Tag: bosco

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Bosco 2007-2012

This wasn’t how I’d planned this week’s posts – I made a top and trousers over the weekend, plus I had some fabrics to show off from last week’s work trip to Montreal…

But yesterday afternoon, our little Bosco died in his sleep. It was totally without warning, and our best guess is that his heart condition finally caught up with him. I’d been home with a fever all day, and he’d been curled up with me earlier, making sure I felt better for him being there. I even tweeted a photo. It’s the last we ever took of him:

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A new sofa slipcover (and bonus cat photos!)

Home dec sewing is boring – there’s no two ways about it. To keep you from falling asleep while reading this, Bosco has helpfully decided to sprawl himself all over said slipcover to act as a diversion from the tedium!

James bought this purple and grey leafy brocade/damask fabric in Paris at Coupon St Pierre last weekend. The coupon fabric shops are a bit different from the usual “there’s a bolt I want you to cut this much of it” fabric stores – here instead, you rummage through piles and piles of pre-cut fabric at set prices, then take what you want to the till. You’re forced to get the full length, but at greatly reduced prices. Anyway, James was after some loud brocade for the interior of a fantasy jacket he’s got brewing for me (which I’ll be telling you more about soon) and bought this only to come across even better fabric later on.

So this lovely, shimmery brocade was left without a use.

Meanwhile, our faux-leather sofa was entirely covered in blankets to try and stop the cat from scratching off what little life was remaining in it (Bosco has the world’s shortest cat memory, and the Liquid Justice squirt bottle hasn’t stopped the problem). So James had the brilliant idea that I should turn it into a slipcover for the sofa!

Lucky for me, there was just enough fabric in the 3m to cover our 2m sofa, and the sofa’s an easy enough shape so working out a pattern wasn’t too bad:

In Progress

Yet more lycra…

Are you bored with lycra yet?

If you recall, I’m sewing three different pieces of running gear – leggings, a vest top, and a long sleeved top. The vest top has stalled while I wait for my new coverstitch binder to arrive, but I was able to finish my leggings this weekend and cut out all the pieces for the long sleeved top.

When I went to look through my stash for fabrics, though, I realised that the long sleeved top needs three different fabrics in order to get a contrast on the upper body, and again at the hip pockets. So I’m using the black supplex for the top and sleeves, leftover turquoise for the lower back and front hips, and the same turquoise but overlaid with olive green stretch lace for the front body. I’m thinking a bit of lace in the running community won’t go amiss.

But now this top is stalled while I await more short, black invisible zips (which should arrive with my binder!) for the pockets and the upper front!

It’s realistically looking like I’ll only have my leggings ready for the Paris half marathon on Sunday, so I needed to take them out for a test run last night prior to the big event.

Be prepared for a totally unflattering, post-hour-long RDC session photo…

(I’m wearing the blue Nike pinny over my jacket ‘cos I’m a group leader!) Overall, I’m really happy with the fit. The ankles are still a bit baggy (even after I took them in a bunch!), but the fit everywhere else was perfect. I was a bit concerned about chafing since I don’t have a flatlock machine so my overlocked seams make small ridges inside, but they were absolutely fine, and the waistband was very comfortable and sat exactly where I wanted it to be with no shifting or tugging. Result! I’ll totally be making more of these from my customised base pattern…

In Progress

A bit of everything

Housekeeping time! I’ve got lots of little bits to update you on, either with my in-progress project, upcoming things, or small projects I managed to gloss over at the time…

So in no particular order:

My purple coat

Progress is slow on my purple jacket/coat from the Winter 2011 MyImage magazine, not because of anything to do with the coat, but because life keeps getting in the way. I’ve finished the shell and I’m onto the lining now, so I’ve just got to finish constructing the lining, attach the two together, flip, and sew the buttonholes.

I’d prefer to do the buttonholes on my vintage buttonholer attachment, but the templates I have aren’t big enough for my enormous (2.5 inch?) buttons. Anyone know a clean way around this? Can I set the buttonholer to do double-length holes somehow?

In any case, I should be able to finish this coat this weekend and (hopefully) get a photoshoot in. Not long now before I can do evenings photos again – it’s already light out when I go running before work!

Gift update

My go-to baby gift is to sew a changing mat, with a hand towel on one side, and nice fabric on the other with big, deep pockets and ties to fold it all up. I had two baby boys arrive in January, so both sets of parents got changing mats with this awesome Alexander Henry vintage robot fabric. 1 meter of it wasn’t quite enough to stretch to the pockets, too, so I filled in with some scrap denim.

In Progress

Upcoming January sewing

I’ve finally emerged from the craptacular flu (which then turned into bronchitis) that I’ve been under since Dec 28 – thank you for all your well wishes! For me, it really feels like the new year, 16 days late!

The Ruby Slip was my first garment of 2012, but my second and third aren’t far away…

Grey flannel trousers

Just before Christmas, I met up with Claire for lunch and she gifted me a massive length of wonderful dark grey flannel. It’s so soft and lovely that initially I thought a dress, but then realised I’m likely to get much more wear out of a really chic, comfortable pair of dress trousers. So on Friday night I traced and cut Burda Jan 12 #122, mostly because the issue was handy, but also because they looked to be a great basic. These have the illustrated instructions for this issue, but I could sew trousers blindfolded by this point, so the instructions didn’t make much difference to me.

I sewed this on and off over the weekend and nearly completed these despite hardly being at home. As a nice tie-in to my previous garment, the pockets, fly underlap, and waistband lining are all done in the pale green silk leftover from my Ruby Slip.

