Two piece Maxi

                     


I've had this piece of material sitting in my stash for quite a while now. I had earmarked it for a summer shorts jumpsuit and I thought it was about time I made it up.

I decided that I wanted to use the pattern that I created for this black slit long sleeve top since it fits so beautifully so I went ahead and cut that out of my fabric - leaving off the sleeves to get a kimono T look.  I got it all sewed together and then went to try it on my dress form.

(Just as an aside I have to say I finally got a dress form for Christmas and I love it - it's a Drizt My Double Dress form and I've been able to pad it out so it's a very good replica of me).

And here's where we ran into trouble.  I could only just get it on over the top of the dress form.  Since the pattern on this fabric had to go in a certain direction I never even thought about whether the stretch was in that direction too - turns out it isn't.   Now don't get me wrong, the top fits nicely - beautifully in fact - its just a bit of a wiggle to get into it and there is no way that I'll be able to make it into a jumpsuit.  So there goes that idea out the window.

I toyed around with the idea of just making the top and leaving it at that.  I finished off the neckline with a facing and top stitched it down about 1" from the edge.  The sleeves I just turned under and top stitched using a stretchy fancy stitch from my machine.

 

And then I started playing around with ideas for the bottom half.  Do I want to make it into a dress? - should it have a gathered waist? or darts?.  Do I want the skirt long or short?.  In the end I decided to make a separate long skirt that I could wear with the top to make a maxi dress look, but I could also wear the top by itself if the pattern gets a bit too much.

To make the skirt I cut two rectangles as wide as I could from my remaining fabric, then measured the top so that it just fits over the hips with a small amount of ease and tapered the side seams of the skirt from that dimension out to the full width at the bottom.    To finish the top of the skirt I used a zig zag stitch to sew a piece of 3/4" elastic around the top edge, then turned it over and stitched again.  As the length was only just long enough, to finish the bottom I just turned it under once and stitched with a stretchy stitch - I finished the shirt off in the same way and we have a compete outfit.

Refashioned Jeans Shorts

After all the effort I went to to try and create a top just to match a pair of shorts I realised that what my wardrobe needs is some more basics.  More basic tops to go with my patterned shorts, but also more basic shorts to go with my patterned tops.

I was thinking about making a new pair of black shorts when I remembered all the pieces of jeans fabric that I still had lying around after entering the Refashions Contest on Makery.uk last year.  Why don't I use some of that to make a pair of jeans shorts.

So I went through and pulled out all the bits and pieces that I still had left over - there were two untouched pairs of jeans, two pairs of pants that had had their waistbands removed and legs cut off, plus a whole bunch of scraps.

I tried on the two untouched pairs, but they were both very large and I didn't love the colour of them enough to want to start playing around with them.

One pair of shorts that had the waistband cut off I had started trying to fit to me when I was thinking of making a jumpsuit - all they really needed was to have the waistband put back on, so I did that and tried them on - and was severely underwhelmed.  They looked like Mum Jeans.  I even tried cutting them off shorter but they still were not doing it for me.  I almost gave up at that point thinking jeans shorts just aren't for me.

But then I decided to go ahead and try on the other pair that had had the legs cut off and had the waistband removed.  These were obviously a much smaller pair of jeans with quite a bit of stretch.  They were quite a bit too small for me...however even squished into them I much preferred the way they looked to anything else I had tried on so far.  So since all the prep work was already done I decided to just try a quick fix and see if they were salvageable.

I cut the jeans about 1/4"  behind the flat fell side seams from top the bottom.  I then found a couple of scrap bits of my favourite jeans fabric that I could use to extend the jeans.

This fabric is from a light blue pair of jeans that has been embossed with gold designs.  The only pieces of this fabric that I had left were quite faded but I decided to go ahead and use them anyway.  I sewed them into the shorts down each of the cut edges and tried them on again - perfect.  They are still a but tight, but a nice "snug" tight rather than a "sausage being squished casing" tight.  Now I just needed a new waistband.  I though about taking the waistband off the the other pair of shorts that I just sewed it onto and putting that on but I wasn't enthused about the idea.  I figured that would just give me a big muffin top, so instead I used a piece of black knit rib and sewed that on, encasing a piece of 3" wide elastic in it.

