Gallery – Page 21

4 July, 2018Gallery

A tropical print Bettine dress

Like the best comic book superheroes, this dress has an almost unbelievable origin story.

As you know, I’ve been sick with multiple viral infections for months, and have been pretty down about it all. Well, I stepped out of the flat one day a few weeks ago and bam! right on the pavement outside the flat was a Tilly & the Buttons Bettine dress pattern, just lying there! I mean, seriously, what are the chances?

I could’ve just left it there for whomever dropped it to recover, but with rain forecast later in the day I didn’t want it to get ruined and besides, this was the Universe giving me A Sign, and I didn’t feel like I should overlook the only good luck I’d had in months! So I took it home and started fabric shopping immediately.

27 June, 2018Gallery

An upcycled knitting bag and some newly-loomed socks

A few weekends ago I found myself in HEMA (a Dutch interiors, snacks, and household shop) picking up a few things and I spied a cushion cover for a fiver that I liked the look of. I’d been meaning to make myself a project bag for my sock loom and various supplies for a while now, and I saw the potential! I was also too excited to get a Before photo but it’s up online and now I see it’s only £2! Figures!

The cushion cover featured a loosely woven fabric on one side (which I used as the bag exterior) plus a plain canvas on the other (which became the bag lining) and a matching zip so it was excellent value considering the zipper alone would’ve cost me around £3.50!

25 June, 2018Gallery

A velvet slipcover for our sofa

We have loved our sofa since the moment we bought it about 5 years ago, and the bones of it are in great condition, but the fabric the manufacturers used was not fit for every day wear and tear. It faded, took on stains, and the final straw was when the cushion fabric actually wore through (it didn’t rip, the fabric disintegrated).

20 June, 2018Gallery

Two bamboo teeshirts

I had just about a meter leftover from the lovely Raystitch bamboo jerseys I used for the samples on my Craftsy class, and the fabric is too soft and wearable to leave marinading in my stash!

So I pulled out the Loose Fitting Top Block from my “Sew Your Own Activewear” book and managed to squeeze a teeshirt (minus a bit of hem length) out of each with hardly anything leftover!

18 June, 2018Gallery

A striped pattern-puzzle Atacac tee

I was browsing through my Instagram feed a few months ago when I saw a post by Ernie about some Swedish designers who made absolutely crazy-complicated 3D patterns and I was instantly hooked! I mean, cos you know me and pattern puzzles, right?? If I can’t work out how a pattern goes together by just looking at it, I’m immediately drawn to it!

Atacac are primarily RTW designers but they released a bunch of their RTW designs as downloadable “sharewear” patterns. They’re only in one size (size “3” on their size chart), but this happened to be my size anyway, and as it turns out, this particular tee is quite loose-fitting anyway.

8 June, 2018Gallery

A floral bias top

Happy Friday everyone! I like to buy souvenir fabric whenever I’m travelling, and when I was in Malaga last summer competing in the World Transplant Games I bought one meter of a lovely floral poly satin at a fabric shop we stumbled across in the centre of town.

I’m not usually a floral woman but this digital print really spoke to me for some reason, and now that the weather has warmed up it felt right to cut into it – and what better way to showcase the beautiful photo print than with a little bias top pattern I’d already tested? So I pulled out Burda 6501, which I’d made last summer in a viscose print and worn loads since.

29 March, 2018Gallery

Two pairs of Cycling Shorts

These are the final garments I’ve got to show you from my “Sew Your Own Activewear” book – for now, anyway! And it’s fitting that I’ve saved these to the end because I wore both of these shorts hard all summer long, and I wanted to show again how you can mix and match features to make garments that work for you. The thirteen designs in the book were only ever intended as a starting point – you have my full permission and encouragement to change them up, repurpose bits of one design onto another, and make what works for you and your chosen exercise!

So in that spirit, last summer I decided I loved the Cycling Shorts design, but I wanted them for running. So I didn’t increase the back rise (a cycling-specific adaptation that’s not needed for running), and I also left off the chamois padding and silicone hems for similar reasons.

27 March, 2018Gallery

The “Sew Your Own Activewear” Cycling Shorts

I can’t quite believe it, but this is our final week and 13th design from my “Sew Your Own Activewear” book! It feels like just yesterday it was the start of January and I finally got to tell you all about the first of the designs in the book. And here we are, 13 weeks later, and I’ve taken you in-depth on each one of them. I’ve saved one of the best for last, though, and I think you’ll find that the Cycling Shorts are a super stylish addition to your activewear wardrobe, even if you never climb onto a bike!

26 March, 2018Gallery

My birthday animal-print Cycling Top

Happy 39th birthday to me! (And coincidentally to Rosie DIY Couture, though I don’t think she’s as old as me!) Yesterday was my birthday, and thank you so much to everyone who wished me well on social media – I’d planned to get this post up on the day itself, but I ended up spending my day packing and hefting boxes as we moved into the temporary flat we’ll be living in while the boat is being renovated! We only really took these photos as we were loading my bike into the rental van to move it to the flat (you can even see it in one of the shots!) so please forgive that the photos aren’t as clear or comprehensive as usual – they were taken very quickly on my phone on a very tiring day!

Every year I like to make myself something special to celebrate my birthday, and often these garments get so closely tied in my memory to that time in my life that I still refer to my green silk dress as “my 30th birthday dress”, for instance, and it means I get to do a bit of selfish sewing for myself, too!

This year I decided to make something I’ve been planning for months and months – ever since I bought a length of pale pink & lavender leopard (or is it cheetah?) spotted activewear fabric from Stoff & Stil in Oslo back in November. I then realised I hadn’t bought quite enough to make the Cycling Top I had envisioned in my head, so I had to order another meter from Stoff & Stil online, which ended up being from a slightly different dye lot (it’s only noticeable if you get really close!).

19 March, 2018Gallery

The “Sew Your Own Activewear” Cycling Top

What’s an activewear book without some cycling kit? Not much of an activewear book, if you ask me, so I knew that I absolutely wanted to include some cycle-specific gear when I was developing the designs for my “Sew Your Own Activewear” book. I’d already developed a great cycling top (as well as all-around winter exercise and rashguard!) when I’d made my Surf to Summit Top pattern (also available for men!), so I wanted to take some learnings from that and make the book design different enough that cyclists would want to make both!

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