Autumn Winter sewing plans

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Warning: Long post

These collections were the outcome of a recent fabric cupboard perusal. I’ve been feeling a bit directionless, so staring at a cupboard which, to be honest is a bit too full of fabric has contributed to a sense of overwhelm and erratic sewing activity. I thought about what clothes gaps I might have coming into Me-Made-May and also about which garments I am wearing a lot but bored of. (“of which I am bored” for the grammar nazis?)

Activewear - to encourage me to get moving more

From left to right the blues are making some racer back tank tops, the two blacks are for leggings and the stripey cream and khaki will also become a top. I’ve previously made a couple of tops following the Slapdash Sewist’s lead using Jalie 2563 as a base and extending the bodice pieces to  covering midriff. No need for me to scare people before breakfast at the gym. I am working on a pair of leggings with curved seaming which are drafted, cut out and just waiting to be sewn. I’ll have the opportunity to borrow my mother’s overlocker which has coverstitch capability while she’s enjoying herself elsewhere so these garments will be my practice ones to see if I really need a coverstitich machine or it’s just gadget lust.

Activewear Garment count – as many tops and leggings as I can squeeze out of the fabric, probably 3-4 of each sewn in a production line to make it quick. I need to throw out several older pieces of my gym clothes before they finally self-destruct.

Workwear Autumn Winter 2012

I bought a few RTW pieces of work clothing in the middle of last year and some have already worn out. Based on the OWOP week it would appear I also heavily rely on a very, very old black cardigan and a lot of my clothing is grey or black or similar dark tones. As a replacement and to inject some colour, the red is a thick merino doubleknit which I’ve already made up into a semi-self drafted cardigan (photos and writeup to come). The cardigan has simple lines and is a perfect addition to the work wardrobe. The black is a burnout knit that will be made into a useful wrap top, maybe Burda 01/2011 #131? The green ovals knit will be Vogue 8663 in View B below, partly because I already have the pattern. I bought it last year and then couldn’t find any nice knit fabric and forgot about it.

The grey bubbles fabric will be a simple shell top to sit neatly under a cardigan or jacket. Possibly made into the assymetrical cowl from Pattern Magic vol 2 which I have drafted and tested. Last in that line up is some leftover grey wool/poly blend to make a simple pencil skirt. Workwear – 5 garments

Casual Wear

And when I’m not at work, sleeping or sweating? Then what I need is a green corduroy Crescent skirt with some brocade trim at the hem – Done! and I love it. The green merino knit is the same colour in real life  as the cord but comes out quite different in the photo here. Mysterious. That green and the grey merino next to it will be two long sleeved tops – depending on the material I might get a cowl Renfrew, if not, a boatneck style will be the most useful. Next along the line, is my linen lion dress. I bought the lion fabric first as two slightly larger than fat quarter remnants, then matched some orange linen to coordinate. I’ve rejected a few patterns so far, and am toying with Simplicity Lisette 2209 for the cute pleats on the front bodice. But I wonder if I’m being swayed to it by the ruffle on the jacket – lion/ ruffle? There is a similar bodice pleat design to the Lisette dress in a book I bought – How to Use, Adapt, and Design Sewing Patterns by Lee Hollahan. And I’d want sleeves too, even just cap ones so I’m going to be frankenpatterning anyhow. Yeah, and the elephant dress too, although that is more summery in my mind.

Casual – 5 garments

PS: when I showed these photos to my better half he asked where ‘his stuff’ was. The men of the household have a list too. For my husband – a black wool flannel coat (like on Spooks, using the Japanese men’s coats and jackets book), a purple Negroni with Stand Collar addition shirt and perhaps another gym top. And for the son? Some PJs to replace the holey pair he keeps wearing, a blue striped shirt (also Negroni adapted) and a grey merino cardigan/ jumper (style TBD). I’ve got all the fabric and most of the patterns for these too.