In Progress

New Year's Progress Report

Back on the 17th I set some bold goals to finish by New Year’s:

I thought it was time for a little progress report, seeing as how I only have a few days to go…

  1. Paco’s Drape Collar Tunic – I sewed this up in an evening before Christmas. Though I had to get very creative in order to get long sleeves out of the 2m of sweater knit I bought… Note to self: Buy more yardage, or shorten the body length next time!
  2. Clover jeans – I just finished these! I’m totally loving the fit and the (IMHO) improved pockets, too.
  3. Holly’s maternity maxi-dress, Burda 08/2008 #125 – Having no place to cut the fabric of the enormous skirt pieces, I actually took it along to work yesterday and cut it out on the big (and empty) lunch table at lunchtime! The few guys left in the office already think I’m weird anyway. Shrug. In any case, this is now ready to sew!
  4. Ruby Slip – I wanted to cut the skirt pieces at the same time I cut out the maxi dress, but the low table height was killing my back by the time I finished with the maxi dress. I don’t think this will take long to sew together if I can ever find somewhere to cut the single-layer, bias layout… A good cutting area is my new productivity choke point.
In Progress

Piling up…

The number of posts I want to write is piling up at an alarming rate, and I have no time to do anything about it, what with work being crazy busy (I hate all of you who get tons of time off at Christmas – I only get 3 days off in total! And my days have mostly been solving one problem, and having five new problems pour in while I was fixing the one, then moving on to the next in a To-Do list which never, ever gets cleared.) and us spending all our weekends working on the boat (last weekend we spent 15 hours building the subfloor down there. No, don’t feel jealous – the boat blog is being neglected, too).

So rather than stress about the amount of things piling up, I’m going to present my pile to you in pictorial form.


This is what James’s desk looked like this morning. It’s supposed to be my temporary cutting table while we’re building in the hold. How can I possibly cut the bias Ruby Slip or Holly’s maxi-dress fabric on this?? I’m pretty sure Bosco isn’t responsible, though he does look a bit shifty there…


I finished my vintage midi skirt ages ago, but have had zero time to document, or photoshoot or anything. So here’s two photos to test the hem length (which is why it’s just basted here)


I sewed a little waistcoat for James’s nephew out of this Tardamask fabric on Spoonflower. It’s got hidden pockets inside! He’s 7, and the biggest Dr Who fan ever, so we’re excited to see his reaction on Christmas.

In Progress

The Burda trench jacket – in progress

I am on fire for Fall sewing right now, and the latest object of my desire is my beautiful little trench jacket. I’d bought some waterproof gabardine from Mood when we were in NYC last Fall, but it was the end of the roll so I only had 2.5 yards to play with while selecting a pattern.

With several years of various pattern magazines to choose from, I was in no short supply of trench coat patterns. However, many of the traditional, double-breasted, longer length trench coats require at least 3 yards/metres of fabric, so my fabric shortage helped me narrow down the possibilities immensely. In the end, it was down to Burda 02-2009-119 and Burda 08-2007-111, and I figured I’d get more years of wear from a stylish jacket than I would a cape.

So the curvy, feminine, petite pattern won out!

I did make a muslin of this (I’d be mad not to for a petite pattern), but surprisingly, the only alterations needed were to lengthen the sleeves. Despite being 5’8”, I tend to find that Burda’s Petite patterns fit me waaaay better than Burda’s Tall patterns (which seem to be grotesquely oversized whenever I try them).

In Progress

Lucky Me

Well, aren’t I a lucky girl recently? First of all, I won interfacing and a metal seam gauge from Pam’s giveaway at Off the Cuff!

I’ve won Pro-Sheer Elegance and Pro-Woven Shirt Crisp interfacings, to be precise. Coincidentally, both kinds were the few I didn’t buy on my interfacing binge a few month ago! So now I’ve got an even greater biodiversity in my interfacing bag…

Then, hot on the heels of winning that – I may have lost Karen’s draw, but I ended up winning a copy of the novel “Laura’s Handmade Life” from craftycrafty.tv, too! A novel where the heroine bounces back from life crises through sewing? Yes, I think I’ll enjoy this… So now I’ve got three books in my reading queue, aahh!

And it was time again for another Google Adsense payout, so I thought this time I’d spend your hard-earned funds on something a great majority of you will want to see: the new DKNY Vogue pattern (1259), and 3m of this gorgeous mushroom-coloured viscose/cotton/lycra from Tia Knight aka “In Fashion Fabrics” on ebay. It’s ridiculously soft, lightweight, and drapey and just perfect for the gajillion gathers on this pattern, so when both arrived within a day of each other late last week, I set to work!

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The silk chrysanthemum blouse

As I discussed in my post on “pedestal fabrics” last week, I’ve had a ridiculously gorgeous silver and black chrysanthemum print silk in my stash ever since AllisonC gifted it to me two years ago when I was about to go into hospital.

But I’d brought it out again recently and thought about how I’d best like to wear it and I decided that I love and wear my silk blouses so much (and my birthday blouse in particular!) that I should sew this into a blouse to get the most wear and love out of this “pedestal fabric”!

In this case I chose to use the same pattern as my birthday blouse, Manequim Feb 2011 #158, because it fits great, I love the style, and I knew it worked well with a drapey silk.

You know what? I am so happy I took the plunge and cut into this fabric, because I just adore this blouse!