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!

Bow Ties are (still) Cool.

Waistcoat & bow tie

Back in March I managed to find a lovely TM Lewin women’s shirt for a bargain price in TK Maxx. We were going to see Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer, so I thought it would be a good idea to make a gentlemanly sort of an outfit for the occasion.

The bow tie is Kwik Sew 3183, as usual, and the waistcoat is Butterick 4815, view C. They’re both made from a lovely silk dupion which is turquoise shot with purple. The buttons on the waistcoat have a little flower embossed into them, which is filled with purple enamel.

I also made a pair of trousers (Vogue 1034, view A) and a jacket (Vogue 1132, view B), but I don’t seem to have taken any photos of those. I must grab them out of my wardrobe and pop them onto the dress form for you!

So cool I made another one.

Bow Tie

Yep, it’s another bow tie. I couldn’t resist.

Exactly the same as the last one, the pattern is Kwik Sew 3183, and the fabric is “Sew What?” by Michael Miller.

Bow ties are cool.

Bow Tie

This afternoon I made a bow tie, using Kwik Sew 3183. This is the self-tie version, and I looked at a lot of instructions for how to tie it, but these seemed the easiest to follow. It’s nowhere near as difficult as some of the instructions seemed to suggest.

The tie is supposed to be adjustable at the back, with a button and several buttonholes. As I don’t have an adjustable neck, I think I’ll probably just check the length against my shirts and then sew the two halves together. (Although the advantage of having a fastening at the back is that you only need to tie it once, and after that you can cheat.)

The most difficult part of the process was turning the pieces to the right side after sewing them. I do have a loop turner, but I can never seem to get the hang of it so I went with the time-honoured method of fiddling about with a pair of tweezers and my fingernails. I might use slightly lighter interfacing next time (this is medium weight on quilting cotton), to make things a bit easier.

I have lots of little pieces of fabric lying around the place that I was originally going to turn into belts. I think they might be heading rapidly towards becoming bow ties now!