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Cushion covers for our glam new interiors

It was probably inevitable that I’d be sewing more home dec projects – after all, I’m pretty sure it’s a natural next step after finishing renovation work, and we’ve just had nearly our whole boat rebuilt! This time around we wanted cushions for two very specific benches that we inherited…

Actually, we inherited a set of three storage boxes/benches from my longtime running coach, Barbara. When she had a studio in Shoreditch she had them built for the space, but after she closed the studio to go freelance they were taking up a ridiculous amount of space in her flat but she really wanted to see them rehomed together. So I said we’d have them for the boat, and two even ended up in our temporary flat while we were in drydock three years ago, but they’ve been in our storage unit ever since.

One is quite small, maybe a foot and a half wide, and that one is now near the front door in the Saloon, storing woollens inside and acting as a plant stand & drop zone for keys and masks. The next one is 1.2m long, has a hinged top, and lives in our corridor, storing guest bed linens for the time being. And the third one is a whopping 2m long (it barely fit in our estate car!), also has a hinged top, and is storing all of our life jackets and nautical flags. We thought it would be great for extra seating for our Saloon dining table, so we’ve placed it against the window to also give Nishi a place to sit and peer out the big windows (which will be getting wooden blinds when we get around to installing them).

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Ramie shorts and a mint ribbed top

I’m sorry guys, it’s my fault! I turned the weather to freezing, non-stop rain by sewing a pair of shorts. 😭 (insert jokes about English “summers” here)

But I was inspired by some recent fabric shopping at both Textile Express and Lamazi Fabrics and I really wanted to make this set as soon as possible – and hoped the weather would rise to the challenge, but it did not. In any case, the garments have thankfully turned out better than I’d hoped, and I know I’ll get a lot of wear out of both as soon as it warms up and dried out.

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A green cotton Axis lingerie set

By my count, this is the 5th(!) Sophie Hines Axis Tank + Threshold Shorts runderwear lingerie set I’ve made in the past year. When I find a combo as comfortable and wearable as this, I go all in.

The fabric is not actually leftovers from the Thankful tee I made last year, as you might expect, but actually a 0.5m remnant I bought from Lamazi Fabrics recently for a fiver (bargain!) that is an exact colour match to my previous tee, despite buying the cotton jersey from different shops over different years. I’m not sure why this delighted me so much, but it does!

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Two more sports bras – from scraps!

Our boat renovations are in their last few weeks, which means that everything is in disarray and even the meagre folding table I had been using to cut out fabric is now out of bounds, blocked in place by several massive sheets of plywood. But thankfully I planned ahead and cut out a few projects before this happened, the last of which I’ve now sewn – two more Jalie Coco sports bras, made entirely from activewear scraps!

If you recall, I made two of these last year, one in each view and with a few crucial tweaks to increase the support in order to be enough to run in. Please refer back to this post for the details of what those are, as I’ve done the exact same tweaks here. After wearing both the Y-back feather bra and the cross-back Tokyo bra for a few months, I can say that I definitely prefer the Y-back view. It’s easier to get on and off and feels a bit more supportive, even though the cross-back is perfectly fine! So for these, I just cut the Y-back (view B in the pattern) to make my life simpler.

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My vintage-inspired BIRTHDAY merino cycling jersey

Happy “over a week late but still my” birthday to me!! If you aren’t following me on social media (I mean, why not??) then you may have missed the absolute frenzy of renovation/building work that’s been taking place over the last few months. In November and December, the builders made us a new kitchen, bathroom, and utility room, and then after a short break, have spent all of February and May creating our Saloon (bright living/dining area, where these photos were taken!) and Snug (dark living room) and corridor. Considering these didn’t even have finished walls or subfloors (or lighting!) when they started, the transformation has been incredible.

But it does mean that for infection control reasons, I couldn’t be anywhere near them while they’re here working (we have a very small but self-contained back cabin we stay in). We’re grateful to be in this position, but it severely limits my sewing time before you even consider the sheer amount of dust, lack of cutting table, fact that large sheets of plywood and doors would randomly block access to my sewing room and omg did I mention the dust?!? So my planned birthday make was not finished for my actual birthday this year, which just happens some years! And it doesn’t diminish it in the slightest.

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Paprika Palisade trousers

I realise that “Paprika Palisade Pants” would’ve had more pleasing alliteration but since I’ve nearly reached the point where I’ve lived more years in the UK than in the US (19 vs 23), I dislike using ambiguous terms that could be misconstrued. And “trousers” if more definitive than “pants”, which has wildly different meanings based on your geography (the reason I tended to use “bottoms” or “leggings” in my book, too).

In any case, these were an attempt to kickstart my missing sewing mojo and make something comfortable and useful for my yes-I’m-still-shielding-at-home life. I’ve sewn the Closet Core Patterns “Pietra” trousers three times now and have literally worn holes into my first pair, but I wanted to sew something a little different and thought I’d branch out and try the Papercut Patterns “Palisade Pants” which I’d bought in a recent sale. I mean, come on, that pocket detail!!

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Naturally dyed Icelandic wool socks

While the builders are working on renovating the main part of our boat, I’ve mostly been holed up in our small, self-contain captain’s cabin meaning that I haven’t been doing as much sewing as I normally would (for the dust, disruption and that I can’t be anywhere near them for shielding reasons!). So I’ve been getting a lot of loom knitting done! If you don’t know what loom knitting is, Google is your friend!

I love loom knitting socks in particular, and I’m normally pretty quick with them these days, but I actually cast these on in Oct 2019! Why so long? Well, mostly because I quickly paused them to work on my loom knit sweater. Once that was finished, I picked them up again and they came along as quickly as I’d expect for a nice and simple repeat.

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I loom knitted a sweater!

Strap in because this may be my first finished make of 2021, but it started in 2019, and it’s a whopper.

I learned to loom knit a few years ago because I was really only interested in making socks, and I have zero desire whatsoever to learn “regular” needle knitting (I am beyond bored of people telling me I should – I don’t care – there’s the door!) so to discover there was an old-fashioned method to do so got me excited and I made a LOT of socks over the years. I also made a few hats, and a cowl, and a pair of weird mittens, but then the worm of an idea grew in my head – “You should make a sweater.”

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A striped bamboo lingerie set

Yes, another lingerie set! I’ve been wearing the other sets I made this year (the polka dot, the black mesh, and the painterly) pretty much nonstop so when Discovery Fabrics asked if I’d be interested in trying one of their panty packs (for the price of postage since Canada to the UK isn’t cheap!) I was all over it. They stock a ton of great technical activewear fabrics so I knew these would be fabulous, and I was not disappointed!

My pack has seven fabrics at the full width but only 12in long – which is absolutely fine for panties and most bras, but in order to fit my favourite Sophie Hines Axis Tank into my yardage I had to get a little creative and cut some new design lines on the front piece. For this one I cut off the bottom with a curve (bottom right in the photo below) but I might change things up for the next one and cut off the straps instead!