A completed Delphine skirt and another Bronte

Does anyone ever have one of those projects where they wait ages for their pattern to arrive in international mail, spend hours carefully tracing off the paper pattern and then pinning those pieces to washed and pressed fabric and cut them out to perfection only to look at those leftover pieces of fabric and be like 'I know exactly what those scraps will be and I need to make it now'?!

Dark as soon as you get in from work - The benefit of Scottish Autumn

Well this was one of those projects.... Right in the middle of making my autumn jacket. But looking at the 90ish cm of royal blue drill laid out and ready to be cut and scanning over to Tilly's love at first stitch I knew what must be done!

I think I traced and cut the 4 pattern pieces in about 20 minutes which is good for me and had them pinned up and ready to go within the hour. The only thing stopping me from completing in one night was my lack of appropriate zipper.

I love how this skirt keeps its A frams shape so well!

The pattern calls for an invisible zipper however given the weight of the fabric I decided that it might not hold up all that well (i read that this was the case some where but cannot for the life of me remember where!!) so went for this statement zipper instead. I really like how in the instructions Tilly tells you to interface the fabric behind the zip to stop puckering - its not something I would have even considered.

I think the metal zipper looksquite good although it does distract quite nicely from the less than perfect waistband!

I took a trip to Mandors at lunch and picked up an 8" zip and 6 awesome anchor buttons. I also picked up some new to me interfacing - it is an iron on and heavy duty and apparently was used by Barbour. It feels really good too and has a nice smooth and structured non iron side. In the end I think it may have been a little heavy as the waistband stands so upright and is really rigid. While I was here I also picked up some 100 % cotton jersey - coz you know, you have to have something to go with the skirt right?!

There's not much left to say about this top - the jersey was a little heavier than the last two versions and I cut the 12 as opposed to the 14 this time. I also fixed the tension problems on my overlocker - last time I somehow managed to thread it with the presser foot down ??? oops!

*Outtakes*

Also this is the only long (3/4) sleeved top I own, I've been lurking the cozy looking wool jerseys that seem to be arriving in the shops so I might make up another version. I kind of used the pattern for the sleeve length but cut them off when i thought they looked long enough. Not the most technical method ever but i am really loving the length of these sleeves. 

So the total outlay for this skirt was about £8.50 the buttons were £0.95 each but totally worth the anchor pattern and the rest was for the zip - I'm not counting the fabric or interfacing coz they were bought for the jacket. The top also came in a little more expensive at £11.99/m for the jersey.

I think I'm going to go back and get some more of these buttons!

So there you have it - does anyone else ever have an inspired make like this?

Have a good week folks

JCS xx

A Mini Quilt!

Yeah! It's finished. I have bound and completed my quilt. In't it pretty??

So this weekend I managed to finish off my mini quilt - which is more like a topper kind of size (about 1m^2) and also managed to cut out all but one of my pieces for lola.the light started to fade adn as I am still without proper lighting in my flat i think ill do it over breakfast tomorrow. I feel accomplished. :-)

oooh and because i was feeling *really* proud I added this:

Not only did i manage these two projects over the weekend I also dug out my camera and my charger seems to be happier with me so it looks like the awful camera phone is now obsolete! yuss! On the plus tho crappy camera uploads take like 1/10000 of the time to upload as the epic camera!

So onto this week now - I wont have much time for sewing as I'm going to look after my mum for a few days. I have been promised wine and an evening watching the sewing bee! muchos happy! I do however have a small project lined up owl family applique project. should be a quick one and easy to carry in my bag!

I did manage to pick up some tweed this weekend at the SECC craft fair ONLY £10/m - i'll hopefully manage to get my vogue coat(vogue 8346) made up againl this time in a more season appropriate weightier fabric...I thought this weekend was meant to be sunny?!

JCS

Finit! Mes Shorts Chataigne from Deer and Doe!

Well hello again blogging world! This has been a busy old week for me! I had a first draft finished of my next conference paper and am well onto my second. But enough of my day job...

