Tag: fehr-trade-patterns

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Article, Inspiration

Adjusting the Duathlon Shorts pockets for bigger phones

My Duathlon Shorts pattern has been one of my best selling designs, and for good reasons – it’s easy to sew, has a bunch of length options, and suits a wide variety of activities. It’s also got two pockets integrated into the side panels, great for stashing your stuff. But when I made this pattern back in 2014, the iPhone 4 and 5 were the standard size phone, and phones have gotten so much bigger over the past few years! I’ve had a few requests asking how to enlarge the pockets to suit an iPhone 6, and it’s really easy to do!

I’ve drawn out the changes into the below diagram, but essentially you need to add both width and depth to the pocket for bigger phones.

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A teal french terry Tessellate hoodie

I know some of you are melting in summer temperatures right now, but spare a thought for those of us shivering in July – no, not just the Aussies and Kiwis, but also those of us with “unpredictable” summers (for real – I had goosebumps here in London yesterday and it certainly wasn’t from air conditioning!). Even if you are enjoying “classic” summer temperatures right now, cast your minds forward to the days when you can exercise in cooler temps in a hoodie like the Steeplechase Tee pattern…

The version I’d like to show you today was made in “terry backed wickaway lycra” from Imagine Gnats in the teal colourway (but it also comes in chile red, green, lilac, vapor blue, and jade!). This stuff is absolutely brilliant for activewear – it’s got a smooth (but not shiny) face with a loop backing, but it has a decent amount of stretch for something so nicely heavyweight. If you’re not familiar with Imagine Gnats, they’ve got lots of other athletic fabrics, too – the owner, Rachael, is an active sewist herself!

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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.

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!

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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).

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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.

Article, In Progress

Long weekend progress update

For all of you in the US and UK who enjoyed a lovely long weekend, I salute you! I made the decision to devote the bulk of my four days to upgrading/migrating this site over to a new backend, and it was exactly as painful as I was expecting (and it’s not done yet). I’ve been wanting to for quite a few months now, but I just kept putting it off for all sorts of tech headache reasons, and I was right to! It took no less than 3 server moves with my web host to find a server that could support both the old and new platforms simultaneously during the transition period, then a bunch of setting conflicts, frantic forum searching, and then finally data munging all 1,036 posts, over 10,000 images, and a ridiculous amount of tags over in a way that broke the least amount of stuff. Which meant that I didn’t get to the actual appearance of it until late on Sunday, and it still needs a few more days work before I can start the fun 403 redirect process, yay! So until then you’ll still see the old site, and I’m going to do my best to redirect all the RSS for those of you who subscribe in your favourite reader, too!

This meant that I was mostly behind the computer (or a barbecue!) this weekend without much happening in my sewing room. But I’d been awaiting the arrival of a re-up on bear fabric (which I honestly didn’t think would arrive in time, but it did!!), so I whipped up a pair of bear shorts for the Transylvanian Bear Race on Friday while a large ftp process occupied my computer. I used my Steeplechase Leggings pattern (Biker short length), using two different Spoonflower bear prints for the body and yoke. I’ll do a full post on these after the race, but here’s a sneak peek from my test run in them on Sunday (because Nothing New On Race Day, folks!)

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A thermo colourblocked Tessellate Tee hoodie

Thanks for all your patience, enthusiasm, and congratulations on the full digital release of the Tessellate Tee pattern this weekend! It’s great to finally enable anyone around the world to sew it now, and like the Surf to Summit top pattern, it’s one where you can mix and match a lot of the options to get the look you’re after.

I thought I’d start with the version shown on the pattern cover – it’s made in Funkifabrics’ “thermo” fleece-lined lycra in Plum, Yellow, and Turq and uses all the optional add-ons – thumb cuffs, zippered back pocket, and ponytail hood.

Inspiration

Tessellate Tee pattern – on sale now in pdf format!

The response to my Tessellate Tee pattern and accompanying Add On Pack over the past few months has been wonderful, and I’ve loved seeing so many finished versions! But many of you around the world have expressed a desire to buy it digitally rather than as part of the magazine…

So I’m pleased to announce that the original teeshirt pattern which appeared in issue 23 of Love Sewing magazine plus the digital Add-On Pack are now available as a single pdf, available now!

In Progress

In Waiting…

It’s never particularly convenient to be ill, but honestly, this couldn’t have been a more inconvenient time. Without going into details, I’ve been ill for over a month now, and it’s been really frustrating to watch the publication month of the Tessellate Tee pattern slip by without being able to show you all the finished garments I’ve been literally waiting months to show off (no really – I made most of these in October and November!), let alone share some fabric choices, great design features, and finished garments that are popping up around the web already.

This is my pile of Tessellate Tee samples waiting for me to be well enough to photoshoot:

And this pile isn’t even including the two I sewed for Love Sewing magazine’s feature, or the one I made my niece for Christmas! To some people, a month spent mostly lying in bed would be bliss, but to someone like me who already doesn’t have enough hours in the day and is very high activity, this is utter, utter torture. You can make up for a lot of things in life, but missed time is just gone forever…

I honestly have no idea when I’ll be able to pick up with normal activities again. But I can say that I’ve had plenty of time to think and devise new patterns and features and really cool things I want to do with Fehr Trade Patterns, so now it’s just a matter of when I’ll actually have the time, energy, and health to put them into reality.