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Duathlon Shorts sewing pattern – on sale now!

It’s been several months in the making, but I’m pleased to report that my third sewing pattern is on sale now! Please welcome the Duathlon shorts!


buy!

This is a pattern for close-fitting capris or shorts in three lengths with contrast side panels. There’s an integrated pocket at each hip, perfect for gels, keys, or your phone plus an optional padding piece for cyclists wanting some extra comfort on their ride. An elasticated, high-rise waistband means they won’t shift around as you move, either!


Read more details in the Shop section…

If you’re not familiar with the term, a Duathlon is a competition where you run, bike, and then run again, and I designed this pattern to be both runner and cyclist friendly (and dance, and yoga, and hiking, and skating!). The draft is very similar to my PB Jam Leggings but with a slightly higher back rise to accommodate the seated, cycling position, and with the pockets placed lower on the hips so your leg crease doesn’t get in the way when you’re sitting down. Lots of people asked for a leggings pattern that could be easier to make fit alterations on, and this is it!

Like my other patterns, these are designed to use up fun scraps leftover from other projects, and I’ve even got a thrifty tip coming up if you haven’t got enough length for the long Upper Side piece, too!

Tropical cats Duathlon Shorts and Tenacity Leggings

Even though I sewed these at the end of November, they’re my final makes of the year. Despite having a week of feeling “kinda okay” (able to take 15min walks outside) around the end of November, I’ve felt truly appalling for the rest of December and am yet again spending 23hrs a day stuck in bed with post-Covid fatigue. It’s now over 100 days since I got Covid and I still can’t sit up or stand for very long, let along have a normal life.

But now that it’s crunch time at the end of the year, I want to share these before I forget the details, even though I’m not able to share anything more than flat photos of both…

These both started with a photo of a maxi dress that was doing the rounds earlier this year (or last year? It all runs together) with big blue and purple flowers on a black background, with black cats peeking out of the shadows. I really wanted to recreate the fabric on my own, but didn’t quite get to do it. And then I saw a similar print on Creative Market so I purchased it instead, and changed the colours to suit my vision.

Developing the Triumph Suit pattern

The Triumph Suit pattern is not only our first triathlon-focused pattern, or our first Advanced pattern, but I’m also fairly certain is the pattern that was in development the longest. And also very likely the one I nearly gave up on the most times (I don’t deal well with very long-running projects!).

So today I’d like to walk you through a bit of its development process so you can get a feel for the timelines involved and the sheer number of hours, weeks, months, and years that go into something as complex and specialised as this!

I started thinking about a trisuit pattern all the way back in early 2021 (I was still shielding during the time, remember!). It was the first inspiration to hit me since the disruption of 2020. During 2020 I concentrated on updating all of our patterns to be layered and projector-friendly, rather than developing anything new simply because I had zero energy for creativity. It started with me combining two blocks together and drawing out design lines – both on paper and on myself!

Vampire lips leggings and shorts

I’ve been sewing with Funkifabrics’ activewear fabrics for a nearly a decade now, and I’m a huge fan of their custom-printed fabrics. I nearly always pay my own way, even when it’s for pattern samples, so it’s lovely when they offer to let me try a new base fabric. The last time this happened was back in 2021 for the lightweight Spider, which I loooooved! So I was delighted when they asked if I’d like to try out their new Olympus base fabric in a print of my choosing.

As I am now (still!) firmly in the throes of my reignited vampire obsession, I went with their “Bite Me” print, with 150% scaling, and different shades of pinks and purples using their Colour Me service.

Updated VNA Top, Threshold Shorts & Running Armband Pocket patterns

Today is the culmination of years of work – today I have finally updated the last three of our patterns to be layered pdfs! This means that if you open the pattern file in a compatible app like Adobe Acrobat, you can turn off the layers you don’t need and just print your size(s), which can make things a lot clearer to read and cut out!