So this week saw me hack my way (literally) through this lovely pattern for some tailoredish shorts Chataigne - brought to us by Deer and Doe. I cannot tell you how long I have been looking for this pair shorts for but when I found this pattern the other week I knew lifes problems were solved :p. I made view A although instead of invisible stitches for the cuffs I opted for some top stitching.

 

So after finding the patern I took a wee jaunt up town andcame across some wool fabric reduced to only £5/m, I bought 3m of it so expect this stuff to be making another appearance soon! I rather like this fabric and as you can see there is a bit of a pattern in it too.

Well I had 3 best friends whilst making these shorts:

My overlocking foot (the wool was rather prone to the odd frey! (and I dont yet have an overlocker)), my stitch ripper (more on that in a sec) and my invisible zipper foot! So I made a rather slight mistake and stitched one of the pockets onto the wrong side of the front panel... :-\ what a dumbass! haha however a glass bottle (ahem) of wine down I threw a hissy fit and left them languishing for an evening. I also managed to stitch the back on back to front. URGH! so yeah after picking out the stitches they kind of stretched an itty bitty. This kind of caused problems later attaching the waistband to the legs :-(. Im hoping this won't be too noticeable! What does anyone else do when working with wool? I thought of throwing them in the dryer however I didnt want them to frey or anything?!

so yeah that 3rd best friend - the invisible zipper foot. I tried an invisible zipper before but with only a regular zipper foot but if i ever give any advice - SPEND THAT £5er and BUY THE FOOT! ha. how much easier did this make the job.Well chuffed with the result!

I know the edge isn't quite straight but I'll take that!

Also mighty impressed with the end result with the lining in place. Totally going to try more invisible zips. just need a project! so now for the photo shoot...(My living room is a TIP!)

Its kind of hard to see coz its an AWFUL camera! My phone broke and a certain 'Best British Brand' 2014 airline broke my camera charger! Rage. But the fit was great - I cut a 40 and made no alterations.

I will definately be buying more Deer and Doe patterns!

JCS

Completed! Vogue 8346 Coat

Meet the newest item in my wardrobe....My vogue jacket. Style 8346 in view A.

So before any more is said - lets address the rather large elephant in the room - this jacket is flowery as hell!

But I like LOVE it! I cut it in a size 12 - 16(ish) a 12 across the shoulders and the bust and graiding to a 14.5 at the waist and I'm mostly happy with the results. I just wish the sleeves were a wee bitty longer. It's not that they are particularly short however i just love long sleeves that you can hide your hands in :-) and its roomy enough inside that I can get a jumper on underneath and not freeze in the traditionally 'boiling' Scottish spring!

I really wanted to make this jacket in a herringbone tweed but there were two problems with this
1) Having never made sleeves or a jacket before I wanted to try the pattern out before I cut into £20/m Harris tweed
2) I couldn't find the colour that I wanted and at that price I wasnt going to settle for second best!

 So off to the sale shop and the cheapest fabric I could find was £2/m in this awesome flowery print so I decided that if i did like the finished article it wouldn't be a waste of material and my time. I think it paid off because the shape is awesome and the resulting coat is quite summery.

I had never attempted sleeves before and were they a pain to put in or what??? I'm sure there must be an easier way than the 'hope for the best' method I used however there's only a little visible tuck on the outside and as the pattern is so busy then its not really noticeable!

 

I thought it looked ok across the shoulders too. Another small irk was the bottom hem - I wanted to test public opinion of it so i just did a quick double fold hem. It will do for now.

 

The light was better in this room so I tried to get a better picture. I think this picture also shows the shape off better. Also note lack of confused expression!! haha

I even finished off the job with some covered buttons! The pattern called for snap fasteners but i wasnt so keen on that idea so went with the button approach.



So now onto a new project - I think ill leave the tweed coat for now maybe move on to my Doe and Deer shorts. My local fabric shop had an epic sale on so I got some black wool for only £5/m
ULTIMATE BARGAIN!

JCS