Because the elastic was so wide I had to angle it in at the top so that is followed the shape of my body but that wasn't a problem it just created a bit of a V shape to the elastic, which I then used at the front of the pants to give a nice shape around the front.

I have at least discovered one thing that I like about having very little difference in size between my waist and my hips I can make elastic waist pants that don't need much if any gathering to fit so they end up looking like real pants but are much more comfortable....got to have a silver lining for everything!

 The final piece of the puzzle was how to finish off the legs.  I had to cut them pretty short as a lot of the leg material had already been used for other projects, I thought about leaving the cut edge free to fray, but decided in the end that I liked the look of them hemmed better so just did a quick serge about the bottom to stop and fraying and turned he edge under about 3/8".

I love the way these shorts turned out.  For a quick mornings work they're a great addition to my wardrobe.

Purple Twist Knit Top

As detailed in my last post I've been trying to make a shirt to go with the shorts that I made for round one of the Pattern Review Sewing Bee  last year.  After finishing my purple linen shirt I just wasn't convinced that I was going to wear it so I started thinking of other options.  I didn't really want to go out and buy new fabric, but them I had a brain wave.  

A while ago, I had a very thin purple knit fabric that I tried to make a long sleeve wrap top out of .  Unfortunately the wrap part of the pattern never worked and I never ended up finishing it.

 The solution - why don't I reuse that fabric to make a little summer tank top.

The first thing I did was to cut off the sleeves about 2cm away from the seam line.  I then turned the seam under and top stitched it in place - instant facing on a sleeveless top.  

 The top was very long so my second order of business was to turn the bottom edge up about 9cm  and then serge along that line effectively creating a band around the bottom of the shirt.  

That just left the bottom band at the front that I could play around with to create a little visual interest.  My final solution was to twist the two sections of the band around each other and then sew them back into the opposite side seam creating a nice little twist and some ruching along the bottom band at the front.  

Not too bad for an couple of hours work (and most of that time was spent playing around with different options.)  It's not the most greatest shirt around, mainly due to the cheap crappy material that it's made out of, but it's functional and much more wearable now than it was before.

Purple and Teal linen shirt

In September last year I entered the Sewing Bee contest on Pattern Review.  For the very first round the challenge was to make a pair of shorts.  The shorts that I entered into the competition  (shown in the pictures above) are one of the best fitting pair of shorts that I own, but the'ye are not easy to wear.

The problem is that they have a strong bright coloured pattern on them......and all of my summer T shirts also have a strong bright coloured patterns on them so finding something to match is impossible.  So what's the answer? make a new shirt of course.

I headed to my fabric stash to see what suitable material I have....not a lot.  Most of my knit material is either brightly coloured and patterned, black or grey and none of those were going to work, so I expanded my search a bit and unearthed some beautiful purple linen material that I originally bought to make cushion covers out of ( I also used some of the leftovers to make L a pair of shorts).  I really only had scover srappy bits left o I wasn't too surprised when halfway through cutting out the shirt I found out I didn't have enough material for the second sleeve.  I contemplated putting a seam down the middle of the sleeve, but after much deliberation I decided to do a bit of colour blocking (see I just cant stay away from colour) and use a piece of the corresponding teal linen to make the sleeves instead.

The pattern? -  I started off with New Look 6704 that I used to make this purple and turquoise  shirt last year.  I did a lot of work at the time trying to figure out what size to use - grading between sizes etc but in the end  the fit of the shirt was not quite right.  It was just a bit too non fitted for my tastes.  (Having said that it did get a lot of wear last summer cause I love the material and it's a very comfortable shirt to wear)

I have however been playing around with another princess seam pattern lately.     The pattern for my black and grey raglan shirt  which I then modified for my rash vest .  I figured if I could combine the two patterns I might have something that worked.

