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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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A fuss-free red shirt for James

While my own wardrobe may be 99% own-sewn, I’m only one woman and I like to concentrate my sewing for James into items he can’t regularly find in shops. Often this means loud and garish shirts in unusual prints (just wait til 4th of July…), but occasionally it’s for practical reasons. In this case, he has two Dakine shirts that are made from some sort of thin, technical woven that dries really quickly and resists wrinkling. So he got just a wee bit excited when he saw Fabric.com was stocking something that looked really similar. They called it “workwear fabric” (it’s no longer available) – a thin, 100% polyester woven that resists wrinkling and dries quickly – perfect for him to wear to cycle into work without looking like a sweaty mess all day.

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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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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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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.

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Digital-print Cowl neck top

Every now and then, I feel like I really crack a garment – I end up with something that truly blends the most perfect fabric with the perfect pattern. I wasn’t entirely sure until I wore it for a day, but this top really nailed it! It feels 100% designer, special, and yet me at the same time.

The cowl-neck tee pattern is from the October 2014 issue of Burda magazine or available to buy individually as a pdf, and it came in three versions – a plain top (which is the one I made) – a tee sliced into various colourblocks, or a plain dress.

But this garment is really all about the fabric, and the pattern itself plays a supporting role. In fact, most of the time, care, and attention to the entire process was in placing the pattern pieces! Look what I had to start with:

I bought this digital print lycra from Ditto Fabrics when I was down in Brighton this summer (an Italian designer offcut that I snagged for £15!). Originally I thought I’d have the main body in the trompe l’oiel knitted houndstooth as that was what drew me to the fabric, but the houndstooth portion wasn’t quite long enough for the front and back, so I placed those over the “lace” portions and cut the sleeves from the houndstooth instead.


Worn with my Colette Beignet skirt I made back in 2010 that’s sadly, a bit too big for me now (it’s really relying on cinching that belt!

I used a size 40 for the first time here, which is my “new” Burda size since I’ve lost a few cm through training, and the fit is just as I’d like it, really. I loooooove the slim fit sleeves in particular on this pattern. They’re extra long here, too – it’s noted in the instructions are that the sleeves are 10cm longer than normal. I wasn’t sure if I’d keep them extra long or not, but as I was laying out the sleeves, I saw that the piece overlapped into the lace print area nicely, creating a sort of cuff-effect at the sleeve that I really liked the look of:

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A purple and green Slouchy Breton tee

You may be forgiven for thinking I have my hands full with designing activewear sewing patterns, running marathons, and working extensively on a certain sewing tv show, but no – I also teach classes! Since I utterly adore working with knits and playing with overlockers, I tend to gravitate towards teaching beginners to sew stretchy stuff, like leggings, tee-shirts, and panties.

So when I bought this fantastic purple & green striped viscose jersey from Tia Knight (formerly Tissu) recently, it practically shouted at me that it wanted to become a Slouchy Breton Tee, which is the pattern that the ThriftyStitcher developed for the class I teach.

Having taught numerous ladies how to make this, I knew it’d be a quick and easy make, and that it also has the magic ability of looking good on all body shapes and being loose enough in the bust to not require any FBA (not that I need one, but still…). What I hadn’t realised though, is that the 2m of the viscose jersey is actually enough to make two Slouchy Breton Tees, so my mom’s getting one, too! Seriously – two great teeshirts that feel like vintage tees for a fiver each? I’m in love!

The fit through the bust, waist, and hips is really forgiving here, and there are two sleeve lengths (well, three, if you just wanted to keep the drop shoulder as a little cap sleeve!) – I made the full length sleeve but in future I’d extend it by another 2-3 inches as it’s not quite long enough for me. There’s also a 3/4 length sleeve option, too, if you prefer.