Why sew?

I made a commitment this year to not buy any clothes. So far I have more or less stuck to my plan. All I have brought are things I can't make like tights or shoes or jeans. However I weakened recently at the price of a $5 viscose cardigan on sale at Cotton On. Fast-fashion is just so cheap that its hard for a girl to resist. I am mortal after all!  I can't make things for as cheap as the big chains can. But I can make things of better quality and with nicer materials. I can use linen and cotton and cool polka-dots and sew careful seams and lining. I can choose exactly what style, colour and fabric I use to suit myself. Even though I occasionally crave the thrill of purchase and the quick and ready-made, I'm glad I have tried to make my own clothes. I get so much more satisfaction from wearing things I made myself. My sewing is also getting better. Now my clothes don't look home-made in a bad way. It makes me very happy when people ask when I got my dress and I can say I made it and they are genuinely shocked!

 This dress pattern is from BurdaStyle. I sewed the dress in a linen/cotton blend so it falls nicely. I modified the sleeves a bit and gave them a little pleat so they sat nicer across my shoulders. I'm so happy with this dress. I love the indigo colour too.

 Rather than buy pajama pants I decided to make my own. I used fabric that I like but is a bit too shocking for my quiet personality to wear out! One pair is in linen/cotton (same print as the dress) and the other is cotton. I gave both a simple elastic waistband. 

The pattern is my own adaptation of a pair of pj shorts. I used the instructions in Cal Patch's book to lengthen the pants.

As a child I always wanted to wear a Tutu but I never go to. So I decided to make myself a Tutu skirt. This project I've dreamt about for about 2 years, but only got to making it this past week. The skirt is made up of 3 layers: 2 of Bridal Tulle and one of acetate lining. I sewed both to the elastic waistband. 

When I wear this skirt out, people are nicer to me. Random strangers smile at me in the street. I guess big swooshey tutu skirts make people happy. It sure makes me happy!

Because I lost a lot of weight I can't wear any of my trousers so I decided to make some. These pants are from a book called 'Simple Modern Sewing' and were quite easy to make...However after I had sewed up the blue linen I realised it was more translucent than I thought so I had to line them. After rummaging around in my fabric stash I found enough white cotton fabric to line the pants.

The pants are really comfy. There is a lot to be said for an elastic waist!

This dress is my adapation from  'Simple Modern Sewing'. The book designed this dress for linen but I wanted to use this pleated polyester. I also decided to modify the hemline to slope from front to back. The change of fabric meant I had to stabilise the top to prevent it stretching out and I added a half-lining of black cotton drill fabric to keep it nice-shaped.

This is the sloped hemline. It looks like a 1920s dress when worn.

The pattern had these nice fold-over shoulder details that I liked.

I had about 0.5m of grey jersey left from my Drape Drape dress and I wanted to make a shawl. I had seen a scarf at the Purl Bee with Pompom edging and thought it looked cool so I decided to make one. Mine is a circle scarf as I only had about 1.0m of length for the scarf - too short to wear as a regular scarf.

The pompom scarf has the same effect as the tutu skirt - it makes people smile. This is a good thing to happen when you walk about!

This dress is from a BurdaStyle pattern. I made this in light grey polka-dot polyester chiffon. This was the first time I had ever sewed chiffon and it was a little bit tricky. I had to zigzag stitch all the pieces before I sewed them as they were unraveling fast! Fortunately the zigzagging also helped to stabilise the seams and keep things from sliding away while sewing as I couldn't pin the pieces as pinning left holes. I definitely learnt a lot from this dress!

I am quite happy with my neat seams around the neck and sleeves. The asymmetrical neckline turned out nice too. It has a simple press-stud to fasten.

More sewing adventures await!

Sew what?

This is the first time I've sewed so much in my entire life. Sewing has become a respite from feeling sick and is a practical solution to the fact that my clothes no longer fit me. Also the more I sew the more enjoyable I find it. I've learnt alot of things about sewing over the past few months.

The first lesson is patience. Read the pattern carefully, prewash fabric well, layout fabric and pin carefully then test stitches. I'm usually one for jumping in with making and hoping for the best, however I'm learning that unpicking seams is not fun so if you are more careful, you actually save both time and heartache.

The second lesson has been understanding what fabric goes with what pattern. I usually just find a pattern I like and a fabric I like and go for it. However I've been much more careful with reading the pattern's recommended fabrics and selecting one from my stash to suit. Case in point: drapey fabric needs drapey pattern. Structured dress needs structured fabric.

The third lesson has been to test sew. I had a tough dress to make and so did a mock-up before trying it out in my more expensive fabric. The results are worth it, I have a very nice dress at the end of it with perfect seams and correctly draped and tucked. This is especially important if I'm sewing something where the instructions are not in a language I can read. Case in point: dress from Japanese book Drape Drape.