Just need a time machine. Although the insomnia is helping :-)

I’d better get sewing!

 

I’m in!

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Pyjama Party

While I’m a bit late to Karen’s Pyjama Party (deadline of this Saturday!), I’m now making my plans public. A few weeks ago I did some planning to simplify my ‘to-sew’ list. I pulled these particular fabrics out of the cupboard to make some PJs.

Pyjama Party Plans

From left to right I have some rabbit highlight fabric, some green stripey flannelette, some stripey light cotton and some grey knit for tops.

Also I’m committing to Me-Made-May for the first time. Last year when I discovered a bunch of sewing blogs, Self Stitched September had just finished and I loved the idea of focussing my sewing enough to make a wardrobe full of options.

Photobucket I, Kirsty of Rocket Sews, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May ’12. I endeavour to wear at least 50% me-made clothes each day for the duration of May 2012′

I’m not counting shoes, socks and undergarments, and keep an exception open to wear my RTW suit for job interviews. I *am* going to be counting activewear and PJs as part of my commitment though, so each outfit I wear needs to have 50% me-made.

My plan is to take a photo each day and post weekly including to the Flickr group.

Elephant Dress no#3 & 4 & 5?

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When I spotted this elephant fabric I knew I needed some.

Elephant Plans

You see, when I was about 19 or so I made a favourite elephant dress out of some lovely soft rayon. Which I wore until it was well past its best. It was white elephants on black background – the sketch is a rough approximation of the design. At Spotlight’s 40%-off sale I saw the white on navy first, then the blue on cream cotton. Also there was a cream on pink on the mountain of stuff waiting to be put away near the counter. I was feeling restrained so only the navy was carted about the store while I made some other selections. While standing in the queue (for about 7 years, I think) my enabler dear friend J agreed that the pink was a good idea (building on a past New Year’s Resolution to “wear more pink”), so I went off to get that. Her visit to the “waiting to be put away mountain of bolts” netted a polar fleece with rabbits printed on it to make a throw rug for her sister. After finally making it to a counter and paying for my treasures, I realised that it would be sensible to also get some blue, just in case. After all, how often have I seen elephant fabric in the intervening years?

Over dinner with my parents I mentioned the excitement of finding fabric to replicate the elephant dress of my late teens and early twenties and Mum looked a bit bemused at my description of colour and fabric. Because, it turns out she was remembering the elephant dress as I had one when I was a lot, lot shorter, probably on a teal background she thinks. Obviously I need an elephant dress in my standard wardrobe!

Now I am well equipped for the next few years. In good company too – Karen of DidYouMakeThat made a Burda elephant top, Winnie of ScruffyBadgerTime has a pink elephant Violet and Roobedoo  made a Lisette elephant  tunic = They’ve all already been wearing their elephant adorned garments!

Lately, my aforementioned friend and fabric purchasing pusher and I have been getting together for Crafternoons to work on sewing projects. J has been working on a present for her sister, a shoulder bag with applique rabbits – a different rabbit and fabric on each side. I learnt that I pin my fabric way less thoroughly than she was taught, and she learnt that pattern tissue won’t burn if you iron it. It’s fun doing stuff together.

Rabbit Bags

 

OWOP Day 7 and reflections

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The final day of One Week, One Pattern was mainly spent on a plane to Alice Springs. To make sure my knot top wouldn’t get gunk on it in transit I changed when I got there. So we are blessed with a photo of my phone in the hotel mirror, apparently missing an arm.

One unexpected bonus of OWOP – a limited range of choices easily answered the ‘what do I wear for a conference presentation’ question!

OWOP Day 7 - a blurry photo of my phone

What else did I learn from OWOP?

  • I really enjoyed putting on a dress the next day – it wasn’t so much I didn’t want to wear the knot tops again, but that I was bored with my bottom half options. Something to consider for wardrobe gap filling.
  • I tend to recycle the same outfits over and over, especially for work.
  • I need a new casual cardigan, and a new work cardigan. The black one I wear continually should have been replaced quite some time ago.
  • I have enough knot tops to take me half way across the country and back.
  • Plain and neutral colours are boring in photos.