The GBSB Live and storewide sale

If you had told me from the start that buying my first ever stall at an expo would require so much time, effort, stress and money, I’m not sure I would’ve ever said yes in the first place. But back when the Great British Sewing Bee Live event was announced, I was tempted, talked it over with J, and decided to go for it and stretch myself as a small business owner.

It’s been a huge learning process, even just moving from a purely digital business into one that not only has to fill a space (which the organisers kept making bigger!) but also taking in-person card transactions, and ordering supplies to try and really show off what Fehr Trade Patterns really is to someone just walking past who may have never heard of us. If you’re coming along, we’re on stall H1 (turn left once you enter, and I’m in the corner with the workshop rooms).

The show is finally upon us, and hopefully now the panic attacks and stress and dwindling bank balance can give way to the enjoyment of meeting new people and putting faces to long-time customers’ names, too. But if I don’t manage to get a pattern released this calendar year, we can definitely point a blame finger in the show’s general direction as much as the book’s!

Steeplechase Leggings – on sale now!

My Steeplechase Leggings pattern is finally available to buy! Yay!


How awesome is the cover illustration I commissioned from Lauren Cox? I wanted to change up the design a bit for 2015, so I got in touch with her and I created a back cover for the first time as well!

The official pattern description:
These leggings have no inseams! Instead, a curved, outer seam runs from the back of the ankle up to the centre front, where it joins a separate yoke piece. There’s an optional, hidden back pocket, elasticated waistband, and your choice of three lengths: biker short, capri, or full length leggings.

I am seriously SO excited to finally release this pattern – I’ve made up so many samples for myself (and my athlete-model niece) and I even ran a half marathon in a pair on Sunday, too! Even if you’ve never had problems with inner-leg chafing, you’ll suddenly wonder how you ever managed without these – they’re just so comfortable to wear!

And if you’re an equestrian, then you’re in luck, because these are great for riding, especially if you add a little bit of silicone grip to the inner knees – which I’ve marked on the pattern for you, because these pieces look weird! Seriously, get your “WTF face” ready when you look at these pattern pieces, because I guarantee they’re unlike anything you’ve seen before! But they’re still super quick to sew up – most of my pattern testers said they only took 2-3hrs to make, including piecing the pattern together!

Happy 2023! (Year in Review)

For the past 15(!) years I’ve posted my year in review on 1 January, but not this year. I lost my sewjo around the end of September so I didn’t really have much to blog about. I waited for it to reappear (as I learned a long time ago there’s no point in trying to force it) and prepped a few projects, tidied a bit, planned a bit, and then fell into a massive “Interview with the Vampire” fandom hole (more on that later), and generally was happier in October and November than I’ve been in a long time (completely unrelated to the sewing) but that’s not the reason this post is late.

This post is late because, despite my best efforts (cycling to/from, FFP3 masking indoors with my CO2 monitor and otherwise staying outdoors) I caught a virus of some sort at the office christmas party which left me practically bed-bound with post viral fatigue for 4+ full weeks (no, not Covid, not flu, not RSV, not anything they swabbed for at haematology, but thankfully not EBV either). Like, 21+ hours a day in bed, and if I sat up for more than 15min to eat or drink, I’d have to lie flat for another hour. So sitting up to type was impossible, and I wrote this in pieces on my phone when I could, not being able to put it all together until I started improving a little bit in the past few days.

So apologies that it’s late, and for the blog silence for the past few months, but hey, 2023 can only get better from this dismal start, right?? Without further ado, let’s have a look back at 2022…

A three-piece rainbow RideLondon 100 cycling set

Strap in, because this is an epic post for three finished garments and a 100 mile cycle ride!

When I bought the recycled sunburst print activewear fabric from Sew Dynamic back in May, I knew I wanted to make an outfit for RideLondon 100 using it. It’s a brilliant activewear fabric made from recycled plastic bottles that’s got great stretch and recovery, totally opaque when stretched, and with a really vibrant colour pop. But the digitally printed colour bursts run down the length of the fabric – not quite a border print as they’re placed about a third of the width in, but certainly something that I’d need to really pay attention to when cutting out my fabric.