Tag: fehr-trade-patterns

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Many vampire bat gifts

First of all, I must apologise because I am SO far behind on blogging my makes, but I’m trying hard to catch up. The problem is that I have such limited energy for sitting up that I’ve got to ration it, and when I do, I tend to want to actually sew than sit at my laptop and blog! So I’ve got well over a month worth of makes to show you, and only two weeks before we go away on a short break, so I may just end up taking photos while we’re away to make it a bit easier.

In any case, today’s round up contains a LOT of makes, some of which stretch back into March, eep.

So many bat plushies!

It all started when I saw this BeeZee Art Bat Plushie pattern and posted it to my vampire Discord, where everyone went nuts over it. Which prompted me to buy the pattern and make it for myself, and then a few for friends, and now I’m at the point where I’m pretty much making these for all my friends’ birthdays, hahah!

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Black linen Bob trousers & a slate blue Versatili-Tee

I’m still not sure whether I actually like this design of trousers or not, but my previous StyleArc Bobs are one of like three non-legging bottoms that still fit and aren’t uncomfortable, so making another pair was a necessity sew.

My waist is 20cm larger due to being mostly stuck in bed for the past 8 months, but I hope to not be like this indefinitely. As a result, I don’t want to sew much for this body. I’m kinda thinking of this as a “loaner body” while my real body is in the shop getting fixed, so I’m basically sewing the bare minimum that I need, unless it’s something that will also fit my real body later (like teeshirts and the cropped Hamilton jacket I’m working on).

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Holiday lingerie sewing

We recently spent a week down in our favourite corner of Cornwall, but instead of staying with friends, we ended up renting a house for the week. J worked at a local coworking centre for a few days (The Workshed in Liskeard – highly recommend! Friendly, great space, super affordable, and extremely safe air quality!), but as I’m still on sick leave with Long Covid, I’d be alone in the house for three days.

For some this might seem boring but to be honest I was really looking forward to the quiet, and it gave me an opportunity to bring my JL Mini (which John Lewis no longer makes! Boo!) travel sewing machine along and do some sewing while I was there.

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Tropical cats Duathlon Shorts and Tenacity Leggings

Even though I sewed these at the end of November, they’re my final makes of the year. Despite having a week of feeling “kinda okay” (able to take 15min walks outside) around the end of November, I’ve felt truly appalling for the rest of December and am yet again spending 23hrs a day stuck in bed with post-Covid fatigue. It’s now over 100 days since I got Covid and I still can’t sit up or stand for very long, let along have a normal life.

But now that it’s crunch time at the end of the year, I want to share these before I forget the details, even though I’m not able to share anything more than flat photos of both…

These both started with a photo of a maxi dress that was doing the rounds earlier this year (or last year? It all runs together) with big blue and purple flowers on a black background, with black cats peeking out of the shadows. I really wanted to recreate the fabric on my own, but didn’t quite get to do it. And then I saw a similar print on Creative Market so I purchased it instead, and changed the colours to suit my vision.

Inspiration

10 Year Birthday sale!

I can scarcely believe I’m writing this, but TEN YEARS ago this month I released the first FehrTrade sewing patterns into the universe. Ten years! (Even scarier is that I’ve been blogging for something like 16 or 17 years??)

I’ve got so many great posts about our first decade that I want to share this month but to kick things off, it’s our longest ever sale – for the entire MONTH of December you can get 20% off all sewing patterns if you use code “10FREAKINGYEARS” at shop.fehrtrade.com!

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A Sports/Casual Versatili-Tank

I was pretty restrained with US-based fabric buying when my mom visited from the States in May, but I did splurge and buy two fabrics from Sew Dynamic for her to bring over in her suitcase. You already saw the botanic/animal print athletic lycra which became one of my favourite Triumph Suit samples, but I also bought a yard of their Drirelease base fabric in the “Prism Peaks” print.

This particular print may be sold out already but I am absolutely sold ON this Drirelease base fabric! Like all their fabrics, it’s made with recycled poylester (82%), and despite being an activewear fabric, it feels like a soft teeshirt material. It’s really, really wonderful and as soon as it arrived, I kicked myself that I didn’t buy more (and at $25/yd that’s saying something)!

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A Cheery Bamboo Versatili-Tee

I’ve been sewing quite a lot of “blanks” recently – basic tanks or tees. Some of these I’ve used as vessels for heat set vinyl (like the green and black IWTV ones), but others I’m keeping plain.

I’ve not got too much to say about this particular teeshirt, but I think it’s nice to share wardrobe workhorses as well as fancier makes, because often these are the sort of garments that get worn most of all.

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An “Interview with the Vampire” custom tribute tee

My obsession with the “Interview with the Vampire” tv show has not waned in time since it premiered (and broke my brain) last October. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that not a day has passed that I haven’t thought about this show. The brain rot is real.

Anyway, I’ve been playing with my Silhouette cutting machine recently, as I talked about in my last post, but this shirt design is one I worked on for quite a few weeks, and the idea just wouldn’t let me go.

It started with San Diego Comic Con, where AMC put a ton of money into building a recreation of a New Orleans street with live actors and swag, but also filled whole buildings with enormous posters to promote season two (out some time next year). But the image that really stuck with me was from some lifts (elevators) within a hotel, where there was a huge photo of the four main characters on each wall inside.

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Black Pietra shorts and a doubly soft Versatili-Tee

I’ve been doing a lot of sewing recently, but haven’t been very good at either documenting all my post-Triumph Suit makes or taking photos of them, so I’m going to start with some of the first!

Ever since I made my first pair of Pietra Shorts using the ramie from Textile Express, I knew I’d need more, specifically in black. So when their black ramie came back into stock, I pounced on it, buying enough to make Pietra trousers and shorts. This stuff is so great for bottoms – it’s similar to linen but wears a thousand times harder, doesn’t crease, and just goes with everything. So making this pair of shorts out of the remaining black ramie was very high on my “need this in my wardrobe right now!” list as soon as I could. But then our summer turned into 5+ weeks of cold and rain so it hasn’t been a big deal they’ve been stuck languishing on my To Photoshoot pile…