Tag: knipmode

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Quick and summery dotted top

Did you guess which knit top was my first off the starting block? Well, it’s not an obvious choice, but I already had KnipMode July 2010 #4 (upper left corner, in purple) traced out so it was easy to just grab it and go.

The dotty cotton/lycra knit fabric was an add-on from Chawla’s to get the minimum order value while I was buying the flannel underlining for my wedding gown. I bought one metre of it for £3.85 so this was a ridiculously cheap blouse, even for high street standards!

There’s a slight change from the tech drawing though – there’s a CF (centre front) seam on the band that’s not noted. It means the band and facing are cut on the fold so there’s no understitching, but the trade-off is that you get that seam.

Inspiration, Magazine

KnipMode October 2010

Hot on the heels of the a-freaking-mazing Burda September issue (in which I have no less than eleven Must Sews!) comes the KnipMode October edition. It’s a bit unfair on Knip to have to follow an act like that, so I’m naturally less enthusiastic about these styles that are just good rather than incredible. Maybe I’ve been buying Knips for too long, but I’m seeing a lot of repeats in this issue that appeared a few months or years ago…

But anyway, on to my highlights!

The cover feature is all about three garments in leather – a leather blazer, an A-line dress, and this skirt. I rather like the skirt but I think the gathers would be really difficult to achieve nicely since you can’t do two lines of gathering stitches (as the lower one would leave permanent holes). And this section gave me massive deja vu from the October 2009 issue where they also had a leather jacket, skirt, and A-line dress…

Next there was a section showing lots of winter knitwear that could either be sewn, or knitted (giving me massive deja vu yet again to the January 2010 issue where they also did the same thing!). Most were either long, baggy, or both, but I rather liked this batwing tunic which could look really nice in a thin, drapey sweater knit:

Inspiration

KnipMode September 2010

Still no August Burda or La Mia Boutique in my postbox (though I just found out my 6 month resubscription to Burda, made in a moment of weakness, won’t start until September now, argh.*), but KnipMode’s September issue arrived already, just like clockwork!

The first, colour-blocking feature has a bunch of great patterns in it, though I’m not quite sure about the styilng…

Case in point: fantastic coat! But purple Uggs? Really?

This knit dress appears no less than six times in this issue, but I thought you could see the lines best in this version. Though I think if I make this, I’d add a gathered waistband to the back, too, to make it all even.

Inspiration, Magazine

KnipMode Summer 2010 Roundup

I’m taken a brief moment to poke my head up from under my enormous pile of BurdaStyle Book sewing, wedding gown dismantling and bodice muslining, running, gardening, wedding planning, and some seriously busy office day-jobbing to bring you an overview of the summer KnipMode magazines… I’ll show off what I’m actually sewing if and when I can, I promise!

June 2010

This dress and skirt are ok, nothing to really grab me, but they’re nice enough basics. I mostly just liked that the model has wrinkles!

Woop! Another origami dress!

Inspiration, Magazine

How to subscribe to KnipMode magazine

An international subscription, that is! All of you lucky Dutch readers can just subscribe online to one of their many cut-price deals with great freebies (a nice Toyota sewing machine with a year’s subscription, nice!).

I’ve been buying individual copies of the Dutch pattern magazine KnipMode for several years now, and I finally got the funds together to get a subscription for myself, just as the euro/pound exchange rate was at its lowest for ages. I started the process at the very end of May, and look what arrived in my postbox on Saturday (3 July)… the August issue! Yayyy!

There have been quite a few people asking how they can subscribe (I think after getting a taste of the magazine during Naaipatronen‘s 3-for-2 sale! Seriously, way to go, guys, we totally cleared out their back issues!), so I thought I’d sum up the process here for anyone outside the Netherlands that would like to subscribe. Please note that the prices vary with time and postal rates, so always get your own quote!

Subscribing to KnipMode outside The Netherlands

As far as I know, there are no resellers or international distributors for KnipMode (or Knippie, their bi-monthly childrens pattern magazine), so you have to subscribe directly with the publishers.

Email ServiceTeam@sanoma-uitgevers.nl and say you’d like to subscribe to KnipMode with [your country] delivery. They’ll email you back (it may take a few days, they can be a bit slow to respond to emails) with a list of conditions:

Inspiration

Double take!

