February Projects

The first thing was actually finished at the end of January, it's a tunic based on a tunic/mini dress I have. I made the pattern from holiday brochure pages this time, in the same way as I made the pattern for the lilac top. It was a little more difficult as there were areas of gathering and I had to estimate the length of fabric gathered. I made a toile to try it out and made some alterations to add more fabric for the gathers. I was going to use some bug print fabric I have, but I wanted to add a contrast fabric and I don't have anything that will go. Instead I used some of a batch of fabric I won in a magazine competition, it's a bit flowery and bright for me to be honest, but I'm using what fabric I have knocking around and that set had several fabric designs using the same colours.

The pieces went together really easily, even the gathers didn't cause me too much trouble. I always tack gathers down before stitching by machine or they do tend to get pushed around. I even interfaced the yoke. I was really pleased with the finished top, not something I would wear to go out but it will be fine for work on a hot day.

I also bought 1 m of thin lilac organza ribbon to stitch inside the neck of the lilac top. As the neck had pulled out slightly I tacked around the pulled areas and tightened it up before stitching the ribbon inside. It looked much flatter and tidier after.

The next project was for some lovely fabric I found in the case in the corner, I think I got it a few years ago at a local fabric shop that's usually really expensive, it was either on sale or I was feeling rich that day. It's a lovely black/white shot cotton, it looks like a slightly mottled grey. We went through my bought patterns to see if I had anything suitable. I decided on the tunic version of a dress I made for my friends wedding. As the pattern is 2 sizes smaller than me I traced all the pieces and redrew them adding to the sides, I had added a bust dart to the dress so I changed one of the seams to incorporate that. I made the toile and as it was a little tight around the hips and loose around the bust I altered the pattern again accordingly. I washed and pressed the fabric and cut out the pieces. I pinned as many seams together as I could as I hate getting up and down from the machine every five minutes. Once the piece was together I tried it on and it fitted really well except for still being a little loose around the bust. I turned it inside out and pinned the bust seams (whilst wearing it) then tacked the change and sewed over the tacking. It's strange sometimes when you see the flat pieces and think they will never fit together, then they create this 3D tailored shape and it looks great. I added the interfacing to the neck and stitched the armholes, hem and side slits by hand. It needed a bit of trim around the neck, so I hung it up till I had a chance to go shopping. I added some black trim and it looked great.

I have 2 m of a white Alexander Henry fabric with spider webs and moths on it, mum got it for me one Easter as I didn't want chocolate. I wanted to make a top that had a few pieces as possible as I didn't want to lose the print of the fabric y cutting it up, so I bought a plain tunic pattern. I made a toile, and it took 3 attempts to fit it properly to my shape. I added extra on the hips in the back and an extra bust dart. Once the toile was done I redrew the pattern and cut my good fabric, I cut the neck and armhole facings from a plain white cotton. The tunic went together really easily, it fits great and looks really nice.

One of my friends has requested fabric weights for her birthday, some of the people at her sewing class have them and she wanted some of her own. I have made a start on the weights but I can't say too much about them at the moment as my friends birthday is in April. I can say that I have bought some 4oz fishing weights, the metal is soft enough that I can reshape them, I am the kind of person that owns a metalwork hammer and an anvil so it was pretty easy. I will write a full blog post about the weights to post when they have been gifted.

The next project I am planning is a dress made from some white linen fabric I've had for years. I am planning to shibori dye the dress when it's made, I think this will be quite a long project so it will feature in next month's post.