Category: tops

An unexpected venture.

Oh, good grief. It’s a month since I last posted here, and I haven’t made a single one of the buttonholes I mentioned in my last post! I have made four in this blouse, though I accidentally made them on the left instead of the right. I decided it didn’t matter too much, as the blouse was for me… but then it didn’t fit, and now the blouse is sitting in the Etsy shop, waiting to find its new home. What you may or may not be able to tell from this little snippet, is that the print is covered with My Little Ponies!

I made the executive decision to split my Etsy shop into two, although at the moment they’re both selling a mishmash of the same things. Once the listings start to expire in one place I’ll re-list them in the other, and hopefully it should all be sorted out over the next couple of months.

The eternal magpie Etsy shop will sell bits and bobs that I’m clearing out from my stash, organic cotton clothing and zipped pouches as I make them, and the more “everyday” styles of felt hat. Oh, and my own sewing patterns, more of which in a moment.

Mr & Mrs Magpie’s Inexplicable Emporium has become a little bit too explicable lately, so I want to have a bit of a tidy-up. This is where I’ll be offering some gemstone jewellery pieces, some of the more complicated-to-make styles of hat, and some corset belts and felt work, once I get around to making them.

So, I mentioned sewing patterns…

A little while ago, a customer who I’d made one of these tunic dresses for (way back in 2009!) got in touch. She wanted to know whether it was possible, as I no longer made these tunics for sale, for her to have a copy of the pattern. I thought about it for a minute, said yes, and set about writing up the instructions.

Since sending off the pattern, Maria has already made not just one, but three tunics – and in the absolutely most fantastic choice of fabrics! And proving that word of mouth is absolutely the best way to sell things, Maria has been very kindly sending everyone who’s admired her tunics over to the eternal magpie Etsy shop, where you can now buy the pattern!

It’s a bit of an experiment at the moment – I’m drawing out the patterns by hand onto brown paper, as I don’t quite have the technology to get them into the computer. I drew them by hand in the first place, and haven’t yet managed to replicate them accurately with my pattern drafting software, which is very frustrating. Also, my greatest bugbear about printing out patterns is having to spend ages sticking all the pages together, so I thought that sending out the patterns complete would be a nice way of saving other people from having to do that.

So, I’ll see what kind of feedback I get about the patterns – whether they’re the right sizes, whether people can understand the instructions, that kind of thing – and decide after a little while whether this is something I want to carry on with or not.

I seem to be pulled in so many different directions these days… I’ll have to see what starts pulling me most strongly.

Waterfall Jacket pre-orders

Orange Wool Jacket

Who remembers this jacket, that I made last August? I’d very much like to make some more, but in order to buy the fabric I’ll need to take pre-orders.

Don’t worry – your jacket doesn’t have to be orange! Though it does work best with wool or wool-blend loosely woven fabrics, like this one. The front, neck and bottom edges are not hemmed, they’re slightly frayed to show the nature of the loose weave. (Don’t worry – they’re also stitched along the edges, so they won’t unravel.) The sleeves are trimmed with a small cuff.

These jackets are pretty much free size, as there are no shoulder seams to fit into, and they don’t fasten across the front.

Orange Wool Jacket

Fabric Land suiting or t-shirting
If you’d like a jacket made from any of the suiting fabrics on this page, the cost will be £65
A plain cotton jersey version would cost £55
Or you could have a patterned one from this page, or this one, for £60
(The lower part of the sleeves can be made in a contrast colour, if you like.)

Organic Herringbone or Linen
If you fancy some heavy organic herringbone weave (scroll all the way down!), that’ll be £140
Organic herringbone or linen with flowers or swallows print will be £165

Organic cotton jersey
A lovely soft t-shirt style cardigan in a wide choice of colours can be yours for £120

Verity's Harris Tweed Jacket

Harris Tweed
For a really sumptuous jacket, why not go for genuine Harris Tweed? It’ll cost £235, and it will come complete with a Harris Tweed Orb label, to confirm its authenticity. It’s available in a stunning range of colours, from very traditional heritage weaves to incredibly bright modern shades.

