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Sewing jeans against the world

Sometimes you have to just close yourself into your sewing room, try to block out the world, and just make. This weekend I closed myself in my sewing cave and emerged on Sunday with a new pair of jeans and a teeshirt.

Let’s start with the jeans – I’ve lost track, but these are probably at least the 10-15th pair of jeans I’ve sewn myself, so I pretty much know what I want and how to achieve it by now. I usually try to make at least a pair a year, as they seem to live for just over a year of hard wear before the inner thighs inevitably start to wear thin and they’re relegated into “boat work jeans”.

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A refashioned Tessellate Tee from race shirts

I’ve got so many wonderful versions of my latest Tessellate Tee pattern to show you, and this one is particularly fun because it uses up old race tees! If you run a lot of races like I do, after a while you end up drowning in race shirts given at the end along with your medal. Oftentimes these are sized for men, so they’re big and boxy and not very flattering to wear, but they’re often made of great wicking material, which, while not very stretchy, is super breathable and works great for the Tessellate Tee!

Once I started cutting up and refashioning old race shirts, I now actually request the largest possible size from races as they’ve got the most material to use and I know I’m more likely to wear a refashioned one than the regular tee. This tee uses an old Run to The Beat half marathon race shirt (the teal & hot pink), and a Royal Parks half marathon tee (the yellow and blue, with “RUN” on the back), plus some yellow reflective DriFit I bought from The Rain Shed last year (no longer in stock).

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Transylvanian Bear Steeplechase Shorts

I mentioned last week that I quickly made a pair of bear shorts to wear in time for the Transylvanian Bear Race at the weekend, and I can share the full details now that I’ve run the race!

I’d bought a few fat quarters of Spoonflower’s Sport Lycra base fabric a few months ago, but recently I realised that combining two fat quarters would soooo not be enough fabric for a pair of shorts. So I frantically ordered another full yard of the “geometric grizzly bear” print fabric to be the body of a Biker length pair of my Steeplechase Leggings pattern, with the fat quarter of the mint green “geometric bear” print bear fabric being enough for the shorts yoke.

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A Great British Baby Grow

If you are in the UK, you doubtless are already aware that the latest season of the Great British Sewing Bee is well underway! Not only have they got a new location (which looks uncannily like the old one in Wapping, but is now coincidentally located right by my office), but also a new judge, with Esme Young replacing May Martin as Patrick Grant’s wing-woman.

I wasn’t able to be as involved on the production side for this season as I was last time around due to my working four days a week at my office job, but I was able to help out with some sewn samples for the latest Sewing Bee book, instructions and illustrations, but also make the odd “Perfect” for the show, too!

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A thermo colourblocked Tessellate Tee hoodie

Thanks for all your patience, enthusiasm, and congratulations on the full digital release of the Tessellate Tee pattern this weekend! It’s great to finally enable anyone around the world to sew it now, and like the Surf to Summit top pattern, it’s one where you can mix and match a lot of the options to get the look you’re after.

I thought I’d start with the version shown on the pattern cover – it’s made in Funkifabrics’ “thermo” fleece-lined lycra in Plum, Yellow, and Turq and uses all the optional add-ons – thumb cuffs, zippered back pocket, and ponytail hood.

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Ina maxi-skirt in Istanbul!

James has been speaking at quite a few conferences since the publication of his book last year, and most recently he had been invited to speak at a conference in Istanbul. But even more exciting (for me!) is that we could upgrade his room to double occupancy so I could come along for just the price of a flight – so for £100 I got a four day trip to Istanbul! Neither of us have ever been there, but multiple friends just raved about it, so we were super excited to come check it out (and eat ALL THE FOOD!).

Once I found out I was going, I started reading up on what to see there (as well as doing my Duolingo Turkish lessons every lunchtime so I could at least say hello and thank you!) and I saw that some of the most amazing mosques require respectful dress (covered shoulders, knees, and hair for women). I thought this would be a good opportunity to expand my wardrobe with a maxi-skirt since I didn’t actually own any skirts that covered my knees!

