Tag: exercise

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Santa Hat leggings around town

It’s a bit of a long story how I came to have a meter of Funkifabrics’ santa hat lycra (short version: a friend wanted leggings made, then went AWOL), but I figured I needed to sew it up in December or face it taking up room in my stash for another year. So around the beginning of the month I pulled out my modified KwikSew 3636 leggings pattern and sewed myself a festive pair in about a half hour flat. This time around though, I actually remembered to add in the back pocket from my Steeplechase Leggings pattern, so I can stash my phone in there without needing to wear an armband.

I managed to get a few festive runs in them before the end of the month, and on the last pre-work run before Christmas, I paired them with my teal merino Surf to Summit top and an all-supplex Santa hat (complete with ponytail hole and hidden elastic to keep it on my head!) that I made last Christmas and ran round my usual river route taking idiotic photos just for fun!

First up were some timer shots with Tower Bridge…

…then a selfie with St Paul’s cathedral, where I managed to contort myself in order to get both hat and leggings in the same shot…
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Pale orange Kimono Sweat tank (View B)

I’ve been holding back this version of my Kimono Sweat pattern for quite a few months because it’s a perfect summer workout top, so I wanted to save it for the Southern hemisphere summer. So Aussies, Kiwis, Saffas, and South Americans, this post is for you!

It’s been a while, so to refresh your memory: View B is a sleeveless tank/vest top with a banded, scooped neckline and straight hem. Deep armholes, and loose, draped sides make this a perfect warm weather workout top for those who prefer a looser fit (and showing off a fancy sports bra!).

You saw my athlete model Lorna modelling a red bamboo version earlier this year but I made this one using a pale fluorescent orange marled “cotton touch” tech jersey I got from my Sweaty Betty insider friend (sorry!). You can use pretty much any lightweight and drapey jersey for this view, but if you’re using it for exercise, be sure to stay away from cotton jerseys which will absorb sweat (ewww!).

I designed this view after seeing so many ladies in my running crew cutting up their race tops to have deep armholes, ready for showing off a fancy sports bra. But regardless of your bra, this is by far the coolest and airiest top I’ve ever run in – you get a great cooling breeze as you run but without revealing too much skin, or having clingy fabric around your waist.

I paired this top with my latest Duathlon Shorts in the booty length that I sewed up before the British Transplant Games at the start of August, made in the suitable jazzy summertime “Aztec Stripe” print in the green colourway (it also comes in purple or yellow), with a bit of leftover scrap fluorescent red wicking lycra for the side panels and some grippy elastic on the hems. Together, these are just about the perfect summer running combo!!

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Steeplechase Leggings Times Two

Pop quiz – What’s better than an entire Saturday set aside for sewing?

Give up? It’s an entire Saturday set aside for sewing with a friend! Yes, a few weeks ago my friend Sanchia (whom you may recall as my Threshold Shorts pattern athlete model) was all “we need to set a sewing date and make some leggings!” so we found a Saturday we both had free, and she came round to the boat last weekend! Sanchia has sewn before, but hasn’t made leggings in a while, so she selected some fabric out of my (frankly, overflowing with fabulousness) lycra stash, and we used my Steeplechase Leggings pattern to sew her up a pair without any inner leg seaming.


Tablets are perfect partners for Pdf pattern instructions!

And since we were going to be sewing all afternoon, well, I might as well make a pair for myself, too! Since Sanchia chose my FunkiFabrics “Prism” lycra (I had the Flexcite base but it’s also available on their wicking Titan base fabric, I wanted to choose something dark so we wouldn’t need to change threads, so I used some fabulous cityscape lycra that had literally just arrived from Sewing Chest the day before (they have got some great sales on their sportswear fabric pieces right now, just sayin’!).

We had a good chat cutting out the fabric, and then pinning each step together and constructing them assembly-line style, plus a break for lunch, and then she got to play on my coverstitch machine for the hems and waistband finishing, too. By the time 4pm rolled around, we had two finished pairs of leggings!

We vowed to wear our new leggings to Run dem Crew on Tuesday, where we got another friend to snap some photos of us!

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An epic and nonstop September Roundup

Posting was a bit light around here in September, but not intentionally so. Coming back from Argentina immediately into building work (which pretty much occupied every morning, most Fridays, and some evenings too) and being away every single weekend in September just left me flattened. A month on and I’m still exhausted, and frankly, trying to figure out if I’m ill, or if it’s diet-related, or just a really slow recovery from international competition.