If you’d like to choose your own fabric, I can advise you on what would be suitable, how much you’d need to buy, and how much the resulting jacket would cost.

UK Shipping will cost an extra £11, as I’ll send them out by Special Delivery.

If you’d like to pre-order a jacket, all you have to do is let me know which fabric you’d like to go for, and I’ll put together a custom Etsy listing for you.

You can either pay the full amount up front, or you can pay a 50% deposit. Again, let me know which, and I’ll create the Etsy listing for the correct amount. This will allow me to order the fabric and make a start! You’ll need to allow up to four weeks from the date of your payment, as I need time to order and receive the fabric and actually make the jacket!

You can contact me by leaving a comment below, sending an email to claire@eternalmagpie.com, or by sending me a message on Facebook or Twitter.

I really like making these jackets, and my orange one has been very popular (orange-ness notwithstanding!), but unfortunately I currently lack the funds for buying the fabric to make more that I can pop into the Etsy shop readymade. Hopefully these pre-order options will work out!

Me-Made May: A Scruffy Start!

1/5/14

Oh dear. The Me-Made May Flickr group is filling up with all sorts of lovely smart people showing off their finest hand made clothing for the occasion. And then I go and post this.

Typically, yesterday I was wearing an almost entirely me-made outfit. Today, not so much.

  • Trousers: Black cords with buttons on the pockets, John Rocha for Debenhams
  • T-shirt: An ancient black long-sleeved Hanes men’s skinny fit, from back in the days when we used to print t-shirts. (Though this one’s always been plain.)
  • Jumper: Me-Made black fleece cowl-neck tank top.
  • Bracelet: Honey & Ollie, with added dangly bits
  • Glasses: Gok Wan for Specsavers. (I need an eye test soon, which almost certainly means I need new glasses. I’m avoiding that possibility because I love this pair so much and they’ve been discontinued.)

I took the photo at work, in the very untidy cloakroom, because I don’t currently have an accessible full-length mirror at home. I suppose I should remedy that, if I’m supposed to be taking pictures of myself for the rest of the month!

1/5/14

I did have one other bit of hidden me-made goodness though, which was my favourite socks. I love wearing handmade socks, there’s just something so warm and comforting and lovely about them. And yet I only own two pairs, because I keep knitting things for other people at the expense of my own feet! I think I need to be a bit ruthless, and just treat myself to a few new pairs of socks. It’s not as though I have any shortage of sock yarn (a new skein arrived today!), just a shortage of time. (I’m a slow knitter, so socks take ages.)

Comments from the Flickr group have so far been polite, with the key observation being that I look “comfortable”. Which I am, because that’s the entire point of the clothes that I make for myself! Living with fibromyalgia being the literal pain that it is, comfort is of paramount importance. If I want to have enough space in my brain to be able to get on with my life, I need to reduce my external sources of pain as far as possible. Which means comfortable clothes, at all times.

I do think I need to up my game from today’s outfit though. Otherwise “comfortable” could all too easily be synonymous with “frumpy”, “boring”, “shapeless” and “scruffy”. I may well be all of those things in myself, but I don’t necessarily want that to be reflected in my clothes!

Fleecy Things

Fleece bolero

I had another mad day in the Etsy shop yesterday, this time listing three versions of this fleece bolero jacket, and three versions of the new top below. This afternoon I went out and bought some patterned fleece, so I can actually make and then take photos of the patterned versions that I’ve listed.

This is my own jacket, and it lives very firmly in my wardrobe. I love it, and it looks just as good with jeans and a t-shirt as it does with a smart dress. My friend Karen (whose wedding I made this outfit for) has the prototype, which is the same style but plain black. She says it “Makes me feel like some kind of thief/archer elf in a fantasy film!”, which is perfect because that’s exactly what it’s supposed to do!

