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Inspiration

Dates for Your Calendar

There are some big things happening in my sewing world over the next month or two you should know about (no, not another pattern release just yet though I am working on the next one already!). So get out your calendar and take note of these…

Monday 13 October

Spoonflower have announced another free shipping day (international shipping, too)!. This is a perfect opportunity to try out our Fehr Trade x Laurie King exercise fabrics if you haven’t already. The fabrics coordinate perfectly with my sewing patterns so you only need to buy one yard of wicking fabric to get coordinating colours and prints.


Seen above, the VNA Top and Duathlon Shorts (booty length) in the coordinating “Maps” citrine & black colourway.

For UK buyers, this means you save $9 on shipping, and if you buy one yard of the Performance Piqué it should fall under the HMRC exemption and you won’t get hit with nasty surprise customs charges.

Thursday 16 October

Next Thursday evening I will be teaching the Slouchy Breton Tee class at the Thriftystitcher studio in Stoke Newington (London), and there’s still space for you to join!


Me in my Purple & green Slouchy Breton Tee

This class uses a pattern drafted exclusively for the class, and has the magic ability of fitting everyone I’ve taught so far without needing an FBA! Magic. Stripey fabric is provided just you just need to turn up and enjoy learning the stretch fabric basics, and go home with your own tee and exclusive pattern.

Tuesday 21 October

OMG, it’s the return of the Great British Sewing Bee, but with a twist! The first of three charity specials for BBC Children in Need airs at 8pm, featuring celebrities who have never sewn before, going through a set of three challenges. Dum dum DAH!

I’m super excited for these to air because, well, I may have spent half my summer working behind-the-scenes on these (there’s a blog post ready for when I’m able to post it!), so I can’t wait to see the finished episodes!

Also, I can confirm that these Pudsey ironing board covers are super cute! Serious bargain at £10 (for charity!), if you ask me.

In Progress

A Coat Muslin Downer & a Pick-me-Upper

Remember a few weeks ago when I took a quick trip down to Brighton and came back with some gorgeous wool coating and vintage Italian silk lining from Ditto? Of course you do!

Well, as shown in the photo above, I bought it intending to make the StyleArc Audrey pattern to be a transitional Fall “car coat” (heavier than a jacket, but not a full-on winter coat). So having arrived home to decidedly Fall weather, I thought I should get a move on with this coat or else it’ll be too cold before I can make it!

So I pulled out my Audrey pattern, cut out all the million pattern pieces (the attention to detail is really terrific – the lining and facing pieces are exquisitely drafted rather than just carbon-copies of the exterior), and made a muslin.

I know muslins can be super useful, especially for fit problems, but there’s something about them that makes me lose all enthusiasm for a pattern once I see it made in beige, crumbled fabric held together with pins and covered in Sharpie marks. I think I’ve probably dumped more coat patterns at the muslin stage than any other garment (let’s all try to erase the Armani coat muslin horror from our minds… oops)! I put this one on, looked in the mirror and thought…. meh.

So I recruited James and a friend for second opinions. They both gave it the thumbs down, then started going through the list of things that could be done to improve it, lengthen here, take out fullness here, etc etc. Err, no – for something that’s supposed to be “fun sewing” I’d rather just dump this and use another pattern I haven’t yet lost all enthusiasm for!

Inspiration, Magazine

Burda Easy magazine Fall/Winter 2014

While we were off holidaying through Bohemia, I didn’t really get a chance to do much fabric or haberdashery shopping. There are tons of fabric shops all over Budapest, but we were definitely more concerned with the street food and thermal baths while we were there. In Vienna I really meant to stop in at Komolka and Stoff und Faden (thanks, Shannon!), but we were short on time and all I could manage was a peek through the windows of the latter while they were having a class at night. I didn’t see anything sewing-related in Prague, but I spotted a few fabric shops in Berlin along the marathon route (sadly, not really the time to be stopping to shop!), so my lone sewing souvenir this time around was a copy of the latest Burda Easy magazine, which I was happy to pick up!

If you’re not familiar with Burda Easy, it’s published twice a year in several languages (German, French, English, Italian, and Russian, I believe?), and has fully illustrated instructions. Sometimes the designs are simpler, but in this issue they’re happily on the more advanced/interesting side and not too difference from what’s in the monthly magazine. The patterns come on tissue and are printed in such a way that they don’t overlap each other so you could cut the out rather than trace if you’re that way inclined. They don’t contain seam allowances, which is the norm everywhere except the US.

The last time I bought an issue was two years ago when we were in France but I think I prefer the designs in this one even to that. Burda Easy really only provide four base patterns, then spin a huge amount of variations off of those, so you can get a pretty wide variety of looks (also helpful if you need to do things like an FBA, you only need to do them once!).

First up – I’ve cooled off the peplum look rather a lot by now, but I really like the paneled pencil skirt (either with the asymmetric godet or not).

