Search Results for: something old

A grey ribbed jumper

I was thrilled when The Fold Line included a free download of Paper Theory’s LB Pullover pattern in their advent promotion last year. I’ve made their Zadie jumpsuit (twice!) and their Block Tee (formerly “Kabuki Tee”) as well and worn them loads.

I’ve heard great things about the LB Pullover, too, but I balk at spending £11 for a really basic pdf pattern. I will happily admit that I was wrong though – this pattern is well worth the full price, even with its oversized shape and simple lines. It’s easy to mess up the proportions of something so simple, but this is expertly drafted.

Happy 2024! (Year in Review)

Sigh. For the second year in a row I’m left thinking “ugh, good riddance to a rubbish year!”. And for the second year in a row I’m facing an unknown future of post-viral fatigue stretching out before me, then months and months of rebuilding my body (and my life) once that finally ends. And life feels unbearably bleak.

But hey, part of the reason I write these posts at the start of every year is so I can look back and at least appreciate the good things that happened – and there are always at least a few things! It’s human nature to remember the negative more clearly than the positive I think, and this reflection and reset helps me remember things in a more holistic way.

Even if I did only have 7.5 months in my year when all the rest of you got 12 to accomplish everything… (yes, I tallied it up and I was sick and bedridden for 4.5 months of 2023.)

A Claudia tribute outfit – the black silk shirt

Earlier this week I talked about my inspiration and goals for this project, as well as taking a deep dive into the making of the cape, and today’s it’s time to talk about the shirt!

The shirt was the garment I could see the least details of in any of the reference photos or sketches, so it actually meant that I gave myself the most room to make what I wanted here, and one that I would want to wear again and again! I already had some beautiful textured black silk in my stash for a number of years, so it seemed the perfect opportunity to put that to good use.

Whenever I need a woven, button-down shirt these days, I tend to reach for the “Saraste” pattern from Named’s first book, “Breaking the Pattern”. I’ve made the dress version twice now, and the swing top once (with another planned), but I’d somehow not made the classic long sleeved shirt yet. One nice detail I love about the sleeve pattern is that they’ve shifted the long seam so that it falls at the side of the arm rather than the underarm. It means you can just fold the seam allowances under rather than faff around with sewing a full sleeve placket, making it much quicker to sew.

A Claudia tribute outfit – the cape

After yesterday’s post detailing the inspiration and fabric sourcing for this outfit, today I’d like to talk about the standout piece – the cape!

As I mentioned in the earlier post, I sourced the exterior cape fabric from MacCulloch and Wallis’s Soho shop after finding a few that I liked online. But before I cycled up there, though, I noted that all of my candidate fabrics were a) expensive! and b) 140 or 135cm wide. Because of both of these, I didn’t want to buy too much or too little fabric, so I drafted my pattern pieces first to ensure I only bought exactly what I needed.

I drafted this cape myself, using the same principles of a standard circle skirt, except the “waist” would be my neck, and the length would be my neck to wrist measurement. The fabric width meant I couldn’t get a complete circle, so I kept changing the angle until I could fit it into the 140cm.

A fun knit bat dress

I’ve done a bit of impulse fabric shopping while I’ve been stuck in bed (no jury would convict), but the one that’s had the shortest stay in my stash has been this bat print jersey. I saw it on a few Instagram accounts but then ended up buying some when it was nearly sold out everywhere! It’s Art Gallery Fabrics “Winging It” (95% cotton 5% elastane), and I bought my 1.9m remnant from Sew Sew Sew for £27 total (now sold out pretty much everywhere!).

The fabric is super soft with great stretch and recovery, but has some white show-through when stretched. It’s also a dark grey rather than a black so it looks a bit washed out even brand new…

I decided to pair it with the Named Tuuli (bodysuit and dress) pattern which I bought a few years ago, possibly in one of their great advent calendar sales(?) but never quite got around to sewing. IMHO this is a criminally overlooked pattern and such a wonderfully flattering winter knit dress!

An asymmetric swimsuit

It’s been a while since I’ve had to write a negative pattern review but hoo boy, this one’s a doozy. The thing is, I ended up with a finished swimsuit that I really like and feel great in, but that’s in spite of this pattern, not because of it. I significantly redrafted all the pieces and relied heavily on another blogger’s instructions in order to get to the finished result.

I’m not even sure how the Edgewater Avenue “Marley One Piece” pattern came on my radar, tbh. I’ve never heard of the brand before, but they seem to specialise in swimwear sewing patterns and this particular one was on sale for $5 for a limited time, so I bought it.

About the pause…

I’m mostly posting these because I have a bit of a backlog of posts building up and I didn’t want to make them even longer than they already are – also one is a swimsuit from July and it’s November now! And because I felt I owed my long-term readers an explanation as to why I haven’t posted in nearly two months…

It’s been over seven weeks since I first tested positive for Covid. In total, I tested positive for 25 days (including a PCR at hospital on Day 24). During this time I had a wide array of symptoms but the worst was a crushing fatigue, at something like 10-20% of normal energy levels, leaving me stuck in bed for 23hrs a day.

Business casual jean shorts

I never really used to wear shorts very much before a) the pandemic and working from home, and b) the Closet Core Patterns Pietra Shorts changed my entire view on wearing shorts. But I’ve made SO many of them now (5? 6?) that I felt like I should do something different.

So when the Closet Core Patterns “Poppy Camp Shorts” were announced recently, I felt like these could be another great contender for me! This was the July pattern for Closet Core’s monthly pattern club, Crew Patterns. Tbh, I loved the look of these shorts so much that I signed up for a month just to get this pattern! Though now that the month has gone you’ll need to sign up to their Unlimited Membership to get these shorts and other past months’ patterns.

A crazy cat swimsuit

We’ve got a holiday coming up in September, and despite the destination being decidedly un-beachy (Berlin! By train!), we’ll actually be spending four days entirely in swimsuits while we celebrate four wedding anniversaries at Tropical Islands.

I’ve still got two me-made swimsuits I’m really happy with – this Aztec-print Seamwork one from 2015(!) and the pastel bikini set I made last summer for lounging in our hot tub. But it’s always fun to make something new for a holiday, and since I’ll literally be walking around in my suit for the entire day, I didn’t feel like it was too extravagant to sew some more.