The one change I’ve made to the design is to replace the hidden hooks and eyes with decorative frog fasteners – though I don’t have any pictures of those yet. The one problem with this jacket is the hooks and eyes slipping open as you move around, and the frogs won’t allow that to happen. Much better.

It’s now available to order in plain fleece, patterned fleece, and organic cotton sweatshirting.

Fleece drape top

This is a new top I made to wear to work, last week or the week before. It’s always cold on the reception desk, so I wanted it to have a high neck at the back to keep me warm. I also wanted to be able to wear layers underneath it without feeling constricted, so it’s longish, loose fitting, and has a draped cowl-style neckline at the front. The edges, like the jacket, are finished with bias binding which is hand-stitched into place on the inside. This top is so comfortable I’m going to have to prize it out of my own cold dead hands to put it in the washing machine… or of course I could always make another one! I’m quite a fan of having duplicates of clothing that you love.

Fleece drape top

This one’s available in the Etsy shop too, in the same incarnations as the jacket – plain fleece, patterned fleece, and organic cotton sweatshirting. I’ve got a piece of bright pink fleece with white spots to make another one of these, so if you’re a size UK 14-16 ish (size M), look out for that popping up on Etsy soon!

I’ve had a couple of requests for custom dressmaking projects lately, to which the answer I’m afraid is still no. I’m trying very hard to concentrate on sewing projects like these, from patterns that I’ve drafted myself, and also on the hats and felting. Because I’m also working part time, I simply can’t fit in anything else. I’m contemplating putting together printable PDF patterns for these items, so that you can go ahead and make your own, but I don’t even have the time to devote to that right now.

In fact, I shouldn’t really have spent two afternoons filling the Etsy shop with haberdashery and fleecy tops instead of working on the hats, but there’s only so much felting my poor arms can take. I’m at work-work for the next couple of days though, then it will be back to felting and hats at the weekend. I have so little free time before the craft fair I’m taking the hats to on Easter Sunday that I really don’t know when I’m going to get anything done!

ORANGE wool jacket

Orange Wool Jacket

Words simply cannot do justice to how INCREDIBLY BRIGHT this fabric is. Ridiculously orange, with teal, magenta and a little bit of yellow thrown in for good measure. In case you hadn’t guessed, this fabric is LOUD.

I think I bought it in Chepstow last year, in a fabric shop that was absolutely piled to the ceiling with goodies. This was everything that was left on the roll – 160 cm long, 150 wide.

Orange Wool Jacket

The pattern is one of my own, that I tested in cotton jersey earlier in the year. Irritatingly, I was so busy with the Emporium that I didn’t take any photos, but it’s very comfortable and I’ve been wearing it a lot. This style is perfect for wearing to work, where it can be quite chilly on the front desk, but it looks daft to be sitting there with your coat on.

It’s a double herringbone wool tartan, with a little bit of boucle running through it, for those who care about such things. The lower sleeves are cut on the bias, with a little bias cuff. This allows them to stretch a little bit, but not too much. There are no fastenings at the moment, although I’m contemplating covered buttons and little loops of selvedge to pop them through. I’ll wear it a few times first though, and see how it goes.

Orange Wool Jacket

I made absolutely no attempt to match the stripes at any of the seams. I didn’t have anything like enough fabric to try, and I don’t think it really matters. The only thing I want to change next time though is to eliminate the top seam on the lower sleeve. It doesn’t really need to be there, it looks a bit distracting, and it creates a dodgy junction of four pieces of fabric coming together in the same place. In a thick fabric that can be difficult to keep tidy, so it seems best to just get rid of the extra seam altogether.

I’m not sure it’s quite chilly enough to start wearing this to work just yet, but I’m definitely looking forward to wearing it!

Assam Tunic

Assam Tunic

Today I decided to take a day off from doing anything I “ought” to be doing (like packing the house ready for the move), or any kind of “useful” sewing (like more bloomers and summer tunics to wear in this ridiculous heat), and make something that had been nagging at the back of my brain for a few weeks.

