Search Results for: little bits of sewing

Bits and Pieces

Ok, so to take a brief break from reading material, I thought I should update you with what I’ve been up to in the sewing room…

Bridesmaids dresses

I had the first fitting of P’s muslin, and there are surprisingly little changes to be made – raising the neckline and armscye, pulling up the waistband by a centimetre, and that’s about it.

So I’m doing a second version of the bodice for her to try on this weekend, and then I unpick the skirt off that muslin and attach it to G’s bodice (the skirt is enormous and I didn’t have enough knit muslin for two!) and have her first fitting while I get down and dirty with the waistband pleating. I’m anticipating the pleating to be the most time-consuming part of both the dresses… (Earlier post about the dresses and colours here)

A spring dress

I finished a nice Springy version of BurdaStyle’s Heidi dress yesterday (finally!).

It was just waiting for a hem for nearly a week, which is a long time for me. It’s nice timing as Spring (or maybe even Summer!) arrived this weekend and it was gorgeous outside on deck with the barbecue going and everyone hopping from boat to boat. I’m hoping to do a photoshoot tonight now that we’ve got daylight for longer in the evenings…

An “Interview with the Vampire” custom tribute tee

My obsession with the “Interview with the Vampire” tv show has not waned in time since it premiered (and broke my brain) last October. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that not a day has passed that I haven’t thought about this show. The brain rot is real.

Anyway, I’ve been playing with my Silhouette cutting machine recently, as I talked about in my last post, but this shirt design is one I worked on for quite a few weeks, and the idea just wouldn’t let me go.

It started with San Diego Comic Con, where AMC put a ton of money into building a recreation of a New Orleans street with live actors and swag, but also filled whole buildings with enormous posters to promote season two (out some time next year). But the image that really stuck with me was from some lifts (elevators) within a hotel, where there was a huge photo of the four main characters on each wall inside.

A fuchsia mesh lingerie set

I’ve made a lot of lingerie over the years, but my bra preferences have changed over the course of the pandemic (like a lot of women) to favour soft bras over underwired styles, and I’m still trying out different patterns to find ones I like. So I was very interested to learn that New Craft House had not only bought up the un-used fabric and haberdashery from a lingerie brand that sadly went out of business, but bought their patterns, too! When the collection was finally ready to buy (two bra patterns, three panty patterns, and four kits), I literally set a timer and hit buy within the first minute (if you’re ready this right after I’ve posted, the kits are only temporarily sold out while they catch up on the avalanche of orders).

IWTV tribute crew shirt

It should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been following me on social media for the past few months that one of my first makes of the new year should somehow involve the “Interview with the Vampire” tv show (aka “the show so good I think it altered my brain chemistry”). I also spoke more about it in my end of year roundup if you want more explanation of just how good this show is, and how to watch it (short version: AMC or Amazon in most territories).

Anyway, in the official Behind the Scenes documentary, Sam Reid (the actor who plays Lestat) wears a slate blue teeshirt with a coffin drawing on the front, which I really liked, so I did a bit of investigating. Sam’s a massive Anne Rice nerd (to an encyclopedic degree!) but it turned out that this was the “crew shirt” for the show – a promo item made and distributed to cast and crew only. Usually these are pretty tacky affairs with just the show logo on a tee or trucker cap, but I really liked the subtlety of this one – it looks like it does have the show name on the sleeve and a bit of text on the back that can’t be read (my guess is maybe “Memory is a Monster”?), but mostly, I was into the coffin drawing. I did some cursory searches on eBay but with NDAs these days, I didn’t really expect to find anyone selling theirs. So if I wanted one, I’d have to make one myself!

Happy 2023! (Year in Review)

For the past 15(!) years I’ve posted my year in review on 1 January, but not this year. I lost my sewjo around the end of September so I didn’t really have much to blog about. I waited for it to reappear (as I learned a long time ago there’s no point in trying to force it) and prepped a few projects, tidied a bit, planned a bit, and then fell into a massive “Interview with the Vampire” fandom hole (more on that later), and generally was happier in October and November than I’ve been in a long time (completely unrelated to the sewing) but that’s not the reason this post is late.

This post is late because, despite my best efforts (cycling to/from, FFP3 masking indoors with my CO2 monitor and otherwise staying outdoors) I caught a virus of some sort at the office christmas party which left me practically bed-bound with post viral fatigue for 4+ full weeks (no, not Covid, not flu, not RSV, not anything they swabbed for at haematology, but thankfully not EBV either). Like, 21+ hours a day in bed, and if I sat up for more than 15min to eat or drink, I’d have to lie flat for another hour. So sitting up to type was impossible, and I wrote this in pieces on my phone when I could, not being able to put it all together until I started improving a little bit in the past few days.

So apologies that it’s late, and for the blog silence for the past few months, but hey, 2023 can only get better from this dismal start, right?? Without further ado, let’s have a look back at 2022…

Completing the Alpine Cycling Set (& 100 miles!)

When I sewed myself the Alpine cycling kit last summer, I didn’t make a sports bra to go along with the Surf to Summit Top jersey and the Rouleur Leggings bib shorts, even though I’d done so for my previous two cycling sets (rainbow in 2019 and Tokyo-inspired in 2020). This was because I didn’t really think I’d have enough fabric left as I knew I wanted to make Tenacity Shorts and a Versatili-Tank with it too, but also because I figured I had enough sports bras and it didn’t really matter.

But apparently I do care, because in the months of cycling in the kit since then (99% of which was on Zwift!), it kinda bugged me that I didn’t have a matching bra – petty, I know, but easily fixable! So once I decided that I’d be cycling RideLondon’s 100 miler in this kit, I pulled out the leftover scraps to see if I could piece together a sports bras from the bits of fabric and upcycled race tees. And the answer was “just barely”!

A mesh black lingerie set

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! Yes, this is a very similar set to the dotty one I shared on Friday, but I liked that one so much I wanted more in my lingerie drawer.

Earlier, I’d made the plain View 1 of the Sophie Hines Axis Tank pattern but this time around I wanted to make View 2 which has the seamed sides and back. I’ve seen loads of great examples of this pattern using different fabrics and it was the real reason I bought it!

A green gratitude teeshirt

These are weird times. Apart from my birthday dress, I’ve really only been sewing face masks for myself, J, family and neighbours and even though I’ve got loads of lovely fabrics paired with specific patterns that are ready to go, I haven’t actually felt like sewing them. For me, most of the joy of sewing is in the making itself, but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t enjoyment in the wearing it for others to admire, too. Without that component, on top of my usual routine being upended for the past 3.5 weeks, it’s just not been easy to get into the right mindset to create.

By go-to for times when I’m in a funk is to sew a “quick knit top”, which, for the past few years has meant a teeshirt using the “Loose Fitting Top Block” from my Sew Your Own Activewear book (my go-to teeshirt pattern). So I grabbed some cotton-lycra jersey from Ditto Fabrics in the most perfectly “me” shade of olive green from my stash, and did some cathartic sewing early on in March.

My feather-print Winter Base Layer top

So I’ve already shown you two versions of the Winter Base Layer top but both are really similar, both in colourblocking and for using the exact same base fabric. But this design is so much more versatile than what you’ve seen so far, and I wanted my second version to be a little different! So I changed up the way I played with the colourblocking and used some different fabrics, and I love this version just as much as my merino one!