Tag: knit

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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.

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Sewing jeans against the world

Sometimes you have to just close yourself into your sewing room, try to block out the world, and just make. This weekend I closed myself in my sewing cave and emerged on Sunday with a new pair of jeans and a teeshirt.

Let’s start with the jeans – I’ve lost track, but these are probably at least the 10-15th pair of jeans I’ve sewn myself, so I pretty much know what I want and how to achieve it by now. I usually try to make at least a pair a year, as they seem to live for just over a year of hard wear before the inner thighs inevitably start to wear thin and they’re relegated into “boat work jeans”.

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A Great British Baby Grow

If you are in the UK, you doubtless are already aware that the latest season of the Great British Sewing Bee is well underway! Not only have they got a new location (which looks uncannily like the old one in Wapping, but is now coincidentally located right by my office), but also a new judge, with Esme Young replacing May Martin as Patrick Grant’s wing-woman.

I wasn’t able to be as involved on the production side for this season as I was last time around due to my working four days a week at my office job, but I was able to help out with some sewn samples for the latest Sewing Bee book, instructions and illustrations, but also make the odd “Perfect” for the show, too!

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Ina maxi-skirt in Istanbul!

James has been speaking at quite a few conferences since the publication of his book last year, and most recently he had been invited to speak at a conference in Istanbul. But even more exciting (for me!) is that we could upgrade his room to double occupancy so I could come along for just the price of a flight – so for £100 I got a four day trip to Istanbul! Neither of us have ever been there, but multiple friends just raved about it, so we were super excited to come check it out (and eat ALL THE FOOD!).

Once I found out I was going, I started reading up on what to see there (as well as doing my Duolingo Turkish lessons every lunchtime so I could at least say hello and thank you!) and I saw that some of the most amazing mosques require respectful dress (covered shoulders, knees, and hair for women). I thought this would be a good opportunity to expand my wardrobe with a maxi-skirt since I didn’t actually own any skirts that covered my knees!

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Two quick tops

Not everything I made while I was ill was an involved as my navy Harriet jacket – I made quite a few small and quick projects, too, just to boost my mood. I wanted to show you two different quick tops today – it didn’t really feel like I had enough to say about either to warrant separate posts, but I wanted to document them just the same.

Seamwork Akita in Japanese floral

My friend Alex brought me back a ton of fabrics fro Tomato in Tokyo (which you’ll be seeing more of, I’m certain!), but this narrow, textured floral shrunk a TON in the wash and was narrow to begin with, so afterwards it was very narrow indeed. So I pulled out the Seamwork Akita blouse pattern since it only needs a narrow, non-directional print fabric because it’s just one pattern piece (no shoulder seams). In the end, the pattern piece touched both selvedges and I had to trim off some of the sleeve depth to fit it in!

I haven’t seen this pattern made up much, but I was disappointed in the fit – this runs HUGE, even for an over-the-head top (in contrast, the woven, over-the-head Sorbetto pattern fits much closer). In hindsight, I think I could’ve made the absolute smallest size and still be swimming in it (and no, no printing errors!). I chopped off about 6 inches in length, too, and it’s still on the long side.

But the worst bit is that the bust point is ridiculously low, which just looks bad. Luckily, it gets lost in such a busy print, but it’s still disappointing.

By the time I tried it on and realised it was massive, I didn’t have any bias fabric left to do the neckline facing, so instead I pulled out some silk charmeuse bias strips I had squirrelled away and used those to finish off the neckline in my preferred way. This is actually my favourite part of this top!

I’ve worn it with layers on top because I like the colours, but I’m glad I didn’t make it in an expensive silk like I was planning! The other Seamwork patterns I’ve made have been true to size, so I’m not sure what happened here…

Sweaty Betty striped tech tee

I had some weird, small offcuts of tech fabrics from my Sweaty Betty-working friend, one of which was this teal, black, and grey striped, slubby wicking teeshirt material. I cycle commute in street clothes that I wear at work all day (unless it’s pouring, in which case I change into dry clothes at the office) and I like to have a base layer which dries quickly. I never get that sweaty on my ride, but when I was ill it felt a bit harder than it does normally, so tech tees were useful.

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A geometric art print teeshirt

Isn’t it funny how the most boring, basic garments somehow end up being the ones we wear the most? Take this top – it was really only meant to be a wearable muslin to test out a new teeshirt draft I was working on last Fall. I wasn’t even planning on even taking finished garment photos of it, as it was a rough pattern (no seam allowances or extraneous notches for my private patterns!) and I just grabbed some fabric out of a bag ready for donation and sewed it all together without much thought.

And it’s ended up being something I wear all the time. Like, I have to make mental notes to make sure I don’t wear it twice in the same week!

