Blog

Magazine

Burda magazine July 2016

Burda definitely keep up with the seasons, but I still kinda miss the reliable rhythm that the issues used to have back in the day – January had loungewear, March was always the wedding special (the only one they’ve reliably kept!), some menswear in April, May had tons of dresses, August was the Fall fashion previews (and usually maternity, too), cocktail dresses every November, and evening gowns in December. But my least favourite was always the summery beachwear in the June and July issues, because there was pretty much nothing I could wear in an English summer, where it rarely gets about 70-75F (25C)!

But in recent years Burda have been mixing things up, and the old scheduling has given way to more unpredictable features, which I think gives more variety and appeal to a wider rare of sewists. This issue certainly has a lot more than I’d usually like from a July!

Gallery

An American flag shirt for 4th of July

I can’t explain why, but my husband James really likes to dress over the top for the 4th of July each year. I mean, I’m the one who’s American, yet he’s the one wearing stars & stripes sneakers, jeans, and now a shirt, too.

We visited a Mennonite fabric store when we were visiting friends in Pennsylvania in April, and they had a staggering array of quilting cottons (as you’d expect, really). James had lots of patriotic designs to choose from, but settled on this one with repeated American flags with an off-white, almost textured look to it.

Gallery

Two casual Tessellate Tees

By the time I was able to release my Tessellate Tee pattern, I had made so many samples of all the different uses and features that the photoshoot required something like 8 wardrobe changes in the restrooms at our local park! You’ve already seen a few of the exercise-specific versions, but I know some of you may be more tempted to sew up a casual tee than an activewear one. So today I wanted to show that you can use it to make a long-sleeved (or short sleeved) teeshirt to just wear with jeans rather than leggings, too.

The full digital release of the Tessellate Tee pattern comes with all the included extras, but these versions were sewn as samples for Love Sewing magazine, so these are just the straight teeshirt with no hood, pocket, or thumb cuffs.

Gallery

A fuss-free red shirt for James

While my own wardrobe may be 99% own-sewn, I’m only one woman and I like to concentrate my sewing for James into items he can’t regularly find in shops. Often this means loud and garish shirts in unusual prints (just wait til 4th of July…), but occasionally it’s for practical reasons. In this case, he has two Dakine shirts that are made from some sort of thin, technical woven that dries really quickly and resists wrinkling. So he got just a wee bit excited when he saw Fabric.com was stocking something that looked really similar. They called it “workwear fabric” (it’s no longer available) – a thin, 100% polyester woven that resists wrinkling and dries quickly – perfect for him to wear to cycle into work without looking like a sweaty mess all day.

Gallery

Sewing jeans against the world

Sometimes you have to just close yourself into your sewing room, try to block out the world, and just make. This weekend I closed myself in my sewing cave and emerged on Sunday with a new pair of jeans and a teeshirt.

Let’s start with the jeans – I’ve lost track, but these are probably at least the 10-15th pair of jeans I’ve sewn myself, so I pretty much know what I want and how to achieve it by now. I usually try to make at least a pair a year, as they seem to live for just over a year of hard wear before the inner thighs inevitably start to wear thin and they’re relegated into “boat work jeans”.

Article, Magazine

Burda magazine June 2016

Apologies for the delay in reviewing this issue, but as I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been spending pretty much all of my sewing-related time and effort into getting the new site ready (and running a little race in Transylvania as well!). Handily, this issue is still on newsstands for a few more days so if you see something you like, you should still be able to get a hold of this issue – or you could always buy the pattern pdfs from the BurdaStyle site if you’d rather.

Inspiration

Sewing Bee Activewear week! (and Flash Sale!)

Before you read any further, if you haven’t watched the latest Sewing Bee episode yet, I just want to inform you that there are screenshots from the challenges in this post, but I don’t reveal who won or who lost any of the challenges, so you’re safe to read on!

This week’s episode was all about activewear, and I’ve been SO excited ever since the theme was revealed in last week’s preview. I mean, how could I not be excited! The pattern challenge this week was to sew a men’s cycling top, and it was revealed that none of the contestants had much experience with sewing lycra, either!

“Perfect”, I thought, “what a great opportunity to show the 3 million viewers that sewing activewear can be really accessible, even on your first try!” But Patrick and Esme had other ideas, pretty much talking nonstop about how difficult and fraught with peril sewing activewear is. Umm, guys, it’s really not that hard! I’ve taught loads of people to sew their first leggings and they practically dance out of the room!

Gallery

A refashioned Tessellate Tee from race shirts

I’ve got so many wonderful versions of my latest Tessellate Tee pattern to show you, and this one is particularly fun because it uses up old race tees! If you run a lot of races like I do, after a while you end up drowning in race shirts given at the end along with your medal. Oftentimes these are sized for men, so they’re big and boxy and not very flattering to wear, but they’re often made of great wicking material, which, while not very stretchy, is super breathable and works great for the Tessellate Tee!

Once I started cutting up and refashioning old race shirts, I now actually request the largest possible size from races as they’ve got the most material to use and I know I’m more likely to wear a refashioned one than the regular tee. This tee uses an old Run to The Beat half marathon race shirt (the teal & hot pink), and a Royal Parks half marathon tee (the yellow and blue, with “RUN” on the back), plus some yellow reflective DriFit I bought from The Rain Shed last year (no longer in stock).

Article

Moving and redecorating

After 10 years, I’ve finally done something that I’ve been putting off for a long time – I moved this entire site onto a new backend. This may not sound like much, but I knew it was going to be a really painful process so I put off doing it for as long as possible.

When I started writing FehrTrade.com back in 2006, I set it all up on a great open source blogging platform called TextPattern, and for a few years it suited my needs well. But the web has evolved massively in the past ten years, and unfortunately, the contributors to TextPattern have not, and even doing seemingly simple things like tagging required a bunch of coding knowledge and a lot of crossing of fingers. Don’t even think about social network integrations – they barely existed when the site was created! I kept coming up against limitations in what I could actually do with the site, and eventually I realised I’d have to move everything over to a different backend in order to keep the site going at all (let’s not even talk about the security holes!).

Gallery

Transylvanian Bear Steeplechase Shorts

I mentioned last week that I quickly made a pair of bear shorts to wear in time for the Transylvanian Bear Race at the weekend, and I can share the full details now that I’ve run the race!

I’d bought a few fat quarters of Spoonflower’s Sport Lycra base fabric a few months ago, but recently I realised that combining two fat quarters would soooo not be enough fabric for a pair of shorts. So I frantically ordered another full yard of the “geometric grizzly bear” print fabric to be the body of a Biker length pair of my Steeplechase Leggings pattern, with the fat quarter of the mint green “geometric bear” print bear fabric being enough for the shorts yoke.