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A non-traditional Japanese kimono robe

A good friend of mine travelled to Tokyo in January, and asked if I wanted anything. “Oh, some nice traditional kimono print fabric would be nice if you see any”, I said. Well, he ended up going to Nippori Fabric Town one day and fell hard for Tomato (I might also add here that he owns a vintage Bernina sewing machine!). I ended up with a massive stack of cotton prints as well as some lovely wool tweed, too.

I’ve been meaning to sew up two of the more traditional prints in particular ever since I received them, and I thought they would coordinate really well together in a project as they’re the same colours but different prints:

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An upcycled baby onesie

This is a much smaller project than my lace dress but one I wanted to share anyway as it involves upcycling a teeshirt into something more useful. One of my very first sewing projects as an adult was transforming a XXL promotional teeshirt into something more stylish, and I think a lot of beginners find teeshirt refashions to be both inspiring and approachable – after all, there’s no question of how much fabric to buy, or if you’ve got the wrong kind, as teeshirts are pretty universal.

In any case, this started life as a very oversized promotional teeshirt for the sports personality Alan Brazil, who records his weekly show in my office’s studio and is well-known around the office. He’s particularly loved by our Creative Director, Ben, so we all decided he should have the teeshirt. But Ben is not a XXL, so it just stayed on his desk for ages, and was left there when he went away on paternity leave…

…when I mischievously spirited it home and refashioned it into a onesie for his newborn son!

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Lace dress for a wedding

Last week I showed you the roses I made for my aunt’s wedding in DC, but I also managed to sew myself a new dress to wear for the occasion, too!

When I was at Ditto’s Brighton shop in December, I fell in love with a wonderful muted turquoise lace and bought a beigey lavender jersey to layer underneath it. I didn’t really have an occasion or pattern in mind when I bought it, but with the wedding trip approaching, I pulled these out of the stash and knew they’d be the perfect starting point.

When making lace dresses, I always look for patterns with a lot of little pieces as I’ve found that the shared seams help keep the layers from separating when worn, such as with the Burda dress I made in pink and grey lace (and still wear a lot, 5 years later!). If you try to make a lace dress from big pieces, you have the opportunity for one to grow or move independently if there’s nothing holding them together in the middle of the garment. I wanted something that I’d sewn before, too, as I didn’t have much time to make it before the wedding and wanted to skip the muslin stage. I ultimately decided on a pattern I’d traced from an ASOS dress and previously made twice – once in a mustard ponte and then again in mustard, teal, and white as a designer inspired colourblock dress.

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Navy Steffi jacket for cycling and running

While I was ill, I found myself mostly working on two in-depth projects – both of which were navy blue jackets for some strange reason! You’ve already seen my wool lumberjacket but I also made myself another StyleArc Steffi jacket pattern, too.

Some of you may recall that I made this a pattern few years ago and sewed some twinkling LEDs into the back of it! At the time, there were a bunch of problems in the instructions (as well as an inadequate seam allowance in one spot, too) so I let StyleArc know about them, and they corrected them, and posted me the corrected version along with another pattern of my choice. Which is freaking awesome customer service if you ask me! I’m pleased to report that the corrected version of the pattern is much, much better. There’s still a major step missing (if I recall, it’s one of the vertical body seams), but everything else is better so it wasn’t quite as frustrating to sew this time around.

But this isn’t my best work, not by a long shot – I made this when I was feeling really bad and couldn’t sit up for more than 10min at a time, and felt like a zombie for weeks on end. But it’s nice enough for a functional cycling jacket when the weather is warmer, and possibly for winter running, too, though I’ve missed that almost entirely this year. Boo.

The main fabric here is some off-cut stuff from my Sweaty Betty industry friend – it’s navy lycra on the outside and super soft brushed fleece on this inside. At the time I received it, I’d never seen anything quite like it, but as it’s been maturing in my stash, the FunkiFabrics thermo range has since been released, and I can tell you that it’s really similar. So if you’re after a fabric that’s both stretchy and warm for a jacket like this, I’d definitely recommend the thermo. The pocket linings and zip shield use offcuts of Laurie King X Fehr Trade Spoonflower fabrics from my zigzag XYT Workout Top, and the two neon yellow pocket zips I bought off eBay.