Search Results for: manequim may 2013

Happy 2013!

As is traditional, I like to take the first of a new year to take the opportunity to look back on what I’ve sewn in the previous year. So without further ado, here’s a visual reminder of 2012!


Click the image to see it better, or right-click here to see it in a new tab to get a better look!

Tip: If you’d like to skim back through the posts for the above projects, you can click Gallery in the upper left menu, which will only show you finished projects, without all the magazine reviews and in-progress reports getting in the way!

By a mere glance at the collage, it looks like I’ve sewn less this year than in past years, but really I just became more efficient with my photoshoots and so most of the photos contain more than one garment! That, and there were a few that weren’t properly documented, oops.

The Year in Stats

In terms of pattern companies used this year, I made: 11 Burda magazine (more on that in January as I finish up my Year of Burda), 6 Papercut Patterns, 5 Jalie, 4 Pattern Magic, around 4 self-drafted, 2 Manequim magazine, 2 Young Image/My Image magazine, 2 Pattern ~ Scissors ~ Cloth, and one each from: Lekala, Simplicity, Vogue, So… Zoe, Christine Jonson, Wiksten, and KnipMode (oh how the once-mighty have fallen!).

By my count, I made: 19 Tops, 15 pairs of Trousers, 4 Dresses, 4 Skirts, 3 Coats/Jackets, plus two slips and a handful of pairs of panties, an iPad cover, some running armbands, and a boat skylight cover!

But the biggest number of them all – 21 of the above were for running! omg.

Look magazine – August 2015

I briefly mentioned the Argentinian pattern magazine, Look, when I told you all about buying magazines in Argentina last month, but it’s time to take a deeper look into what’s inside!

I totally love sewing pattern magazines – you get so many fashion-forward styles for such a low price, and it’s fun to see what fashions are like in different parts of the world. So far I’ve bought pattern magazines from Germany (Burda!), The Netherlands (KnipMode and My Image), Belgium (La Maison Victor), France (Fait Main), Spain (Patrones), Italy (La Mia Boutique), Brazil (Manequim, Moda Moldes, and Molde & Cia), and now Argentina, how exciting! It doesn’t matter if I can’t speak the language the magazine is written in – as long as I can translate enough to pick the right size and fabric, and identify the pattern pieces, I can sew together most garments without instructions (though usually you can just look at another similar pattern’s English instructions and follow along with those instead). The Google Translate app can translate most text on-the-fly if you point your phone’s camera at the magazine text, too, which saves you from having to type in all the text yourself.

But back to Look! This was the current issue when we were in Argentina in August, along with a “mother and baby” issue from the previous month which I didn’t bother to buy (having several kids pattern magazines already and nieces and nephews into adult sizes now). This particular issue just captured my heart, as it features a huge amount of SS15 runway designs! Remember back in the 1990s and early 2000s when Burda used to do International Collections magazines knocking off all the runway looks? Well that’s precisely what this issue of Look is all about!

I’d say a good half of the patterns in this issue are straight off the runways. Look is a bit different from the other pattern magazines in that the instructions are in a separate booklet from the glossy magazine and the pattern sheets. This means you kinda have to have both open at the same time to see tech drawings next to the runway photo, but is a bit easier than flipping back and forth in the same magazine. If you buy Look on a newsstand, make sure you get all three pieces! Even though the instructions are in their own booklet, these are the briefest I have ever seen in any pattern magazine, so clearly they’re not intended for beginners…

Another observation – like Manequim magazine, most of the Look patterns are only offered in one or two sizes, and the sizes are tiny!! Like, Japanese tiny. Which is strange because even in Buenos Aires the people on the streets seemed to be fairly normal European-sized… Seriously, I’m a size 48 in this magazine, which means I could only fit into one or two of the patterns in this entire issue. (By comparison, I’m a 42 in Burda, La Mia Boutique, La Maison Victor, and KnipMode, and 44 in Patrones and Manequim). Usually with Manequim, most patterns I like are either in my size or a size up or down, which makes it easy to just fudge into fitting, but grading up a bunch of sizes is just too tedious to me.

My birthday jeans

It’s my birthday today! And I’m in New York City!!

We usually take a Spring holiday, but not til later in April or May, however this year James suggested we go away to New York over my birthday, since we haven’t been for four years and there were some shows we really wanted to see (we’ve developed an expensive immersive theater habit!). I’ve been needing a new pair of jeans for a while now, so I promised myself that I’d sew some up once the Steeplechase Leggings pattern was released and I’d have a little bit of a breather. And here they are, coinciding nicely as my birthday make this year!

