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A grey & neon Lestat Rest Vest

Apologies for the lack of updates over here recently – I’ve actually been doing lots of sewing and living, but not much blogging! Part of that is because I’ve sewn a few things that are incompatible with the super hot & dry summer we’ve been having in London and I don’t really fancy doing photoshoots of trousers and long sleeved shirts!

But I thought I’d share a quick little project I made a few weeks ago… We had tickets with some friends to see an outdoor Super Furry Animals & Beta Band concert up at Ally Pally in north London, and I wanted to wear something sleeveless for the heat. The concert itself was fabulous – The Beta Band literally played my dream setlist (only songs from The Three EPs plus “Squares”) and SFA played all their greatest hits, and there was tons of shade and space to sit and a truly extravagent array of food trucks!

But back to the top I sewed for it…

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A slate blue Revel Topper

Now that I’ve got all my fabrics from the Interview with the Vampire props auction prewashed and catalogued, I’m doing my best to try and sew through them, especially the ones more suited to summer garments, like the cargo trousers I made recently (also worn here). But it’s also been brutally hot here in London, which limited my sewing time and energy, so once it finally cooled down I ended up sewing this in an afternoon!

The fabric here is a steel blue textured viscose from the props auction. It was unusual in that it actually had a fabric store label on it detailing the fibre content, so I can confidently say it is 100% viscose instead of just guessing from a burn test. This piece was like most of them, in that it had about 1.5m with a portion cut out but included. This was a more usual yardage amount to work with, unlike the odd shape of the cargo trouser linen, and it was enough to cut this pattern without too much Tetrising. It takes a press nicely and is a great weight for tops with lovely drape, but it does fray a lot so I’m glad that the pattern instructions includeed finishes for all raw edges (a mix of overlocking, french seams, and facings).

Inspiration

Important Shop Update

Our Shopify pattern shop will be closing near the end of August 2026. To clarify – this blog is not going anywhere, I’m not going anywhere, and you will still be able to purchase FehrTrade patterns via our Etsy shop as well as through our partners Pattern Review and Thread Theory.

This is only the end of the Shopify storefront, which charges a monthly fee, regardless of how many patterns are sold. As I’ve been unable to work on any new patterns while ill, sales have dwindled below the monthly fee, and a recent spate of scammers using our digital products to test stolen credit cards has really soured me towards keeping it open.

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Linen cargo trousers

This is the first proper garment from my haul of fabrics from the Interview with the Vampire props auction in March! I made two small projects out of some scraps, but they weren’t really big enough for a post, so they’ll likely get rolled into a Miscellaneous post at some point.

Once I got those two quick scrap projects out of the way, I got it in my head to tackle the most challenging of the fabrics first!

It’s a pale blue linen/cotton (a burn test seems to think it’s mostly linen?) heavy weight chambray, that has a little slub effect and is surprisingly robust. When I was turning the waist ties the fabric was shredding SO badly, but was also tough enough to withstand me literally pulling it through with pliers!

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Luscious lavender trousers

Like the matcha green shirt you saw earlier this week, this fabric was also a souvenir from the Atelier Brunette shop in Paris when we were there in February. I bought this 2.0m “Divine Parma” lavender cotton gabardine remnant for €32! This was an extra 30% off the already reduced remnant price, and it normally retails for £30/m, so I got quite the bargain on this.

I knew I wanted to make a pair of trousers with this fabric but I didn’t just want to default to the same TNT patterns I always use, so I had a browse through the past few years of Burda magazines that I couldn’t sew through while I was sick, and liked the look of Burda magazine 11/2024 no115.

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An olive green merino top

I’m enjoying being able to fit back into my activewear again, and as I wore my 2021 birthday vintage merino cycling jersey for a Zwift ride I realised that I definitely should have more merino jersey tops I can wear for casual cycling. Since I’d not sewn anything for a week or two while my mom was visiting, I figured sewing a “quick knit top” would be just the pick-me-up I needed!

Inspiration

My windfall of IWTV fabrics

If you’ve been reading here at any point over the past few years, you’ll already know I’m a massive fan of the “Interview with the Vampire” tv show and the books (the latter for over 30 years!). I’ve made myself outfits inspired by Claudia’s NYE outfit, Lestat’s Wolfkiller cloak, his rockstar S3 outfit, and countless HTV teeshirts.

But, being so ill, I’ve not been able to meet any of the cast or creatives, or visit the sets, unlike all my friends, much to my anguish. BUT! There have been a few auctions of the props and costumes used on the show, being sold to regular ol’ fans as well as industry professionals. The first two auctions were in Toronto and limited to people with Ontario credit cards(!) and who could collect in person, but then a third auction popped up in February in the middle of Ireland, of all places!? It seemed to have a random mix of props from the first two seasons (filmed in New Orleans and Prague, respectively), and offcuts of fabrics from the Prague costume shop from Season 2 (who shared duties with a NOLA-based costume dept).

And I managed to win two lots of fabric, for €10 and €20 each!! Though the shipping cost to get these to me was significantly higher than my bids, it could’ve been a lot worse, because Pack and Send Belfast (who were utterly lovely!) drove across the border to collect our lots, packaged everything up, and shipped it out. So at least mine was UK-UK shipping with no customs to deal with.

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Parisian turquoise linen shirtdress

We had a lovely little getaway week in Paris in February, and I took the opoprtunity to do some fabric shopping while we were there – both in Montmartre and at the Atelier Brunette shop. From the former, I ended up with 3m of teal linen bought at the Coupons de Saint Pierre for €40. This was the most expensive of the three coupons (pre-cut lengths, usually 3m) I bought but it was a good weight and great price for 100% linen and in a very Me Colour, too. When I bought it I thought the 3m might stretch to a shirt for both J and I but when I changed plans to a dress, it turned out I needed pretty much the whole yardage! (Sorry, J!)

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A digital print birthday top

Happy (slightly belated) 47th birthday to meeeee! I’m a week late but it’s for good reasons – being healthy enough to get out more means I’ve been celebrating all week long with friends! Multiple cycle rides out to dinners, to see one of my favourite musicians (shout out to the Union Chapel accessibility team for reserving me a box away from others!), out for cocktails, and even a trip to “the boy aquarium”!

You may recall that I sewed Burda Jan 2024 no105 in the first few months after I got sick, in a super soft charcoal grey jersey. I’ve worn it so much that I wanted to sew it again, and have been thinking about fabrics in my stash that could work for it…