This is a silk dupion tunic, with broderie anglais trim and bias tape edging, waiting to be dyed in the tea urn. The stitching is brown because it’s polyester and therefore won’t dye, so I wanted to use a colour that would tone in afterwards. (In future I’ll use cotton thread, but right now I’m using up the stash.)

Assam Tunic

The tunic is elasticated all the way around the waist, under the bust, and around the edges of the top. It wraps over at the back. The broderie anglais trim might be polyester, polycotton at best, so it’ll probably stay cream.

Assam Tunic

It has a fixed, ruffled halter neck, and wrapover back detail. The bias trim is polycotton, and won’t take the dye as well as the silk, so I chose a colour that would still look good with whatever dye it did take up.

Assam Tunic

First dip into the tea urn…

Assam Tunic

The tea itself had been brewing for about two hours. This photo was taken after about another two hours in the tea, and the fabric was already much darker than it looks in the photo! You can see that the trim is still very pale, but the bias binding tones in nicely. The machine embroidery on the trim represents the tea leaves in the dye. (Although I used bags in the urn, as they were left over and out of date.)

Assam tunic

Squeezed out of the tea, the bias trim has taken up the dye nicely, but the broderie anglais is still very pale. The white overlocking on the shoulders is unfortunately on the outside. I had a bit of a moment when applying the broderie anglais, so I made the executive decision that two little white seams on the back of the neck wouldn’t matter too much on an experimental piece.

Assam tunic

Rinsed until the water ran clear…

Assam tunic

Here it is dry, and just waiting for finishing touches. I hung it outside, in the shade so it wouldn’t get bleached by the sun, and it dried at record speed. (I suppose the heatwave has its uses.)

Assam tunic

I added gold ribbons at each side to fasten, and another one in the front for decoration.

Assam tunic

Ta-daa!

There is a little bit of a story behind this piece. The assam tea bags were bought specifically for a reunion with a long-lost friend, about three years ago. Said friend then always seemed to be too busy to come and visit me enough times to actually drink the tea, and we’ve since all but lost touch again. It wasn’t until I came to tidy the kitchen cupboards to sell the house, that I realised the teabags have actually been out of date for eighteen months. Rather than waste them, I thought I’d turn them into something pretty for myself.

Test Vest

Kwik Sew 3524

This is Kwik Sew 3524, a simple-looking strappy vest top. It’s made from two of Paul’s old t-shirts. It looks okay, but there are a couple of things I’d change. The join of the straps to the body is a bit bulky, I’m sure there’s a better way of putting that togther. And the neck is just a little bit wonky, which a line of top stitching would fix, no problem.

Kwik Sew 3524

This is the inside, which is lined with a shelf bra. Again, it’s okay, but I don’t like having that inch of nylon elastic directly against the skin, when it could be hidden between the two layers of nice soft cotton. And I need to join the two layers together at the side seam, otherwise it takes a certain amount of faffing about to make the two layers line up neatly. And who has time for faffing when they’re trying to put their vest on in the morning?

Anyway, thanks to our impending house move (have I mentioned that yet? I’m not really on top of what’s going on around here lately), Paul has pulled a big pile of surplus-to-requirements t-shirts out of his wardrobe. His clear-out is my gain, because I now have plenty of nice soft jersey to have a couple more test runs at this.

Hopefully the eventual result will be a nice soft, comfortable vest!

Waltz on the Wye – Saturday

Saturday

Saturday was mostly spent at Chepstow Castle, exploring the site and looking at the extremely inspirational contraptions exhibition. We also ate some very good pies at the Chepstow Castle Inn. (Mmmm, pie…) Paul went to Professor Elemental‘s chap-hop workshop while I mooched  slowly back to the hotel, stopping at all the antique and charity shops on the way.