A huge thank you to Tilly for all her coordination and enthusiasm about this idea. Oh, and the pie charts too!

Post OWOP – a little sightseeing around Alice Springs

After the conference finished and before my flight home, I walked down very early on Sunday morning to the local market which is held fortnightly. I had a good coffee and waited while the stall holders turned up and set up their stalls.

Silk scarves at the market

The Mekong Silk stall of silk scarves caught my eye and a two-toned one had to come home – it is wide enough and long enough to make a soft gathered or pleated skirt for dressy dinners. The darker colour is like the one in the second column from the left, five from the top – a brick red blending to a medium pink. I’ll use it like a border print. Would go beautifully with my white linen knot top ;-)

I see now from the website that the owner sources her products directly from the weavers in Laos. That makes me feel even better about my beautiful scarf/skirt-to-be.

The Todd River in Alice Springs, Northern Territory.
It’s been a wetter than normal past 18 months apparently, explaining the green growth of the grasses along the river bed. One of the bridges across the river into town was not more than about 20cm/8inches above the sand. I’ve been told it’s rare to actually have water in the river so I was interested to see from the patterns in the sand that there were remaining marks from waterflow. Yeah, and footprints.

Todd River, Alice Springs

OWOP Day 6

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Not feeling photogenic today. The first me-made version of this top got an airing today. It think this white linen version with pleated sleeves might still be my favourite. It is the closest to the original RTW top I copied.

I got dressed and felt a bit plain – plain white top, plain grey work trousers (Clovers). Sigh. A necklace wasn’t going to work with this neckline ruling out my normal fix-it approach. So I wrapped a silk scarf around my wrist. Something I’ll do again – slightly quirky, colourful and doesn’t get in the way.

 

 

OWOP Day 4 and 5

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Day 5

This is getting fun. Today I found out a colleague has been a member of Australian Sewing Guild and thinks the ASG convention she went to was the best conference ever. Funny how asking someone if they’ll be in your photo opens up different conversation rather than educational research.

Here’s my grey knot top interstate at a meeting today. Apologies for the shocking photo quality but I had to include Cheryl and her not-so-secret-anymore sewing background!

Knot top goes to Melbourne

Because the light was so dim inside, when I got home tonight I asked my son to take some photos but they turned out to be against the sun. Let’s pretend they are meant to be supersaturated and overexposed shall we? Today I just flipped the ties one over the other and it worked better than a knot on the bulky fabric. Note to self: Yeah, tidy the bench next time.

Day 4 was the day of the splodgy top. Here’s me in the garden after work. It works better with the black skirt than the speckled grey A line I wore for this day.

Look over there...

Only two more days to go and the white linen hasn’t even had a showing yet! The splodgy top will get the final day – a conference presentation in Alice Springs where it is forecast to be 34 degrees C.

Swimming in Fabric

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I am now the proud and slightly embarassed owner of an Olympic pool’s length of fabric. Uh, we counted it all up. Not all in the one fabric thankfully, that would be boring. Now, I hold myself and my dear husband ultimately responsible for such a state of affairs. I must say a “thank you” to my enablers  as well – Sewaholic’s Tasia for asking “How Close is your nearest fabric store?” and Rachel of MyMessings for helpfully responding to my plea in the comments for tips about Melbourne with: “If it’s a weekday or Saturday morning that you’re free it’s worth getting the 19 tram up to Sydney road in Brunswick, on the same block that the Brunswick Spotlight is on there are 4 or 5 little independent fabric stores that have some nice fabrics. Then if you walk east along one of the cross streets about 10 minutes to Lygon street you can go to Rathdowne Remnants and GJs (which has quilting and dance fabrics, a little bit of nice fashion fabric, but might not be your thing), and then you can get the tram back down Lygon street. I’ve done that little loop a few times on a Saturday morning when looking for fabrics.
Oh and if you’re after formal fabrics, I discovered Franke Stuart in Hawthorn last weekend, it has some AMAZING fabrics there and seemed very reasonably priced. It’s a short walk from Glenferrie train station.”