Fashion has always been cyclical – we reinvent ideas from decades past and give them a new twist. But with everyone playing off similar influences, sometimes two designers independently come up with very similar ideas. So it’s really not a surprise that you can sometimes find very similar pattern designs across companies, too.

As I found out, once you start looking for “pattern twins”, suddenly you start seeing them everywhere!

Patrones vs Knip tops

It all started when reader Hilde pointed out in my Patrones 289 review that this Plus top looks an awful lot like an older KnipMode design, so I decided to investigate further by comparing the shapes of the pattern pieces side-by-side:

(This KnipMode top was previously neglected because it was in the same issue as the fabulous swimsuit pattern…)

While the tech drawings look different, when you look at the pattern pieces you can see that most of that is just down to artistic interpretation and the pieces are very similar indeed!

Knip vs Burda blouses

Then I noticed in my review of the March 2010 KnipMode that their ruffle-collared blouse was incredibly similar to one Burda released last year!

Inspiration, Magazine

Which Sewing Pattern Magazine?

There have been quite a lot of people wondering about the various sewing pattern magazines out there and which they should buy or subscribe to. Since I’ve been primarily sewing with pattern magazines over the last few years, I thought some of you might appreciate my opinions on the major pattern magazines (and no, I’m not getting any kickbacks or referral money from any of these links, if it wasn’t obvious!).

For all of these magazines, you receive a glossy magazine with lots of nice photos of models wearing the various designs, and there will be a section containing the technical drawings, instructions, and fabric layout for each design. Patterns are included in a special folded bunch of papers (usually stapled in the centre so you can pull them out easily without damaging the rest of the magazine). The patterns come in a variety of sizes, but none of these contain seam allowances and you need to trace them off the sheets provided.

I trace my patterns using a serrated tracing wheel and brown kraft paper, but many others prefer to use tracing paper and pencils. I add my seam allowances when I cut out my fabric by simply cutting 5/8”/1.5cm away from the edge of my paper pattern, but there are double tracing wheels available to do this for you.

Inspiration, Magazine

KnipMode Spring 10 roundup

The flowers are out, the sun is shining, the geese have started nesting on our barges, and I’ve gone and bought the last few months of KnipMode magazines to see me through…

February 10

KnipMode often do celebrity style features, but this time it’s (squeal with me now—) Michelle Obama style!!

The first jacket/dress combo is a bit matronly for me, but I love the shirtwaister with the pleated hemline, as well as the layered skirt. Though, as NancyK learned with the Oprah celebrity-style dress, when Knip don’t sew up a sample themselves for the magazine, it’s always a good idea to make yourself a muslin first!

Ooh, look at this cute Plus jacket and jeans (yes, Burda, this is what Plus sized women look like. No, we are not afraid nor are we turned off the pattern because of it.)

In fact, this outfit totally reminds me of the jacket + jeans combo I liked in the November 09 issue:

Gallery

Silver tweed skirt

You’ve seen the jacket, and a peek of the skirt as part of the suit, but now it’s the skirt’s time in the spotlight!

(Dutch readers – who is Odette Simons, anyway? Dutch celebrity? Fashion designer? Stylist? She’s appearing in most issues these days and it’s bugging me…)

I just loved the shape of the yoke and pockets on skirt #7 from the January 2010 KnipMode. Essentially they’ve just drawn a bunch of lines onto an A-line skirt pattern which you then cut apart to be the wide yoke, the main skirt body, the pocket backing, and the pocket facing. All that pattern piece reusing means you actually only end up tracing 3 pattern pieces (front, back, and pocket) because you cut up the pieces as you go along. So the top of the skirt back pattern gets cut off for the facing, the skirt front gets cut apart for the yoke, the pocket back, and the facing, etc.

Gallery

Silver tweed suit

Last week I finished the first half of my second Planned Partnership, so I think that makes me exactly one half finished (right, Sharon, resident maths professor?). Though I suppose if you’re counting individual garments, I’d be slightly over halfway finished…

But I digress. You remember the silver tweed fabric and my plans to make a cropped jacket that I could wear with either a matching skirt or with a nude sheath dress (yet to come)?

Well, I’m so delighted with the way both the jacket and skirt turned out that I couldn’t wait to show you! So in the tradition of that other tweed suit, you get a sneak preview!