Long time readers may actually recall that I’d used this fabric for a long sleeved teeshirt a few years ago. Well, that particular top has since gone off to the charity shop because the neckline was just too low and wide for me to wear more than occasionally, and I hadn’t even worn it enough for the black and orange print to start doing their cool crackle/fading thing! The fabric was originally from Mood via Kollabora, so it’s probably long gone, but everything I disliked about it then I actually really like in this teeshirt. Funny, eh?

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A Day of the Dead refashioned tee

I know I’m technically a day late for Dia de Los Muertos, but if Mexico City can hold their official celebrations today, then so can I!

This project actually started life in a market in Brittany two years ago, where I bought a pair of sugar skull print leggings off a market stall for a grand total €3. But they were “one size fits all” and “made in China”, which means that really, “one size fits most Chinese people”, so the fabric stretched over my thighs making the print pale and unattractive. I still liked the print, though, and the jersey itself was soft and surprisingly nice for the price, but I didn’t wear them much.

So when I came across these leggings when I was switching over to my winter wardrobe last weekend, I pulled them aside and thought they’d be a great candidate for refashioning, especially since we’d planned to attend the British Museum’s “Days of the Dead” festivities. So I cut them apart along the inseam and unpicked the coverstitching, and I was left with a sizeable amount of fabric:

I took my basic tee sloper and my long sleeve fit perfectly into the leggings piece with only a few inches spare at the bottom (added to my scraps pile). Then I sifted through my jersey stash, and after a brief, ill-chosen combination of burgundy, mustard, and black (way too “German flag”, and thrown in the bin!!), realised I had enough of some royal blue ponte to make the body and neckband.


Photos taken before work on a very foggy morning with my phone camera…

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A Slate blue Drapey Dress for Keeps

I have sewn so many Drapey Dresses that I could pretty much make them with my eyes closed. I made the first prototype version for the Great British Sewing Bee: Fashion in Fabric book last summer, and I even got to cheekily wear it out for a weekend before returning it for pattern development purposes. Then I sewed something like 6 more over the next year, including both the blue and stripey versions seen in the book, and the lovely pink one CL wore to promote the book during her February “Bee Mine” challenge.

But I still didn’t have one in my wardrobe to call my own! It’s definitely saying something about the greatness of this pattern and design that I still even wanted one – I mean, I’m usually sick of a pattern after making it 2 or 3 times!

Having seen this dress in all colours and prints imaginable, it made it all the harder to pin myself down to this “duck egg blue” ponte from Truro Fabrics. Theirs isn’t the cheapest ponte out there, but it’s really nice quality and doesn’t tend to bobble as quickly as others I’ve bought elsewhere. I made this Burda vintage wiggle dress using a Truro ponte three years ago and the dress still looks great, despite constant winter wear.

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Simple Sew banded bamboo tee

Thank you all so much for your words of encouragement on my last post. I am pleased to report that I feel significantly better than last weekend already, just by eliminating some foods, which definitely points to it being a nutritional issue than anything more serious, thankfully. I’m already very much looking forward to adding foods back in one by one in a few weeks to see which is the culprit, though! Because of everything in September, I didn’t have time or energy to document or post about the few things I made which aren’t top secret, like this quick knit top!

I actually made this the day we landed back from Argentina. I worked out a few years ago that if I get even a few hours sleep on an overnight flight and then force myself to stay awake through the day I arrive, I’m recovered from jet lag the following day. So once the laundry was on and my suitcase was unpacked, I wanted something easy to sew that would keep me awake, and this little pattern was staring me in the face.

This Simple Sew pattern came free with the September issue of Love Sewing magazine that I’d bought before we went away, and it seemed a perfect mix of easy enough to sew on jetlag, and not requiring me to buy anything. Simple Sew patterns seem to only exist as magazine covermount patterns as far as I can tell, and I don’t see this #015 Jersey Top listed on their site, either. If you want to buy it for yourself, I’m not really sure what to suggest!

I shopped my stash since this only required a meter of fabric, and I came up with this bamboo jersey from Jersey Fashion that was leftover from my Kimono Sweat View B sample – I wanted to be able to give my athlete model Lorna a choice of colour and she chose red, so the teal was left for me. It’s super soft and drapey and really lovely to wear, so just about perfect for this top. For something different, I chose some contrast orange ribbing for the neck and sleeve bands, but since this was offcuts from a ridiculously long vest (tank) top I’d been given at a running event, I didn’t have enough for the hem band so I just turned and coverstitched that instead.


Worn with my birthday jeans from earlier this year

Even in my jet-lagged haze, I could see that the sleeve drafting was wack on this – the hem comes to a point at the seam! Seriously, did no one sanity check this pattern before releasing it? Even if you weren’t trying to attach a hem band (and were just folding under and twin needle stitching), this would be a massive problem.