 The test dress from Drape Drape in cheap yellow jersey. I modified the pattern to line the back of the dress too as this fabric was a little too light.

 Even though it was a test, it turned out quite wearable (despite all the mistakes I made!)

This is the final version in grey jersey. I love how it turned out though the draping does make it a heavy dress to wear. This one has no mistakes thanks to my test piece. 

I made another simple gathered skirt. This one is made out of quilting weight cotton so has a nice stiffness that I think works with this type of pattern. The fabric has an old fashioned circus print with animals and trapeze artists. It is good to cheer up a day. I love the green background too.

Silk velvet skirt. This one is based on the simple skirt instructions from Cal Patch's book which I followed carefully and made my own pattern from. The fabric is really lovely, 100% silk velvet and feels amazing. I had just enough for the skirt, the fabric is actually an upholstery sample and so was only about 42 inches wide and 46 inches long, I really had to squeeze the skirt out of the fabric! I finished the skirt with some vintage cotton bias tape at the waist, a zip and a hook and eye for the side fastening. I was careful to double stitch the seams as the fabric falls apart easily and shed black fluff all over the floor and myself while sewing!

Unfortunately I lost weight again after I sewed this skirt so its now too big for me! 

This top was a test run for a dress (see below). I used it to test out the sizing for the darts and how the sleeves fit me. So for this I just used some yellow muslin that I had dyed in black tea and bias tape I had left over from my white dress.

I then experimented with cotton synthetic fabric paint to make a dye by dipping the shirt in it. It turned out quite nice, but I'm yet to see if the colour stuck to the fabric. At them moment it turns my hands a little blue which is not ideal!

This is the first dress I made using the pattern. I used a really lovely light cotton print for this one. I kept the hems all simple, just double turned. And I added pockets of course!

For the second version I used a heavier cotton and used red bias tape to trim the sleeves, neck and pockets. The combination of red and blue reminds me of a 60's air stewardess uniform, which I think is rather nice.

Sewn Things

Some things I was busy with during April. 

This top is a tube of black ribbed jersey fabric which I cut two holes into each side. It drapes nicely when worn. Pictured with it is a fabric necklace I made some time ago.

Circle scarf or Infinity scarf made from a blue and white chambray fabric. I practiced my hemming skills to good effect here.

Finally I made a white dress I love to wear! This one is cut based on a dress I brought from Country Road. The original is silk which means I have to hand-wash it and be very careful with it! I wanted a more 'everyday' version so I made my own. My version is made from off-cuts of curtains from Ikea. I brought a bias-tape maker to make the trims for the neckline and armholes. It made everything look so much more neat and professional. Its my new favourite thing to play with.

This skirt is based on a pattern from a Japanese sewing magazine called 'Female'. The magazine is from a few years ago. I added pockets and made the waist wide elastic. However, as you can see, my sewing skills for elastic still need some work! 

The skirt is some sort of pixellated pattern and is actually quite bright. Its good for cheering up mid-week.

March Making

I thought I'd share some things I've made recently. Though I've been sick, when I've had the energy I've been making all sorts of things.

 I've been busy making baby vests. I'm stockpiling them in case there is an onslaught of babies soon.

 Actually I just really like making them as they are quick to make and I get to play with colours and stripes. My jogless stripe knitting in the round is getting pretty good now.

 I made a bag out of two remnants I picked up in the fabric store in Montreal. Total cost for this bag is CDN $2.00 plus some black thread. The outside is a crunchy sort of vinyl and the inside is a lovely cotton.

 I like the lining as it gives some excitement to what is otherwise a very plain bag. I'm considering turning up the edge of the front flap so that the lining shows a bit to make the bag less plain.

 The nice thing about making your own bags is you can decide exactly how long the shoulder strap should be. 

 I tried making a crocheted shoulder bag before I attempted the sewn one but a few days into it I realised that I didn't like it. I'm going to undo it and try again.

 I made a tunic top from the Japanese book 'Drape Drape 3'. The pattern is very simple - just two pieces and has a really nice drape to it. The lace has a slight stretch and is slippery so I had to sew the front and back pieces and the neckline by hand first as I couldn't pin it. I then zig zag stitched it together with a jersey needle on the sewing machine.

 I assure you it looks less like a Kaftan when worn on a human. Its actually quite stylish.

 This dress I made from a jersey knit pillowcase (for an extra long pillow) from Muji. The dress is just a simple rectangle and I unpicked along the seams for armholes and a head-hole. I then reinforced the edges where I had unpicked by handsewing some stay stitches. I left the neckline and armholes unfinished.

I wear it with tights and a belt. I like stripes!

