Believe it or not, I didn’t actually set out to post this on the same day that shooting finally (finally!!) begins on season 3 of Interview with the Vampire, but it just turned out to be a happy accident!
I sewed these at around the same time as the Dead Inside tank, but I separated that one out since I had a bit more to say. These three are all repeats of patterns I’ve happily sewn before though, so I’m grouping them together!
After I sewed The Kiss dress, I had a fair bit of fabric leftover, but it was in odd shapes due to the asymmetric cutting layout. It looked like I should be able to fit a teeshirt or a vest top (tank top) out of the remnants… and since I’ve got a lot of teeshirts that fit, but hardly anything sleeveless, I opted for the latter.
Jalie 3245 (View C) is an “oldie but a goodie”! I first made this pattern back in 2018 as part of my “Serging Activewear” Craftsy course (still going strong!). I’m still wearing those bamboo OGs, but they’re getting a little tight and they always felt a tad too long.
A few months ago I visited a good friend who used to work in the fashion industry. Since she doesn’t sew anymore, she ends up gifting me with random jewlels from her stash that I graciously accept. This time around there were some small offcuts of an Alexander McQueen leather! It’s a pale peach-pink with a white crackle top, and the pieces were all fairly small.
When I sewed myself the Alpine cycling kit last summer, I didn’t make a sports bra to go along with the Surf to Summit Top jersey and the Rouleur Leggings bib shorts, even though I’d done so for my previous two cycling sets (rainbow in 2019 and Tokyo-inspired in 2020). This was because I didn’t really think I’d have enough fabric left as I knew I wanted to make Tenacity Shorts and a Versatili-Tank with it too, but also because I figured I had enough sports bras and it didn’t really matter.
But apparently I do care, because in the months of cycling in the kit since then (99% of which was on Zwift!), it kinda bugged me that I didn’t have a matching bra – petty, I know, but easily fixable! So once I decided that I’d be cycling RideLondon’s 100 miler in this kit, I pulled out the leftover scraps to see if I could piece together a sports bras from the bits of fabric and upcycled race tees. And the answer was “just barely”!
Carrying on from my earlier feeling that I have far too many clothes, I realised that one area of my wardrobe where I currently have a need is… supportive sports bras for running! Plus my lycra scaps bin is absolutely overflowing so this was a great project to work on! These are the 4th and 5th Jalie “Coco” sports bras I’ve made, so I think you can safely say I’m a fan of it!
This is the only sports bra sewing pattern I’ve found (and I’ve tried a LOT) that is supportive enough for running, but with a few small but essential changes – which I outlined in this post so I won’t repeat them here again.
When swapping over my wardrobe from summer to winter recently, I realised that I have way too many clothes. Even after getting rid of 8(!!) bags to the charity shop collection, I still have a full wardrobe full of clothes that I adore and really want to wear. Which is great, but it means that I don’t really need to sew much, and I started thinking more on what I should make that would really serve a function, and trying to concentrate on needs rather than wants.
One of the needs I recognised over the summer is that I don’t really have any small bags that I can take with me when I cycle, when I don’t want to carry a full bag, and what I’m wearing doesn’t have enough secure pockets. So I settled on a waist pack (aka “bum bag” or “fanny pack”) but one that I could sew in a more casual fabric so it’d look nice when I arrived, rather than screaming “I cycled here”!
Our boat renovations are in their last few weeks, which means that everything is in disarray and even the meagre folding table I had been using to cut out fabric is now out of bounds, blocked in place by several massive sheets of plywood. But thankfully I planned ahead and cut out a few projects before this happened, the last of which I’ve now sewn – two more Jalie Coco sports bras, made entirely from activewear scraps!
If you recall, I made two of these last year, one in each view and with a few crucial tweaks to increase the support in order to be enough to run in. Please refer back to this post for the details of what those are, as I’ve done the exact same tweaks here. After wearing both the Y-back feather bra and the cross-back Tokyo bra for a few months, I can say that I definitely prefer the Y-back view. It’s easier to get on and off and feels a bit more supportive, even though the cross-back is perfectly fine! So for these, I just cut the Y-back (view B in the pattern) to make my life simpler.
I didn’t make many in-person gifts this year, but when the Jalie Galaxie 4 pattern aimed at pets was announced, and I looked at my recent Spoonflower purchases from their BOGOF sale, I knew I had to make something for my bestie’s pooch!
You already saw the cat bed I sewed for Nishi from this pattern, but there are a bunch of other treats in this pattern, too!
First up, I made the “Johnny” collapsible bowl in the largest size (Freya is only just over a year old but she is a BIG girl with a big appetite!).
For the last few years, Jalie Patterns have released a “Galaxie” pattern around the holidays that is usually gift-themed. One year it was cooking-focused, another on travel, but this year the focus was on pets, and, reader, I bought it immediately! Galaxie 4 contains several little projects for pets – collapsible bowls, zippered pouches, a poo-bag dispenser, and a pet bed – and one for humans, too – a bum bag. My Instagram followers will know that I made some of the other views of this pattern literally the next day, but as those are presents you’ll need to wait to see those!
Today we’re talking all about the “Coquette”, a pet padded bed/cave/house/etc. It comes in a range of sizes that would be suitable for a guinea pig, rabbit, cat, or small dog, but you could likely scale it up for larger dogs if you really wanted to. After some deliberation, I ended up using the second-to-largest size, 35cm, and I think this is the right size for an average sized cat, though you could probably go down one size further in a pinch if you had to, too.
Earlier this week I talked you through the inspiration for my Tokyo-inspired three piece cycling set and today I wanted to talk a little more about the smallest garment in the set – the sports bra!
Like the rest of the set, for the bra I predominantly used the Tokyo-inspired print from Funkifabrics on the Life Recycled base fabric, and really only used the Discovery Fabrics’ Yoga Stretch in “Rust Berry” for the under-bust band. For the inner layers I used some beige power mesh from Sewing Chest.