So I traced the main pattern pieces from the New Look 6704 pattern onto some easel paper that I use for pattern drafting.  I then took my pattern pieces for the grey and black raglan and overlaid them.  I decided to skip the yoke from the New Look pattern and instead use the raglan pattern around the shoulder 

Now when I go back and look at it the only things I really took from the New Look pattern were the  the shaping for the front neckline and the sleeve and the addition of the collar and button band.

When it came to adding the button band and collar I decided that with the new neckline due to the raglan sleeve I could just combine the two, which resulted in a very baseball shirt kind of look that I really quite like.

As per usual I put on plastic snaps rather than try and do buttons.  Can I just say I love my snap press!  I also serged and then top stitched all the seams in light purple thread.

Overall I'm pretty happy with this pattern, it  still need a little tweaking around the waistline - there is still some pooling under my bust - and neckline doesn't lie perfectly flat, but otherwise its pretty good. 

However I'm not entirely convinced that I will wear this top, though I'm not sure why?  I'm heading back to Australia next month and am trying to figure out what clothes to take.  The plan was to take this shirt to go with my shorts, but as I'm not entirely convinced that I'm going to wear it, I'm not sure I want to lug it all the way just to find out that I don't.

That being said I did wear it the other day with my black and white pants and loved the look, so I'm sure it will get some wear.

Kids basics

As I mentioned in my last post the kids and I are heading back to Oz for a couple of weeks meaning that we need to get all our summer gear back out.  Of course, with the kids growing like weeds as they do, half of their stuff from last year doesn't fit any more so I pulled out all their clothes to see where any gaps were.

The biggest gap I found was in simple tank tops.  At the end of last summer J decided that he really liked wearing tank tops so I made him one out of some really slinky knit material that I had on hand.  He loved that top - so much so it's already all worn out, so I figured I should make him some new ones.

Since he was already outgrowing the last tank top I made, and I wasn't totally happy with that pattern I decided to do a quick online search and see if I could find a ready made pattern rather than make my own.  What I found was a boys tank top pattern by iCandy Handmade.  This pattern is for a boy size 6-7.  Whilst J is only 7 he quite often wears a size 8 so I compared the pattern to one of his shirts that still fitted and it seemed to be fine.  I did change the shape of the armhole just a smidge though, I felt like the shoulders were just a touch too narrow.  I'm glad I did cause evern now they're a bit narrow.

I ended up making three tank tops for him.  Each top was sewed almost entirely on the serger and finished using ribbing which was doubled over then serged on to the neckline and arm holes to create a small band.

The first shirt was made with the original material, a lightweight blue on blue stripe knit, with black ribbing for the neck and arms. I was running out of  the striped material though, so the front is striped horizontally and the back is striped vertically.

The bottom was finished by turning under twice and stitching using a very stretchy specialty stitch on my normal machine. (I couln't be bother changing out to a twin needle).

The second is a plain blue with black bands.

The third I added a yoke to back and front.  The yoke is from an old neon yellow T shirt of my husbands, and the bottom is a grey lightweight knit.  The neckband and arms are finished with the same neon yellow. (and yes the hem is finished with blue thread because I couldn't be bothered changing the machine around - are you seeing a pattern here - I'm a very lazy sewer).

I figured that L could use some new tank tops as well so after having her try on J's shirts I used the same pattern to make her a top as well.  Hers is neon orange with purple finishing bands.

(What's that - blue thread on orange fabric - yeah that's fine)

When searching for tank top patterns I found another free pattern that I liked.  The Racerback Dress by crafterhours.  Now L does not wear dresses, but I figured that this would be easy enough to cut off into shirt length so I printed out the pattern.  It only goes up to size 8 and L generally wears a size 10, but I compared the pattern with the pattern I used for the other tank tops and just had to add about 3/8" to 1/2" to the centerline of each pattern - there seems to be plenty of ease in that pattern with the gathers.  L chose to get this top made up in the navy blue with bright orange neck and arm bands.  I decided that I would also use the bright orange for the back yoke piece.  I quite like the way this turned out.  We'll see how much wear it gets.