So I must apologise to all the people out there who are waiting on emails from me – when I’m too tired to sit up, I don’t tend to open my laptop to write out proper replies, let along blog posts (this one has taken me about 4-5 sessions spread out over a week to write). But I did manage to get all the Sewing Indie Month posts together that I needed to, and I wanted to gather them together along with a bunch of other bits and pieces you may have missed if you’re not following me on Twitter or Instagram.

Imagine Gnats Wrap-style Bess top Tutorial

One of the few finished garments I managed to make in September was a fancy, wrap-style hack of the Imagine Gnats Bess top, which I wrote a full tutorial for, too.

I loved the shoulder detailing on the original pattern, but I thought the shoulder seaming looked reminiscent of kimonos, so I changed the front pattern piece to be a wrap-style instead.

But the fabrics in my stash that went together best ended up being a brocade skirt that my friend Pip gifted me after she lost weight, and a poly satin that (I think?) a neighbour gifted to me years ago, so this ended up being a refashion project, too!

Anyway, you can read more about it over at Imagine Gnats, and last week I also wrote an Activewear patterns roundup for Rachael, too. Definitely take a look at her shop while you’re over there – she’s a keen cyclist and has just taken delivery of a bunch of wicking lycra in some lovely colours (she’s US-based)!

Also for Sewing Indie Month, Maison Fleur interviewed me and asked a lot of interesting questions I’d not thought about before, which was nice! I may have also hinted about a few big things happening in January, which will also coincidentally start my 10th year of FehrTrade.com!

Seamwork Radio

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Seamwork magazine, having subscribed from the very first issue, made quite a few of their patterns, and written a bunch of articles for them, so I was literally dancing at my desk when the first episode of Seamwork Radio was released last week!

Inspiration

Yoga-style PB Jam Leggings – a tutorial by Lolita Patterns

Sewing Indie Month is back again so you can look forward to a whole month of fun interviews, tutorials, pattern sales, and sewing contests (with a ton of prizes!) throughout the month of September. Just like last year, when I interviewed Hannah from Sinbad & Sailor and you got a great tutorial from Heath Lou hacking my XYT Workout Top into a maxi dress, you’ll get to read some great, different content from my usual sort, starting off with this fabulous tutorial by Amity of Lolita Patterns. You may recall that I pattern tested her Sugar Plum dress a few years ago (and I still wear it!), plus we got to meet up when she visited London a while back, too. So read on and see how she adapted my PB Jam Leggings pattern to have wider legs and a yoga-style waistband, too! – melissa

I was so lucky to get paired with Melissa for the tutorial post for SIM. While my life before baby was filled with court visits (I was an attorney) and professional wear, my new mom life incorporates a LOT of yoga pants. Casual wear is my life now! So it was unbelievably perfect to get paired with Fehr Trade patterns.

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For my tutorial I turned her very stylish PB Jam Leggings into yoga pants! This required a different and thicker waistband, and a widening of the legs. Can I just tell you that my pants turned out amazing?!? I was going to just go black pants with the gray houndstooth contrast but at the last second remembered I had some orange stretch piping I had bought for a project but had since bought a different shade of orange. This piping made the pants. Literally. The piping looks so amazing I have worn these pants 4 times already and I’ve only had them made for a week!

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I’m here to share pictures and a tutorial on how I transformed the PB Jam leggings into yoga pants. To do this, I used a pair of yoga pants I loved to see how wide I wanted each part of the leg.

Wide leg alteration

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Excuse the dog hair—such is the life with three dogs 🙂

The bottom of the leg was 10 inches.

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In between the knee and the hem was 8 7/8, and the knee was 8 5/8. I took these measurements and wrote them on the diagram so I could compare and make sure I didn’t forget them. I also measured the inseam and how far down the knee began from the waist. These are all helpful measurements when altering the pattern to match the yoga pants we are copying from.

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Now keep in mind, these are all just one side of the leg (so the entire circumference would be twice the measurement) and also do not include seam allowances. But this measurement is perfect because the pattern pieces work this way.

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An orange VNA Top with revamped Threshold Shorts

This top has spent quite a long time brewing in my brain before coming into reality. I really wanted to have another VNA Top for exercising since I loved my others so much, and I’ve had this project near the top of my To Sew queue for so long. But I had so many other projects that had to be done for deadlines, that this just kept getting pushed aside, until finally I had a spare weekend day to just do some Fun Sewing for myself!

