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La Mia Boutique turtleneck

Before I tackle the Vogue sheath dress that will marry happily with my tweed jacket, I made a quick diversion in the form of a simple wintry knit top from the February 2010 La Mia Boutique magazine:

It’s a classic turtleneck pattern with a little bit of neckline gathering at the centre front, so there were only four pieces to trace (front, back, sleeve, and collar) and it was ridiculously quick to sew on the overlocker/serger and coverstitch. We’re talking a single evening in between preparing dinner here, folks!

Turning to the back…

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Silver tweed skirt

You’ve seen the jacket, and a peek of the skirt as part of the suit, but now it’s the skirt’s time in the spotlight!

(Dutch readers – who is Odette Simons, anyway? Dutch celebrity? Fashion designer? Stylist? She’s appearing in most issues these days and it’s bugging me…)

I just loved the shape of the yoke and pockets on skirt #7 from the January 2010 KnipMode. Essentially they’ve just drawn a bunch of lines onto an A-line skirt pattern which you then cut apart to be the wide yoke, the main skirt body, the pocket backing, and the pocket facing. All that pattern piece reusing means you actually only end up tracing 3 pattern pieces (front, back, and pocket) because you cut up the pieces as you go along. So the top of the skirt back pattern gets cut off for the facing, the skirt front gets cut apart for the yoke, the pocket back, and the facing, etc.

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Silver tweed jacket

It’s time now to turn our attention to the upper half of this silver tweed Planned Partnership, the little boxy cropped jacket (#18) from Patrones 272:

You saw the jacket as part of a classy suit, but how does it work with jeans?, I hear you ask.

As it turns out, even better!

I actually prefer this jacket hanging open instead of buttoned up (which is why I left off the button loop at the very top of the collar stand and the small button hidden under the collar that the pattern suggested).

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Silver tweed suit

Last week I finished the first half of my second Planned Partnership, so I think that makes me exactly one half finished (right, Sharon, resident maths professor?). Though I suppose if you’re counting individual garments, I’d be slightly over halfway finished…

But I digress. You remember the silver tweed fabric and my plans to make a cropped jacket that I could wear with either a matching skirt or with a nude sheath dress (yet to come)?

Well, I’m so delighted with the way both the jacket and skirt turned out that I couldn’t wait to show you! So in the tradition of that other tweed suit, you get a sneak preview!

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Racy lacy lingerie set

When fellow blogger Sigrid visited me last May, she brought along a birthday gift for me – a fantastic lingerie kit from Kantje Boord (a big lingerie notions shop in Amsterdam), full of really cool goodies you only ever see on high-end RTW underwear. In fact, it was all so nice that I was hesitant to cut into it as my bra-making skills are not quite as polished as the rest of my sewing yet.

But Pattern Review are having their first-ever Lingerie sewing contest, so that gave me the impetus to cut into the kit!

I planned on making the same partial-band, underwired bra I’d sewn once before (twice if you count the muslin) with a few improvements, plus my TNT thong panty from KnipMode, and, as it turns out, I was able to squeeze a camisole out of the yardage included in the kit, too!

Camisole

We’ll start with the largest item first, even though I made it last… This one was really easy – I started with a RTW knit vest (tank top if you’re American) that I really liked, laid it on my fabric and traced the front, then did the same with the back.

Inspiration, Magazine

La Mia Boutique Dec & Feb

It’s been a while since I’ve bought or sewn from a La Mia Boutique magazine. It wasn’t any sort of conscious decision, but it’s a bit difficult for me to get ahold of since the newsagent that used to stock it is no longer a newsagent, and RD Franks sells out of it within hours of getting any instore… The styles were also usually a bit too “out there” for me, in the way that Italian fashion can sometimes be – always vibrant and interesting, but not necessarily something I’d want to wear myself.

In any case, I’d been hearing reports and seeing scans from others that La Mia Boutique was getting a lot more wearable these days, so I jumped on two recent issues when they came up for sale from a UK ebay seller (afer having a previous order with a UK magazine shop mysteriously cancelled weeks later with no explanation).

December 2009

I absolutely knew I wanted to grab this issue since littlejazzbird gave a pretty comprehensive rundown of the best patterns in it (seriously, go see the scans on her site! She’s sewn up a lot of LMB patterns recently, too), but there were a few more I wanted to highlight…

In Progress

Silver Tweed beginnings…

With the first Planned Partnership done & dusted in the form of my techno skirt and sequin top, it’s been time to start concentrating on another pairing – the pale silver tweed to go with the nude stretch suiting…

I decided to go with the bottom jacket seen above, so I traced all the pieces of it and the skirt pattern, playing it very carefully and was able to fit BOTH the cropped jacket and the skirt out of the 1.5m of tweed I’d bought! Woohoo! It was by no means certain, but my powers of fabric Tetris prevailed and I’m rather proud.

Inspiration

Twinkle Sews

I got an early Christmas present from lovely Rachel that I’ve been dying to talk about, but I’ve just been sewing too much to find room on here! She ended up with two copies so she offered me one (with unbelievably perfect timing, as I’d not five minutes before received my Christmas parcel from America, totally soaked through like it had been dunked in a lake somewhere en route and was thoroughly upset. So her offer really turned the day around for me!).

It’s called “Twinkle Sews”, and it’s the first sewing book by designer Wenlan Chia.

It’s got sections for skirts, raglan sleeve tops and tunics, dropped shoulder tops and tunics, and sleeveless tops. I’m not a big fan of the dropped shoulder look myself (it just looks badly fitted to my eyes) but that’s easily altered and the designs in here are just so different to what I’m used to seeing in my pattern magazines that it was a real fresh burst of inspiration.

The book contains glossy model photoshoots for each design, then shots of the clothing laid flat, line drawings of the pattern pieces (though not laid onto fabric) with a few detail shots and text-only instructions. To my dismay, there aren’t any technical drawings, but you can get a pretty good idea of what’s going on from the flat photos. They rate the patterns from “Easy” to “Advanced”, but to my eyes, this is not a beginner book at all! The A-Plus A Line skirt is definitely the easiest in the book (read on for a free download link), but the instructions are un-illustrated and don’t seem to use standard pattern instruction notation. Don’t get me wrong – they’re not as bad as Burda magazine, so if you can handle those, you’ll be fine here!

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Techno and sequins

Now that all the 2009 projects are out f the way, here is the first of my sewing partnerships I dreamed up around the end of the year! This skirt & top partnership consists of an “egg skirt” from the April 2009 Manequim magazine…

…and a cowl-neck sleeveless blouse from Simplicity 2580 (which is a dress pattern that I modified before to become a very versatile top).

I always pictured these two fabrics together, and I am loving the resulting outfit! I really think I got it right in matching both the fabrics and the patterns! I originally saw it as club/party wear, and it turned out that I finished it just in time for a big party on Saturday night!

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Champagne silk yoked blouse

Believe it or not, this blouse is my last project from 2009, and I wanted something both simple and silk, which isn’t a common combination! But the cover blouse from Patrones 276, #3 was exactly right:

Apart from being a really nice easy-going top, this pattern only has three pieces – lower front, lower back, and a yoke that’s got a slit opening at the back and goes over the shoulders seamlessly to the front. So not only is it great for <1/2m cuts of coordinating silks, but the yoke is perfect for prints you don’t want to interrupt with seams. And if you’ve got a healthy trim stash (which I’m strangely not really into), then the ribbon across the front provides the perfect showcase.