Oh, such wise words.

Combine that advice with a weekend in Melbourne a few weeks later and kaboom! My fabric cupboard overfloweth…

Click for larger images. First up a brocade. I think this will be a feature panel on a corduroy skirt. Then the assortment of fabric to make aforesaid husband an overcoat “like on Spooks“. We kept finding ones we liked better, finishing with a black wool blend flannel from Rathdowne Fabrics. Next up a textured vertical stripe knit in black (dress for me?) and some french terry in blue (PJs for the son). Then 3 stripey knits – dark merino for LS Tshirt for son (done!), cream/blue cotton wool for stroking making into something warm and stylish for me, black and white poly cotton for a Renfrew V neck with 3/4 sleeves (already sewn). Moving right along to the explosion of colour which is the Tshirt weight knits pile. Some more obviously for bright bike riding clothing, others for leggings and PJs, and others, perhaps even to be sewn as Tshirts. Then last but definitely not least. The colourful prints. I couldn’t decide between red or green ovals in a soft drapy knit, ‘both’ was the colour I went for, the red diagonal check and blue diamonds are both lycra. Possibly a skirt of the red check and some gym tops using the blue in panels? Can you tell I’ve been feeling starved for choice with knits lately? And a lovely border poppy print of lightweight cotton that has already become a birthday present skirt for my Mother-in-Law.

The Anita Skirt

The In-Laws collected us from the airport after this trip and sat around with us going through the fabric. My M-I-L held the poppy print in her lap while picking up and putting down others. As I hadn’t actually figured out what it was for when I bought it, it was obviously meant to be hers.

Note to self: it was a good move to buy the Japanese Men’s Coat/Jacket book and invite my husband to choose which one he’d like.

I think we have enough fabric to be getting on with.

We did do a lot of other Melbourne things too – drank coffee, went to Ikea (for a single table leg, if you must know), ate and drank at Movida’s Next Door bar, went to an opening – the 25 year retrospective of Peter Hill’s Museum of Contemporary Ideas (website), and spent lovely time with family.

OWOP Day 1 and 2 and 3

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Erm, can I play catch up with my photos?

As I flagged earlier, I am using a ‘knot tie top’ as my OWOP garment for Tilly’s fab group idea – One Week One Pattern where we wear versions of the one pattern for a week non-stop.

OWOP Day 1

Saturday was a horrid day weather wise. I buried myself in polar fleece without thinking and at dinner time realised I could ‘dress for dinner’ rather than scuppering my OWOP efforts before I’d even begun.

OWOP Day 2

 

Sunday started crisp and bright, still with a bit to the air so I wore the same top in a layered approach with a merino tee underneath. I wouldn’t normally layer a top like this so the challenge has already got me thinking more about using my clothes in different ways. The day warmed up enough to discard the merino and enjoy the sunshine later. Looking at these photos I realise how close the living space wall colour is to this top!

OWOP Day 3

 

Monday Day 3: I wore my newly made grey sheeny knit version with long sleeves to work. Here’s a shot with my office roomie – Ned, he’s lying on the consultation table behind me. I work in a medical training organisation and get to share my space with a full sized simulation mannequin. Normally he’s very quiet, zipped up in his bodybag carry bag. This top feels very different being made out of knit fabric. TBH the knot is a bit heavy and pulls down the front, good thing I raised the neckline on this one!

Playing with Patterns

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Over the past three months I’ve picked up some pattern magazines and have a few patterns also in my pattern box that haven’t yet been sewn. Having made a Kirsty shaped croquis (outline drawing) I decided to use some sketching to try some possible patterns on for style decisions. Click for larger images.