Remember my VNA Top pattern I released last summer – the one inspired by a 1930s Vionnet gown? Or to give it the full blurb: This is a pattern for a close-fitting, sleeveless workout top inspired by a 1930s Vionnet evening gown. It features a front V-neck, curved under bust seam, and distinctive angular seaming in back. Neckline and armhole edges are finished with binding, and there are no side seams.

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Aztec print Seamwork retro bikini

I have a really bad habit of trying to cram in a bunch of last-minute sewing just before I go away on holiday, when most normal people would be packing their suitcase or reading through guidebooks. But no, I decide to sew up a pair of trousers and a bikini in the week before I leave!

I’d sewn up a swimsuit once before, but I’m not even sure whether I actually wore it in the water at all, as I hardly ever go swimming, and I’d moved away from one-pieces and that one had zero bust support so it just flattened the girls. But discovering that Team GB had been allocated the posh beachfront hotel with the pool, sauna and jacuzzi for the World Transplant Games gave me renewed enthusiasm to cram in the retro bikini patterns included in the August Seamwork magazine (which you can buy separately if you’re not a subscriber).

The Reno halter bikini top has ties around the neck and the back, separate seamed cups, and is also fully lined. The August issue (free!) gives tips on selecting and sewing swimsuit fabrics and elastics, and also how to insert boning, underwires, or foam cups if you prefer. I opted for the latter, since I had some in my stash anyway, though my foam cups were a little bigger than the lining piece, and I had to trim some off.

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Grey Kimono Sweat top (View A)

Buenos dias from Argentina! While I was developing my latest Kimono Sweat pattern, I made up a bunch of samples for myself to test the fit and how they performed while exercising… or in the case of View A, how practical they were for post-exercise! Today I’d like to show you one of my earlest View A samples, made up in a cheap grey sweatshirting, but it’s one I’ve worn over and over again throughout the summer.

Two tops from one pattern! View A is a top with a deep armscye and kimono-inspired short sleeves with a faced V-neck and dipped hem, designed to wear for your warmup or cool-down, or even just with jeans.

If you’ll recall, this is same view of the pattern which you’ve seen Binta modelling, and it’s one I’ve found to be so useful for rolling up into my kit bag to throw on over my sweaty workout clothes post workout. The short sleeves cover up your shoulders but they’re still loose enough to let a bit of airflow through, and wearing it means I don’t feel quite as self conscious on the bus ride home.

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Lorna's Kimono Sweat

Last week I introduced you to the lovely Binta, who modelled View B of my new Kimono Sweat pattern, and today I have the pleasure of introducing our second athlete model!

I’ve known Lorna for about eight years now, as she and her husband live on our moorings on a Dutch barge that’s a very similar size and age to our own. The term “bad ass” is used an awful lot these days, but believe me when I tell you that Lorna is a genuine bad-ass! Up until her recent retirement, she was an international roller derby super star, quite literally flying all over the world to compete in brawls with the best American, Australian, and European teams.

Since her retirement, she basically hasn’t stopped moving for a second! She just can’t sit still so this photoshoot was a ton of fun – running, jumping, pulling up, balancing – she’s basically been doing parkour since before it had a name!

Now that she’s not on skates every night, she’s got time to try out loads of different sports – everything from Krav Maga (Israeli self-defense) to Muay Thai boxing to aerial acrobatics to bouldering. She thinks nothing of starting her day with a 3 hour skateboard session! And did I mention that she also taught herself how to weld?? Yeah, bad-ass.

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Binta's short sleeved Kimono Sweat top

Wow, thank you all so much for your enthusiasm and orders of my newest Kimono Sweat pattern! It really is a wonderful feeling to release a finished pattern into the world after so many months of hard work behind the scenes.

Today I’d like to introduce you to the first of my two athlete models for this pattern, so say hello to the wonderful Binta! She’s originally from Norway but has been a long-term UK resident and spends her days as a professional PR.

I first met Binta a few years ago when she joined Run dem Crew, and she has been one of the most consistently cheerful people I know. Week after week, she’s led the Greyhound group with patience and enthusiasm and helped so many women to run faster than they thought themselves capable of.

She’s run loads of races but this weekend she’s taking on her first 24 hour relay race at the Spitfire Scramble, and she’s really looking forward to donning a head torch for the first time and getting some quality campfire time in with her teammates! So keep your fingers crossed for dry weather for her, as apparently the 10km course is decidedly off-road and really hilly, too. I know a certain top which would be perfect for wearing in the chilly night air around the campsite, though…