Of Birthdays & Happy Things

I just had a significant sort of birthday. A goal evaluation and re-setting sort of birthday. I celebrated quietly and went back to working on my essays. But today I got myself my birthday present: a Singer SewHandy Model 20 Sewing Machine. It came with its original box and instructional booklet. The booklet is copyright 1953, so I guess the machine is of a similar age. I saw it in an antique shop and it was love at first sight.

(Teapot is for comparative size)

With its Box, Booklet and Packet of Needles (empty, but original)

Yes, I will want to sew on lace, and ric rac

And of course children should learn how to make proper seams

The introduction concludes with this comment: 'You'll want to take your machine with you on vacations with the family, weekend visits with friends, and finally to college. Ever ready for mending or making a simple garment.'

Yes, I might just want to take this little beauty everywhere. Its really light (despite being a rather solid chunk of metal) and you never know when you have to do some emergency shirring or pin-tucking.

As far as I can tell it is in working order with all the necessary moving parts moving. But I will have to thread it up to see.

I think it needs a name...

Things that Birdy has been up to and other stories

There won't be any more pictures of Rambutan-eating Birds for a while because me and the Mr. just moved to Canada for a year. This has been an involved procedure taking many months and right up until the last week, it was not certain that we were actually going. But we got here in the end. This relocation of course means a whole new lot of birdy adventures are to be had both in actual bird paparazzi-ing and in making and finding new things.

On the bird front so far we have seen only pigeons, sparrows and seagulls. The seagulls are very much larger than I have seen before and in the evenings seem fond of circling over the city in large numbers. We saw some ducks too (probably the Mallard Duck) swimming around the pond in our local park and some North American Starlings which unlike the Singaporean versions, don't seem to have red eyes. We've also been enjoying the abundant squirrels and even saw a beautiful creamy coloured albino squirrel at our local park. Seems like our local park may be our new creature-spotting area of choice.

On the making of things front, I was making a chunky wool coat to bring with me to Canada. Because I hear it gets cold here! I got the back done and halfway up one sleeve before I left only to discover that the chunky wool is really very chunky, and I couldn't fit it in my suitcase! Sigh...

The pattern has pockets - pockets! I love this! The wool is a Lion Brand chunky weight in a charcoal grey.

The pattern is by Wenlan Chia of Twinkle. See here for a hilarious review of this and other patterns in the same issue of Vogue Knitting. I personally think the chunky jacket look is nice, you just accept that you will look like you are being eaten by a jacket and you wear it like you don't care. It would have been warm, cozy and would double as a blanket, all pluses in my book! I wish I could have squeezed it into my suitcase. Sigh again...

I did manage to complete and fit into my suitcase two recently finished sewn items: a skirt and a t-shirt.

The t-shirt is an altered Uniquo t-shirt which I wrote about here. I finally got to stitching it in place by machine and taking out the tacking stitches. Its comfortable and fits well except for the neckline as I made it a little too wide and it tends to slide off the shoulders. This would be fine, except it wasn't the look I was going for (plus I'm shy of sharing my shoulders with the world). But with a scarf, singlet or the sleeves pushed up it stays in place, so it works out.

Back in October last year when I went to Malacca I got this cute cotton floral fabric amongst other treasures. I finally figured out what I was going to do with it. Following on from my Gingham skirt experiment with the rectangles and t-shirt fabric waistband, I broke out my precious fabric. Shown here unhemmed (I've since stitched up the hem!) the skirt is comfortable and sits nicely. Its got a kind-of bubble-skirt feel to the waist. Like the Gingham skirt, its reversible and the inside is plain calico. I haven't yet printed anything on the inside yet or decided what to print. I've found a shop here though that sells fabric paints, so I'm set once the inspiration arrives!

The t-shirt for the waistband comes leftovers from this t-shirt dress I sewed previously. I love having no waste when sewing!

Having to move countries with only two suitcases means making supplies and things have to be culled back to bare essentials. I did however squeeze in 4 balls of purple alpaca wool and 4 balls of light soft mohair blend. The soft mohair will come in very handy as on my way to Canada I picked up the latest issue of Rebecca knitting magazine while in Germany. I've been wanting to get my hands on this magazine for ages, but couldn't find it locally. In it there are a host of cute patterns that use mohair. My favourite is the long sleeved tunic dress seen here on their website. You can also look at the other patterns they have in the issue (Issue 43). Its all good stuff, but unless you read German, anything other than simple stocking stitch knitting would be difficult. It think I can manage the dress from the schematic diagram & measurements as its is stocking stitch, but the cabled military style coat might be impossible unless I were very very determined!

But there will be no winter woollens out just yet, because for the last few days and for the rest of this week the weather is expected to stay above 30 degrees C. Though this means the cotton skirt has come in very handy!