This denim was bought from Ditto Fabrics, labelled as an Italian denim with very slight stretch, so I treated these as a non-stretch denim. It’s super high quality and I love the colour and wash, though like most denims, it’s still bleeding a bit of colour after two prewashes, so I’ll wash it separately for a while before sitting on any white couches.


(Apologies for the iPhone timer photos taken before I left, but I wanted to ensure I had covered the bases and it’s hard to upload images on the road without a laptop!)

I used the same base pattern as my classic pair of jeans made in 2013 (which is #120 from the April 2010 issue of Burda magazine), but my older pair is a bit too big, and also very straight in the leg and I wanted something more fitted and with a slimmer leg this time around.

I essentially made the same pattern (plus the same wedge cut out of the CB as before), but then basted the inseam and side seams to check the fit. I then decided I wanted to take out a cm at the hips and thighs to make the fit closer to “just washed jeans” to allow for some relaxing, then took out a cm from each of the side seams and inseam through the legs for a more skinny-jean silhouette.

Happy 2015! (My year in review)

As I do every year, I like to spend the first of a new year to take the opportunity to look back on what I’ve sewn in the previous year. So without further ado, here’s a visual reminder of 2014!


Click the image to see it better, or right-click here to see it in a new tab to get a better look!

Tip: If you’d like to skim back through the posts for the above projects, you can click Gallery in the upper left menu, which will only show you finished projects, without all the magazine reviews and in-progress reports getting in the way!

The Year in Stats

In terms of pattern companies used this year, I made:

  • 29 FehrTrade patterns (no surprise, really!),

  • 7 Burda magazine (aka Burda Style),

  • 5 Self-drafted (including traced from RTW),

  • 4 KwikSew (well, the same one pattern four times!),

  • 3 Manequim magazine,

  • 3 Cake Patterns,

  • 2 Style Arc,

  • 2 Vogue,

  • 2 Orange Lingerie,

  • and 1 each from Simplicity, McCalls, ThriftyStitcher, Christine Jonson, Seamster, Named, Sinbad & Sailor, Drape Drape, House of Pinhiero, and Jalie.

By my count, I made: 31 tops, 19 trousers (including leggings & shorts),
5 dresses, 4 pieces of lingerie (bras, panties, slips, etc), 3 skirts, 3 jackets/coats/cardigans, and 4 bags. James also did well this year, being made a winter coat, 2 shirts, 2 cycling tops, and a dop-kit bag.

And I realise I’ve been sewing a lot of running gear but the total number even surprised me – 34 of the above were for running (though not all for me)!

The above may sound like a lot of sewing, but even this is only a fraction of what I’ve actually sewn – I couldn’t really include all the garments sewn for the Great British Sewing Bee, for example, or those made for custom clients (of which there’s been a LOT!), or for the book I’ve been working on, either. In all honesty, I think you could probably double the amount shown above and it’d be closer to the total output!

Honing in on a jeans pattern

Even though I finally finished my pink trousers and lace teeshirt I mentioned last week, it’s been so hot and sweaty that I haven’t quite managed to do a photoshoot for them yet. Everything’s written so as soon as I do, you’ll get to see how great they are, honest!

I also managed to cut out a Kwik Sew exercise top, but not start sewing it yet, but what I really wanted to talk about today is the ongoing process in deciding which jeans pattern to use as a match for some heavyweight, non-stretch denim in my stash. So when I say that I’m “always thinking two projects ahead”, you now know it’s the truth!

If you remember back to my Spring Sewing Ideas, I had two different KnipMode jeans patterns that I thought I might use:

However, I found out soon after that the 2012 KnipMode one was for stretch wovens, which dis-counted it for this particular bout of jeans sewing.

The 2005 one looked very promising, but when I made a muslin of it the look was not good – ill-fitting in the waist and hips and way too wide in the legs. I’m sure I could fix it with plenty of time and patience, but with such an enormous pattern stash it just wasn’t worth pursuing further!

So I went back to the drawing board, otherwise known as my online pattern catalogue, and had a look through all the magazine issues I’d tagged “jeans”. This was a lot! So as I flipped through, I took screenshot segments of the ones I liked the look of, and renamed these files with the brand and pattern number, and shoved them in a special folder.