I thought this foldover clutch with the bow detail was really cute – it’s explained in a series of colour photos on the facing page, and it’s only rectangles so doesn’t require any tracing, either.

Here’s another variation on the seamed pencil skirt, but this time it’s shorter and with more godets inserted to give it more of a skater skirt shape. I also like the look of the colourblocked tee, but not being a sweetheart neckline kind of woman, I’d personally smooth out the point so it’s just a curve over the bust.

Inspiration, Magazine

Burda magazine October 2014

I received my subscription copy of this magazine the day before we left for our Bohemia trip, but by that point I’d already written a full week’s worth of posts (I hope you enjoyed all those book reviews!), and didn’t have any time to spare to scan this until after we came home.

I haven’t seen much about this issue online yet, but after two mediocre Fall issues, this is the Fall fashion issue I’ve been waiting for!

I usually shy away from “nautical styles” since it can be a bit cliché to live on a boat and dress like a sailor, so I was surprised that I really liked a lot of the styles in this feature, including the His’n‘Hers pea coats.

It’s hard to beat a good long sleeved cowl neck tee as far as I’m concerned (they’re pretty much my uniform in the colder months) and I really like that this version has a crossover at the shoulder which brings the cowl a bit higher. This should prevent any “leaning over gaping” issues that some cowl tops have, but there’s only one way to find out! (There’s also an un-pieced version of this same tee)

Now, I thought the trousers pictured with the stripey tee above looked nice enough, especially since they have an interesting back view, but then I saw this note in the instructions! What?? That sounds like a problem, not a feature! I don’t know about you, but one of the reasons I sew is to avoid RTW fitting issues like trousers falling down as I wear them…

Gallery

Lavender Threshold Shorts in Berlin marathon

Thank you all so much for first your good luck messages, and then your congratulations after this weekend’s Berlin marathon! We had an absolutely wonderful (and gluttonous!) week in Budapest, Vienna, and Prague leading up to the race, and we thoroughly enjoyed Berlin, too!

I promised you all before I left that I believed enough in my Threshold Shorts design that I’d run an entire marathon in them – and I did! They performed great during the race – they didn’t ride up in the thighs at all and the little back pocket kept my final two gels safe and secure right up until 40k when I gobbled down the last salted caramel Gu.

You can read my full race report over on my River Runner site, but the short version is that I loved this race and truly smiled the entire way through, ending on a total high as we ran through Brandenburg Gate. This was my fourth marathon and my most enjoyable to date (as well as my fourth marathon run in me-sewn gear!).

You can also see that I modified my RDC vest a little bit, too – during races I like to only use one headphone, and normally tuck the other earbud under my sportsbra. But for longer races, this has a tendency to both irritate and get salt and sweat in the earbud, so this time I thought ahead and stitched a little piece of elastic onto my vest at the shoulder to wrap the headphone around! It worked a treat and is something I’ll definitely do for future marathon and half-marathon tops.

Gallery

Turquoise Threshold Shorts and a Purple Zigzag XYT

I hope you all have been enjoying all the book reviews while I’m away on holiday! I thought I’d end this week with some photos of one of my favourite pairs of Threshold Shorts that I sewed myself. These are made in some turquoise/teal aerated polyester and pale “apple green” FOE, both from Sewing Chest. It’s an unusual colour combination but one that I totally love!

Even better is that I realised that the teal matches the purple/citrine/teal colourway of our Fehr Trade x Laurie King fabric designs really well! I sewed up a sample of my XYT Workout Top pattern in the “Zigzag” pattern to show them off together. It’d be rude not to!

Let’s talk about the top first – as I mentioned with my first, ombré samples, the Spoonflower tech fabrics have no vertical stretch, so you’ve got to add some into the patterns. I chose to demonstrate the super-easy cheat’s way, which was to just draw two horizontal lines (one above the waist and one below), and spread these out when I cut the fabric!

I separated each by 2cm and this seems just about right for me. It also has the bonus of making it easy to stripe match the front and back, as you get a little “window” for the zigzags!

I chose to use the Y back here and I even paid attention and switched coverstitching threads from purple to citrine so they blend in nicely. You can’t see it, but I’ve also used purple power mesh for the built in bra, so it’s a very attractive little running top!

Inspiration

Book Review: Two Pattern Grading books

I’ve got not one, but two books to talk about today, both on the subject of pattern grading, which, to be honest, has hardly any books published on the topic and seems to be a bit of an industry secret or something.

If you’re not familiar with what pattern grading is – it’s the process of taking one pattern and adding or subtracting amounts at various points to make it another size, or multiple sizes. This isn’t just a simple equation of “well, size Y is twice as big as size Q” because humans’ shapes don’t grow at the same rate (ie: the difference between a size 0 and a size 18’s shoulders aren’t likely to be as great as the difference in hip sizes). In general, the measurements around the body change much more than the vertical measurements, so you need to follow some rules to know how far to move different points and in which directions.

