Tag: cotton

Organic Cotton Skirt Ideas

Skirt ideas

Starting to work with the organic cottons again reminded me that I’d already put together some designs for skirts that were very similar to the blue cotton tunic dress. Large pockets and a ruffle, although I think I’d go for an elastic waistband rather than darts and a zip.

I drafted these little sketches way back in 2008, when I was also going through a phase of buying lots of recycled fabrics, mostly in the form of duvet covers. I thought I could use the matching pillowcases to make the ruffles and pockets, and do you know what? I think that might just work! Why it’s taken me three years to get around to doing anything with this idea, I’m not so sure.

I have four colours of organic cotton left in the stash – blue, green, pink and cream. My favourite place to buy organic cottons has a special offer on pot-luck remnant pieces, so I might buy a bundle and see what turns up. That, along with the Kaffe Fassett fat quarters, should give me plenty of choices for contrasting waistbands and pockets.

Blue Organic Cotton Dress

Blue organic cotton dress

This is a little tunic dress, from one of my own patterns. The main body of the dress is blue organic cotton from Bishopston Trading. The yoke and assorted other parts are also organic cotton, from Kaffe Fassett’s collection for Rowan a few years ago.

The pockets are set into the side seams, because it seemed like a good way of creating a nice sturdy finish. As the tunic is so full, next time I think I’ll make patch pockets and place them a little further towards the centre.

I’ve worn this with and without the belt, and I think it looks great either way. The belt is made from 5cm elastic, simply covered with matching fabric which gathers as the elastic contracts. The ends are fastened with loops and matching fabric-covered buttons. Next time I’ll add a slightly thicker interfacing, or perhaps a scrap of corset coutil, to make the front panels a little less likely to fold over on themselves. I also need to make another one about two inches longer, as this one’s a bit too tight for my liking!

I’ve been thinking for a long time about what to make with my organic cottons, and I’m really pleased with this tunic and belt. This is going to be the start of some thinking out loud in fabric, as I try to work out which styles might be available for sale.

London Souvenirs

London Souvenirs

Everyone knows that yarn and fabric bought while you’re on holiday doesn’t count as stash, right…?

On the left is two balls of Schoppel Wolle’s “Flying Saucer” sock yarn. It’s dyed two strands at once, so that when you unwind it into two balls you can knit two identical socks. If you follow their pattern, it also creates a somewhat psychedelic flying saucer pattern on the legs of the socks. I probably won’t be following their pattern (because I’m awkward like that), so it’ll be interesting to see how it knits up.

The little burgundy stick is a shawl pin that exactly matches the never-ending stole that I’m currently knitting. I bought the stick and the yarn from Loop, which was just up the road from our hotel. We also had a nice little wander around the antiques shops and stalls around Camden Passage while we were waiting for Loop to open. (I’d accidentally dragged my friends there half an hour too early. Oops.)

The fabric, as you can see, is from the V&A. I was slightly disgruntled to look at the V&A online shop and discover that both of the fabrics I’ve chosen are on special offer, and therefore cheaper, but I guess the shipping would make up the difference, so never mind. The fabrics were produced to go with the 2010 exhibition Quilts 1700-2010, and are a limited edition featuring designs from prints in the V&A collection.

The top fabric is ‘Palm Tree’, and is taken from a patchwork coverlet pieced from various early 19th century printed cottons. It was possibly made in Wales, sometime around 1830-40. The bottom fabric is ‘India Flower’, taken from a patchwork coverlet composed of block-printed cottons of the 1780s and 1790s. It was made in Britain, and dated 1797.

Being tight of budget, I bought a half-metre of each print. It’s a metre and a half wide, so there should be enough to make three pairs of shoes from each design, if anybody might be interested in such a thing…? They had so many lovely prints, I wish I could have afforded to buy one of everything!

Organic Fabrics

Organic Fabrics

While I’ve been thinking about making lingerie and slippers, I thought I’d have another look at what’s out there in terms of organic and fair trade fabrics. I still have a lot of my Bishopston Trading organic cottons, but I wanted to find out whether there was anything new and exciting around.

The samples above are from Organic Cotton, who are based in Wales, and it’s just a small assortment of the enormously expanded range I was pleased to find there!

On the left is cotton poplin, which has been dyed with various plants and herbs to achieve the different colours. (The red is madder and the yellow is pomegranate, for example.) The dyes will fade after wearing and washing, but I think that adds to the charm of this type of fabric.

On the right are “colour grown” cottons – did you know that not all cotton is naturally white? There’s no dye at all in these fabrics – just the natural colour of the cotton as it was grown and harvested. These won’t fade either, as there’s no dye to leach out of the fabric when you wash it.

At the top are herringbone woven cottons, heavier weight, suitable for furnishings and definitely good for slippers!

At the bottom is bamboo “silk” – bamboo fabric which definitely feels very silk-like, and would be lovely for underwear. They also stock bamboo jersey, and a mixed cotton and bamboo woven fabric.

I still have mixed feelings about bamboo though, no matter how lovely the resulting fabric seems to be. Although it originates from a natural material, it has to undergo so many chemical processes during its transformation into fabric (as do rayon, viscose and acetate, for example) that its environmentally-friendly credentials are somewhat questionable. There are some cellulose-based fabrics that can be manufactured using closed-loop production methods (ie the chemicals can be re-used rather than discarded), but it certainly isn’t standard practice yet.

Mind you, every fibre used for fabric production has its ups and downs. Whilst organic cotton may not use harmful pesticides, it still requires a huge amount of water in its production. Man-made fibres such as polyester may be derived from petrochemicals but they’re easy to recycle, and can be manufactured from already-recycled materials. Very little fabric of any kind is now made in the UK, so everything’s subject to being shipped halfway across the world before it even gets here.