Last but not least, J needed new shorts.  He has had in his closet for almost a year now, a couple of black bandannas with white decoration that he wanted me to make into shorts for him.  It's not great fabric, some sort of nylon and quite thin, but I figured it'd be fine for play shorts, so I used his pants pattern to whip up a quick pair of shorts.  I did add pockets in, but very basically.  I just attached the back pocket piece directly to the front of the pants so no pocket bag is needed.  I used the existing finishing from the bandanna to finish the bottom of the shorts and used some red rib knit material to make a waistband and 1" wide elastic.  Hopefully they will last for more than one wear but if they don't oh well.

And I think that that's it for the kids.  Hopefully they are good for a while.

Swimwear - in the middle of winter?

I seem to be making a habit of this - wait until the snows start, then start making swimwear.  But in this case I am justified - we're heading back to Australia for a couple of weeks in February and March and it'll be nice and warm over there so I wanted to make sure I had swimmers to take with me.

A while ago I made a two piece swim suit out of a beautiful peacock design swim suit material.  Whilst I'm fairly happy with the top, the bottoms do not sit nicely and I spend all my time whilst wearing them adjusting them - not fun.  So, since I had lots of left over material (I think I bought 2 or 3 meters of this stuff), I decided that I would like to make a new pair of pants.

I started with my basic underwear pattern, but added an extra inch to the the top and brought the legs down to make them more of a boy leg cut.  I then added a wide band around the top enclosing 1.5" wide elastic.  I lined the front of the pants with a teal coloured power mesh cut slightly smaller than the main piece.  Around the legs I used 1/4" wide elastic and turned over the edge two times to fully enclose it.  This was probably my only mistake - if there is one thing I don't like about these it's that they are just a smidge to narrow in the crotch area.  Otherwise I really like the way these turned out. And I now have a swimsuit which, whilst probably not the most flattering thing in the world is entirely wearable and quite comfortable - and really that's what matters most.

Now while I love two piece swimsuits for their comfort and convenience, they're not very sun smart - and in Australia that is a very big issue (It's amazing just how much more powerful the sun is in Australia than it is up here in Massachusetts).  So I decided that, since I still had plenty of material left over I should make myself a rash vest to go with my suit.  Now I don't know if you've ever tried to wear a rash vest, but getting them off whilst they are wet is really not very easy, so I decided to make mine with a zip up the front for easy access.

I used my princess seam raglan pattern that I developed for this shirt, cut about 1/4 to 3/8" off each seam to make it nice and snug and did a few little tweaks  to the princess seam and sleeve pattern based on my last make.  I cut the sleeves off mid bicep and finished them with a small 3/4" band.  The bottom is finished with a 3" band as well.  The collar is not the standard high mandarin that you normally find on rash vests as they annoy me, I figure this is more than good enough for keeping off the sun.

 

All seams were done on my serger (yeah I finally got it all fixed and working again), then stitched down with a zig zag stitch on my normal machine.

I really love the way this turned out, and think that this outfit will get quite a bit of wear.

It does however have some competition.  During one of my many trips to my local discount fabric store (can I just say here that the new location of Sewfistication on Rt9 in Framingham is fabulous, such a fantastic new space, and some great new fabric as well), I found this cool swim suit fabric, so of course I had to make a new suit.

The top is the based on the Bravo Bella bra pattern again.  This time however I cut the cups in two pieces rather than one as I do find the cups in the original swimsuit I made a bit to small.   I cut the back of the bra down to a single band (just the elastic encased in the fabric), and then made tiny little straps and created a criss cross pattern across the back with the shoulder straps.  I would have liked three straps on each side but couldn't fit them into the cups at the front.  Next time I'll cut the cups off lower to make a wider strap attachment and make three straps.

The pants I used the same pattern as shown at the end of this post. I decided to add in some aqua material at the sides for a bit of contrast.  I really should have spent a bit more time looking as pattern placement - I knew I didn't want any full circles, but all those cut off circles look a bit strange to me now.

As far as the style goes - I'm still not sure whether I like this style of pant or not - in some ways it's more comfortable, but I'm just not sure that it's all that flattering. I'm contemplating buying more of this material and making another pair of pants like I did for the other suit - and possibly another rash vest as well - we'll see how motivated I am in the coming weeks.  In the mean time I'll just have to mix and not match.