Saturday

The two skirts are from my own patterns. The waistcoat’s Style 1815, in a lovely shot silk, and the jacket is Vogue 8299. Even for a cropped style, it came out a little shorter than I’d expected! At least it shows off the waistcoat nicely though, unlike the shirt (TM Lewin) and bow tie (Kwik Sew 3183) which remained sadly unseen. The brooches were a gift from Miss Alice, and I knitted the mittens in a tearing hurry, casting them off on Friday morning before we left. They’re made from Rowan Felted Tweed. Boots (Moonshine) and handbag (Elder) from Fairysteps, of course!

Saturday

Lesson of the day? Just because your skirt pockets are big enough to hold an A5 book, a folded pillowcase, a small bottle of hazelnut liqueur, a pair of mittens, several oddments of haberdashery and a little pile of business cards, it doesn’t mean that you should shove all those things in at once. Especially not if the waistband’s elastic. Yes, once again, I embarrass myself so you don’t have to!

Paul Smith – Kraken Hunter

Paul Smith - Kraken Hunter

This is Paul at Chepstow Castle, part of Waltz on the Wye 2012. Despite being May, the weather was absolutely freezing, so he hijacked my new Clapotis for most of the weekend.

Paul Smith - Kraken Hunter

But what was he hunting with his camera, high up in the remains of the castle?

Kraken at the Castle

Why, the Kraken, of course!

Paul Smith - Kraken Hunter

When he wasn’t off adventuring, he dressed smartly for an evening’s entertainment at the Drill Hall.

Paul Smith - Kraken Hunter

Both waistcoats are from the Harlots and Angels Sweeney Todd pattern. The brown one is moleskin, the grey is pinstriped denim. They’re a little bit big, but they pull in nicely with a little corset-style lace-up belt at the back.

I had a bit of trouble with the pattern (the amount of interfacing needed wasn’t clear, and the construction method seemed unnecessarily complicated), but once I’d decided to ignore the instructions and just sew, they were easy enough to put together. Because my sewing machine refuses to make buttonholes and I didn’t have time to do them by hand, each waistcoat is fastened with poppers and the buttons are sewn on top.

Thankfully I took a sewing kit with me, because I made the grey waistcoat in such a hurry that I’d sewn half the poppers in the wrong place! That was easily fixed, and the sewing kit came in handy a few times over the course of the weekend.

Paul’s usually extremely averse to dressing up, but he was so comfortable in these waistcoats that he’s thinking of wearing the grey one to business meetings instead of a suit jacket. I call that a sewing success!

New Old Cardigan

New Old Cardigan

This morning I rediscovered the gathering foot for my sewing machine, and combined it with Pretty Jane’s continuous bias tape tutorial.

Half a metre of fabric turned into around twelve metres of tape, which I then ran through the gathering foot. This resulted in about four and a half metres of pretty ruffled trim! It’s about 4cm wide, and I ran both long edges through the overlocker. This gives it a nice finish, and also a little extra wiggle as the bias edges stretch a bit.

New Old Cardigan

I wanted to use my lovely new ruffle straight away, so I decided to re-vamp a very old cardigan. My Mum knitted this for me many years ago (I might even have worn it to school!), and the cuffs had become very threadbare.

Once I’d chopped off the worst of the unravelling cuffs and run them through the overlocker, I simply zig-zagged a length of ruffle into place. That looked a bit silly on its own, so I added some matching buttons. Good, but still nowhere near ruffly enough, so I decided to go a bit mad and stitch the ruffled trim all the way around the neck. Much better!

I was looking at the bias tape tutorial because I have quite a lot of small pieces of fabric lying around in the Shed, and I wanted to find a use for them. Now I’ve got the hang of it I’m planning to make some lengths of bias tape in different prints and patterns, and see about resurrecting my old Etsy shop. I have lots of vintage buttons that I’m never going to use, so I was thinking about listing them, along with some covered buttons and bias tape, and having a little haberdashery clear-out. Chances of this happening soon are minimal, but I’m thinking about it, and that’s a start!