I suppose it’s a question of deciding what matters to me right now, and making as informed a decision as possible. Easier said than done, I suspect.

That’s better.

Vogue 8145 - with amendments.

I find that most dresses can be improved by the addition of a polo neck. If it’s frilly, all the better.

Now I just wish I’d put pockets in it!

The pattern started out as Vogue 8145, with the addition of a modified polo neck based on the pattern piece from McCalls 5924. The dress is the shorter of the two, and the sleeves are elbow length because that’s how much fabric I had left.

The fabric is organic cotton natural pointelle from Near Sea Naturals, and I dyed it “Burlesque Red” using Dylon machine dye. The tie belt is organic cotton shirting from Bishopston Trading, dyed at the same time.

Despite the difficulties I had while making this, I’m really pleased with the end result. I think the frilly neckline is my favourite part.

A slight sewing difficulty.

I’ve been trying for the best part of a fortnight to make a dress. A dress which should be so easy that I thought it would only take me about four hours to make. And then my sewing machine stopped working, so I was going to use the overlocker, and then I didn’t have the right colour of thread, and then I remembered my old sewing machine was still in the loft, and it was all going quite well until I tried to bind the neckline yesterday. And now it’s all gone a bit wrong again.

The dress currently looks like this:
Vogue 8145

It’s supposed to look like this– that is, with a nice flat neckline.

It did look exactly like that, until I tried to add the binding.
The neckline is supposed to be hemmed, but I wanted to add the binding a) because I had a bit of matching fabric left over and it would be a shame to waste it, and b) because I wanted to add stability to the wide boat neck, so it didn’t stretch out and slide off my narrow shoulders all the time.

Except that this fabric is a very heavy ribbed pointelle, which means that it stretches. A LOT. And my old sewing machine doesn’t have a differential feed, or any variation in the pressure on the presser foot, and as a result the neckline has stretched and stretched and stretched.

I’m going to undo the binding and hope that I can stream shrink the ribbing back into place. Then I can do what I should have done in the first place, which is finish the neckline by hand.

The hem and sleeves though, I actively want to stretch! I plan to finish them with a lettuce hem, which basically means that I’ll deliberately stretch the ribbing out as far as I can when I run it through the overlocker. This will leave me with a decorative wiggly edge.

That just wasn’t quite what I had in mind for the neckline. :/

(And yet, as I sit here swearing at my sewing machines, I do still harbour some faint delusion that maybe I could one day be up there with Secret Lentil and Sarah Clemens. If only I wasn’t so… I don’t know. something.)

New hat!

New hat - finished!

For Christmas, skycarrots gave me a 1960s book on millinery. I keep leafing through it, but it’s taken me all these months to get around to actually making anything. There are several chapters on “dressmaker” hats. Rather than using felt hoods and a block to mould your hat into shape, you make a pattern and sew it up in the same way that you’d make any other item of clothing.

This is a sort of a cloche style, with a four piece crown and an asymmetric brim. The fabric is “Kyoto Hollyhock” by Alexander Henry – yet another quilting cotton. The brim is made from the same fabric on both sides, and the crown is lined with plain black polycotton.

As recommended by various online tutorials, I stiffened the main fabric with fusible interfacing. It works well for speed and convenience, as you don’t have to worry about a third separate layer, but next time I think I’ll try horsehair canvas or coutil instead. The fusible interfacing prevented the fabric from steaming into a nice rounded shape at the crown, and I think horsehair or coutil will be better for that.

I finished the main body of the hat last night and left it plain. I knew it needed a bit of livening up though, so this morning I added the band around the crown, and the flower trim.

The flower is a variation on my flower brooch tutorial. I’d been reading about kanzashi (traditional japanese hair ornaments) and was inspired by some of the multi-layered flowers that I saw. Once I’d made my basic flower, I added the second layer by folding strips of bias tape into place. I used a fabric covered button to finish off the centre of the flower, and here it is – my finished hat!

New hat - finished!

Liberty Lawn knitting skirt.

I’ve had this fabric for about eighteen months, but I’ve been “saving” it for just the right outfit. First it was going to be Vogue 8470, and then McCalls 5431. Then I decided that neither of those options would be comfortable, and I couldn’t decide what to do instead.

Chris Zydel wrote yesterday about how precious art supplies can make you afraid to use them. That’s definitely true for me (don’t ask me how many blank sketch books I own), and it’s true of my fabric stash as well. Because I usually can’t afford to buy fabric from Liberty (this piece was given to me in part payment for a dress that I made), this lovely cotton lawn fell into the “precious” category, and I was afraid to use it on the “wrong” garment. I wanted it to be something that I would love, and not something that would just sit in my wardrobe without being worn.

Yesterday I made an executive decision that I didn’t want to wear the blue smocked tunic to the Albert Hall on Sunday, which left me still in need of a blue outfit to wear on the day. I knew I had a blue t-shirt, and it suddenly occurred to me that this knitting print was also blue, and would make a fabulous summer skirt!

The skirt is a full circle, with my usual fancy elasticated waist. I’ve added pockets to the side seams and a ruffle to the hem. The ruffle is made from 9 metres of fabric, gathered down to fit the 4.8 metre hem. The lawn was a little bit see-through, so I’ve lined the top part of the skirt (not the ruffle!) with a plain white lightweight cotton.

I’m really pleased with this ruffly summer skirt. I have a pretty piece of white broderie anglais with rainbow coloured stitching that I think would be ideal to make another one. I only hope that there’s enough summer left for me to wear them!