Contrary to the amount of time I’ve been spending behind a computer recently, I actually have been finding some time here and there to sew, too. It’s just, well, most of it is for my next pattern, which is going well, but is still at least three weeks off going live (sorry!). It turns out that, even though I can reuse some parts of the pattern between the men’s and women’s versions, there still an awful lot of extra work involved in creating two versions!
You might reasonably expect that I’d have to make twice as many samples, but there’s other added time involved with “invisible tasks” like walking seam lines and measuring finished garments, for instance. While both are made considerably easier done digitally, and even moreso if you’ve organised yourself a nice little Excel spreadsheet to do the heavy calculating and imperial converting, there’s still an awful lot of measuring to be done. But it gives me a little thrill when I can see my finished garment measurements vs body measurements equating to ease, down to 1/100ths of a mm!
This is just a small portion of my spreadsheet – the other bits gave too much away!
If you want to be the first to hear details of my new pattern, then now is an excellent time to sign up for my FehrTrade patterns mailing list, which which you’ll find at the bottom of my Shop front page. If you ticked “Yes” to marketing emails when grabbing my free Running Armband Pocket pattern, then you’re already on it. And I absolutely promise you that the email volume will be really low volume and only important stuff, like sneak previews and special voucher codes.
So on top of getting my next pattern ready to send to my two teams of pattern testers, organising athlete-models, and sewing up more samples, I’ve been spending my office hours working on an upcoming sewing book (not mine!) for a publisher, too. So it’s good practice in double-checking instructions and illustrations, but it is rather brain-taxing to be doing all day!
I’ve managed to squeeze in a few “Fun Sewing” projects, though, including a pair of leggings made from some luuuuuuuuuscious Funki Fabrics lycra (bought with my own money).
I took these for a test (trail) run on Sunday so I can wear them to race Three Molehills this weekend, where I’m hoping to get a few more photos for you all!
I also finally cut out the pieces to make a replica of a favourite mustard yellow ponte sheath dress!
The original is from ASOS, but I just adored the curvy, paneled seaming so I traced off the original a few months ago. The original dress is grubby and pilling, and about 10cm too short in the sleeves and hem, so I of course corrected that on my pattern!
I’m trying to sew this together in as many 15 minute segments as I can gather together – I managed to construct the back (minus the zipper) over lunch today, for example. I’ve actually been personally invited by Samantha Cameron(!) to attend a reception at Number 10 Downing Street next week, so I’m trying to finish this to wear to that! So far I’ve been told that the toilets there are “must see”, and that I should eat as many canapes as possible. Done and done! (No cameras allowed inside though, so no shots of the dress in an iconic location like the Houses of Parliament this time around)