Now, there’s an old-fashioned way of doing this with paper patters, scissors, tape, a special “grade ruler”, and several hours of your time, and this was covered pretty extensively in the September 2014 Threads Magazine (#174). In my personal opinion, this is fine if you only want to change one pattern to one other size, for instance if you have a vintage pattern but want it in your own size. Doing more than one size this way is a great way to end up throwing everything into the bin after several hours of swearing.

In my opinion, the far less stressful way to do pattern grading is digitally. You select a point, tell your software (like Adobe Illustrator) to move it xx cm vertically and yy cm horizontally, and you do that to all the points around the pattern. No taping, no cutting, and no weird ruler. Plus it’s way more accurate. So with this in mind, my reviews of both books are skewed heavily towards how they deal with digital drafting.

Let’s look at “Grading Workbook” by Connie Crawford first. It’s been out as a print book for a while, but I bought an early edition of the pdf ebook last year, which has been extensively cleaned up and digitised. I checked about a month ago, and there haven’t been any revisions so the copy I’m reviewing here is indeed current.

The book is targeted at someone who has some knowledge of pattern drafting, but is a beginner at pattern grading – most home sewists would be able to follow along with the introductory chapters which explain the methods and theory, and how to select different grades.

For each of the grade tables (ie: bodice, skirt, sleeve, stretch, child, etc), there are a few pages which show which point is being selected and which direction to move it, shown in a series of diagrams, like these two:

Inspiration

Book Review: Pattern Cutting for Menswear

Unfortunately, menswear really is the ugly stepchild of the fashion industry – there seem to be about two menswear books for every ten for women, plus there are hardly any commercial patterns out there for men (and if there are, 90% of the time it’ll be that same button-down shirt I’ve seen a million times, argh).

The Aldrich book seems to be the de-facto standard for menswear drafting as far as I can tell, but I tried her teeshirt draft for men and hated it so I’m loathe to buy it to test the rest, really. Perhaps it’s the standard just because there are so few to choose from and not because it’s particularly very good? So I asked for (and received!) this book instead for my birthday, as I’d love to draft more menswear for James and possibly for future patterns, too.

Now I haven’t actually tested the drafts in here yet (though I fully intend to), but I really like a lot of things about this book. Most obvious is that it’s a modern menswear book – instead of just covering the basic tailoring styles, it shows you how to draft things like hoodies, jeans, and parkas on top of the more standard jacket and button-down shirts. There are 20 different styles in all, with instructions on how to adapt the basic blocks to match the given style. So this is more like how the Japanese pattern books do things, only a bit easier to follow than the standard Pattern Magic “instructions”!

Gallery

Book Review: Digital Textile Design

I bought this book when I was working on the Laurie King fabric collaborations and I saw that Laurence King publishers were having a massive sale on all their fashion and textile books. I already own all the Pattern Magic and Drape Drape books in English, but I was intrigued at the idea of this one and I’m really glad I picked it up as I don’t really know of any other books like it.

This book is really aimed at the beginning textile designer and has full tutorials for Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to show how to get a bunch of different effects. I really like the style that this is written in (it’s much easier to read than a textbook!), and the screenshots and steps in the tutorials are really easy to follow along with.

There’s a fair amount of design inspiration from cool up and coming designers playing with digital prints, plus some advice on good design aesthetics, but I’ve learned the most from the tutorials, like this one which shows how to map out photo-realistic prints exactly where you want them on your pattern pieces.

Even if you’re not a fan of the Versace look, it’s a great primer on photo manipulation, scanning, placement, and printing (though of course it’s easier for me since my designs are already digital).

Inspiration

Book Review: Demystifying Bra Fitting & Construction

While I’m away on holiday I thought I’d keep you all entertained with a series of posts on books I’ve bought over the past year or so and never really quite talked about. Not a single one of them is a “beginning sewing book”, either, so for those of you who are a bit sick of seeing the same books being released over and over, well, you’re in for a treat this week.

First up is a book which I talked about a while back when it was released as an e-book, but I thought it was worth a revisit as it’s just been released in print.

The print edition has the same content as the e-book, with full colour photos and really very excellent advice on both fitting and construction that I just haven’t seen elsewhere, in print or online. If you missed my earlier review, the condensed version is that this is really what you need in order to make a bra pattern fit you, and then sew it all together. I’ve sewn with Kwik Sew bra patterns before and even though their instructions are held up to be really good, it doesn’t even come close to the level of detail in this book.

Plus, she tells you how to make a muslin (toile) so that you don’t get all the way to the end of sewing a gorgeous bra, only to find out in the final step it doesn’t fit properly. Which is what I usually end up doing, and then getting discouraged and not sewing another one for months (speaking of, I’m probably due for another spate of bra sewing soon!)