BurdaStyle 10/2011

BurdaStyle Magazine 10/2011
This magazine had a standout dress when I first looked through it – the wrap at the end of the top row. Lately my skirts have been made around high calf/ just below the knee and through the sketching exercise I realised the longer length of this pattern (it came in long, longer and longest) just wouldn’t work for me and raised it to just on the knee. Much better. I also rejected an oversized jumper (but found a good replacement at Victory Patterns below).

My Image Spring/Summer 2012

My Image Magazine Spring Summer 2012

This one you can see I spent more time playing with some colour block options with the diagonal lines of one of the dress patterns, and also with the idea of shortening it into a top which I saw at A Little Sewing. And adding sleeves. The trousers in the second row might be a good pleated work trouser.

Victory Patterns Selection

Victory Patterns Current Range

This sketch through some of this pattern line was prompted by a giveaway for 3 patterns somewhere in the blogiverse. It helped me choose Lola over Hazel. And realise I shouldn’t tuck a top into the Madeline skirt. Ever. And I added a longer sleeve to Chloe influenced no doubt by the arrival of autumn.

Discount Alert: Tilly has a 15% discount code at the end of her interview with Kristiann for Victory Patterns this weekend (Sat 24-Mon 26 March) link here

Would I do this again?

Definitely. It helped me see that some patterns may well suit me where I was unsure, and discard others without sewing a stitch.

Overall result

To sew in next six months or before I get distracted by other patterns and fabrics

  1. Burda wrap dress #123 in shorter length (teal knit already bought)
  2. Burda ruffle wrap top in useful work neutral.
  3. My Image M1202 as a weekend dress (not sure of fabric)and gym tops (plenty of knits in cupboard now)
  4. Victory Patterns Chloe dress in a lime green dot/stripe cotton already bought
  5. Victory Pattern Lola maybe in blue cream cotton wool knit already bought
  6. My Image M1208 trousers – grey wool blend suiting already bought

One Week One Pattern

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Is it too late to still be considering what to wear/ make? One Week, One Pattern only starts at the end of next week doesn’t it?

One option is the Knot Top which is a copy of a favourite top I wore for years until I put my fingers through the fabric taking it off one day. I’d worn it one too many times. I made the new versions last year as one of the first garments I successfully re-created. The new variations are in white linen and a green and yellow cotton.

White Linen Knot Top

I need to sort out the tight armhole business though. I think I might not have trimmed the seam allowance back on this one sufficiently for the small seam allowance I used putting on the bias binding. I should compare the white and patterned versions to see.
Seam Sealing Tape

During the OWOP week I will have two work trips – a day trip to Melbourne, then a 3 day trip to present at a conference in Alice Springs. I need to make a version that has a higher neckline, and also consider a long or 3/4 sleeve version. I am wondering about what it would be like made in a knit fabric as I have some slightly sheeny grey knit that would be terribly useful for work. If I made a loop to thread the ties through rather than knotting them that would change up the look as well.

I could also wear the multiple pairs of Clovers I have made. Although that almost feels too easy as I wear them a lot of the time for work anyhow. It would prod me into taking in the side seams of the soft black pair which have been loitering near the sewing machine for a month or two now. It would be useful to have them back in rotation. I have a pair of navy cotton stretch capri Clovers I made over summer too in addition to the ones pictured.
3 Clovers

Or I could go choose a completely different pattern… Thursday night is the deadline to decide as the weekend will be my time to do any last minute sewing.

Update: It’s now Sunday and I have cut out two more knot tops – one in the sheeny grey knit with long sleeves, and another in a splodgy navy khaki cream poly chiffon with short sleeves. That chiffon one will be one day of the conference and the white linen the other (35 deg C during the day). I’m already realising a ‘bottom’ such as a skirt or trousers would have meant less washing mid week.