighted blanket that they could buy cheap (and whilst I wouldn't cost me too much to make the weighted blanket it would cost me a bucket to post it to Aus) so they did that and I just made mine a blanket.

I decided to add piping around the blanket to finish the edges and cut it out of the blue with gold leaves batik and added 3mm cord to it.

I then sewed the flannel fabric to the back hand stitching the opening.  I didn't get any photos of the back before I sent it off.  Once it arrives I'll have Dad take a photo and update the post.

 I hope that Mum will get some use out of this - and if not that she likes it as a nice lap blanket to keep her warm in winter.

Jumpsuits for L

My daughter has been growing again - I could tell the other day when I realised that the long pants she was wearing were about 2" above her ankle.... For the last couple of years I've been buying most of the kids clothes but this year I just didn't want to go out shopping ....you know....Covid.... and I hate buying clothes online so it's back to making clothes. J and I have made a few pairs of shorts for him already but they're not really blog worthy - but now it was Ls turn. Together L and I raided my fabric stash and found a couple of pieces of fabric that she liked.  The first was a piece of scuba fabric in an orange and black geometric print.  L actually chose this fabric a couple of years ago  - I was going to make her a jumpsuit out of it.  She still likes the fabric and decided that she still liked the idea of a jumpsuit so we decided to go for it.  I drew a croquis for L and sketched out an idea for a jumpsuit taking into account L's preferences.  She wanted short sleeves, long pants and a high neckline.  With the high neckline I knew I would need to make an opening in the front and went for a placket that runs from the crotch area right up to the neck and then into a simple flat band around the neck.

L has grown so much that all the patterns I've drafted for her in the past would not fit anymore - and whilst she does fit into adult patterns these days, none of the patterns I have were what she wanted so I decided to do it properly from scratch.  I went back to the notes I took when I got a free preview of Suzy Furriers moulage course and used that to make a moulage of L's bodice. Lots of measurements were taken and an excel spreadsheet was made to do all my calculations - I was in heaven.  I really enjoy this part of sewing.  It all went pretty swimmingly right up till the armhole.  The arm scythe and shoulder seam were giving me a few headaches so I did it as best I could and moved on.

After drawing up my pattern I used an old sheet to make a mock-up.  I sewed up all the darts, shoulder, armhole, side and waist and put it together and tried it on.  Not too bad really.  I did have to do a bit of modifications to the shoulder and arm scythe area which I expected but that was it really.  I transferred all my modifications back to my pattern and I was ready to start on my actual pattern.

First thing I wanted to do was eliminate some of the extra darts  - 4 in the front is a bit excessive - especially for someone who is an A or B cup\. The first one to go was the arm hole dart - I rotated it into the side dart.  Next up was the shoulder - this also got rotated into the side dart.

Next step was to add ease.  I used the Dresspatternmaking.com website and the first step according to that is to add a small dart at the armscyth - I'd just removed one of those so it was pretty easy to add it back in.  I lowered the underarm point about 0.5" and took it out about 0.5" too to allow for a sleeve to be inserted.

I knew my daughter wouldn't want anything too fitted so I left the waist dart drawn in but unsewn and tapered the side seam from the new underarm point to the existing waist point.  This leaves a new bodice pattern with just a single side bust dart.

The neckline on the bodice was about where L wanted her neckline to sit so I just removed 1.5" from the existing neckline and reassigned it to the neck band pattern piece.

Down the front of the bodice I wanted a cut on placket so I extended the bodice centerline by 0.75" for the front of the placket, 1.25" for the back of the placket and an extra 0.5" turn under.

Then I just had to add 0.5" seam allowances on all the other seams.

For the back pattern piece I again ignored the waist dart to add ease, but kept the back centerline shaping.  Again I took off 1.5" for the neck band - did the same modifications to the arm scythe area and added 0.5" seam allowances on all seams.

For the sleeves I drafted a basic short sleeve from scratch - starting with the bicep measurement plus ease I wanted. Figuring out how high I wanted my sleeve cap and then using my front and back arm scythe lengths to figure out the slope of the curves and the center point of the sleeve cap leaving about 1" ease at the top of the sleeve cap.

Next to the pants.  Unfortunately I don't have a tutorial for pants sloper making that I like so I fell back on my existing patterns.  I got L to try on some of the jumpsuits I've made for myself  and whilst the top halves were no where near fitting the bottom halves weren't bad.

 Since we wanted a more tapered leg we decided to go for the Sirocco pants, but without the pleat.   I folded out the pleat then traced around the pattern, then started modifying for L's dimensions.  First off I made sure the width of the back and front bodices matched the width of the top of the pants pattern, then the hip width was modified based on L's measurement.  Finally I extended the placket pieces down the front onto the pants pattern.

And now it was time to cut out.....but here's the problem.  I bought the fabric based on the plan to sew a shorts jumpsuit for a 7 or 8 year old.  Now I wanted to make a long jumpsuit for a 12 year old.....Hmmm tetris at it's best, but you know what the 1.5 yards I had were enough - Just!  As you may have noticed there was no pattern matching or anything - I thought for a while I would have to piece the sleeves but I managed to find a small sliver of fabric just big enough.  I did however have to piece my back neck band pieces but that's OK. 

I managed to get everything cut out, then basted it together...  The top was perfect, but there were issues with the pants - there was a huge pouch on each side much lower than where her hips were, so I pinned it out, then transferred the changes to her pattern and recut my pattern pieces.  Now that I was happy with my pattern I took everything apart and put it together properly.  I wanted to add pockets and L said she wanted in seam pockets - that's lucky cause I didn't have enough fabric for any sort of visible pocket - as it is I managed to scrounge together enough fabric for the first inch or so of pocket bag, then used a plain grey cotton fabric for the rest of the pocket bag. 

All seams were serged except the darts and the waist seam.  I sewed the darts in the front bodice.  Attached the front to back at the shoulders, set in the sleeves, then sewed the side seams.

I then moved onto the pants and sewed the front crotch below the fly, the back crotch, the inseam, then sewed the pockets into the side seams and sewed up the side seams.  I sewed the bodice onto the pants leaving the seam unserged.  I then stitched each side of the seam allowance open so I could thread 1/4" elastic through each side of the seam.  I made sure the elastic stopped at the end of the placket and stitched the ends in place. 

I added interfacing to the front band, turned under the first 0.5"  then turned the placket under again and top stitched it in place stitching the two plackets over each other at the lower end.  Next up the neck band.  Again I interfaced one layer of neckband, sewed all pieces together and then sewed the outer edge onto the to of the bodice.  The inner layer I hand stitched in place.  Finally I added black star shaped snaps down the front, placing one right on the neckband, one at the bust line, one at the waistline and spreading the others out between.

Thankfully after all the work L loves it - so much so that she asked for a second one.  So when I finally got to the fabric store I bought her some more fabric and made a second one!

As you can see - L has definitely got my taste for garish prints.  Who wouldn't want a blue and green animal print full length jumpsuit!

 I made no changes to the pattern, but again I did no pattern matching.  I bought 3 yards of the material thinking that would be more than enough - but the fabric actually had a panel down each side in a black and white print which L didn't like so we had to avoid that.  So once again I had to do some tetris to get the pattern to fit on the fabric.

This time we went for green circular snaps down the front and I got them spaced a bit more evenly.

I didn't particularly like threading the 1/4"elastic through the waistband the first time, so this time around I actually made a separate casing on the inside and used 2/4"elastic.

I'm really pleased with how these came out and so is L.  I love having a proper moulage for L and hopefully I'll have a chance to use it for something else before she grows again, but at least now I know basically what I'm doing - hopefully next time will be easier.