Tag: Kwik Sew

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!

Psychedelic Dress

Psychedelic Dress

This is a test-run of Kwik Sew 3472, a simple jersey dress. It also has options for a knee-length version, a scoop neck and short sleeves. The fabric, I promise you, isn’t anywhere near as loud as it looks in this photo! In real life the colours are much more muted and dusky. I figured that any mistakes I made on this first try wouldn’t show up too badly against this very swirly pattern, but thankfully it seems to have come out pretty well! I think the only change I might make is to shorten it a bit, but I’ll wear it first and see how it goes.

I have nine metres of organic cotton jersey on order, ready to make three more of these – two black, and one purple. That should give me a basic work wardrobe that goes with most of my existing shoes and accessories. My fibromyalgia’s playing me up quite badly at the moment, which is seriously limiting what I can comfortably wear. Separates give me stomach ache. Anything that isn’t soft enough makes me itch. And frankly I need every scrap of my brain power to be working for me through the tiredness, not fighting against my uncomfortable clothes.

I realise this all sounds very dramatic, but unfortunately it just seems to be a fact of life for me now. Wearing uncomfortable clothes causes pain, which causes fatigue, and life’s too short to be exhausted because my stupid jeans gave me a blister. I’m sad and angry about it, because it seems as though I’m going to have to get rid of about 80% of my current wardrobe, including a lot of things that I’ve made for myself over the years. The thought of sending it all off to the charity shop makes me utterly furious that my body has decided to do this to me.

But hey, let’s look on the bright side. I get to make a whole new wardrobe of the softest organic cotton dresses.

Also, I have one really nice picture that Paul took of me at the Frome Steampunk Extravaganza. I’ll show you that one soon.

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!

Skull & Rose Print Bra

Bra & Pants

While I was on a roll with this matching-everything outfit, I wanted to have another go at making a bra. This is Kwik Sew 2489 again, with a couple of modifications based on the fit of my first attempt.

I widened the centre front panel slightly at the top, and adjusted the shape of the cups to fit. I’ve also added underwires to this one, so I’ll see what difference that makes. (I haven’t tried it on since I added the wires.)

As you can see, I added the elastic on the outside, to match the pants. The front part of the straps is made from matching fabric, while the back part is made from ready-made bra straps. I bought those, and the red bra fastener, from Sewing Chest, along with the red elastic and a few other bits and pieces. I feel as though it was somehow cheating slightly to buy the bra straps ready-made, but I couldn’t find all the individual components in red. I could have bought black ones and made the straps myself, but I’d already bought red stretch fabric for the back strap panels and I wanted the findings to match.

I rather like the slightly long-line effect of this bra, caused by sewing the elastic onto the outside without trimming off the seam allowances first. (The pattern instructs you to turn the elastic to the inside.) I think I might make the next one even longer, and see how comfortable (or not) it is to wear.

Skull & Rose Print Knickers

Red and black skull print knickers

This is pair of knickers number five. This time I started with Kwik Sew 2100, the most striking aspect of which was the ridiculous width of the gusset, especially as the sizes increase. I modified that part of the pattern to make more anatomical sense, and I was impressed by the instructions for putting together the lined gusset. It’s a bit fiddly but you end up with no raw edges on the inside, which makes these knickers very comfortable to wear.

I didn’t like the way that the original knickers were so puffy, so I decided to combine a stretch and a woven fabric to try and make them a bit flatter. They are more streamlined than they look in the picture (the mannequin’s so small I can’t stretch them right out), but they’re still not how I want them. I really need to buy a lingerie-drafting book, so I can work out how to do this properly.

I’m trying really hard to avoid using entirely stretch fabrics because there’s so much more interesting variety in wovens, but I’ll have to get the pattern absolutely right if this is going to work. These need the print panels to be smaller and the jersey panels to be bigger, to allow more stretch around the legs.

I also tried two different ways of applying the elastic – the waist has the elastic turned to the inside, and around the legs it’s on the outside. Each method is a two-step process, so there’s no time-saving in doing it one way over the other, but I think aesthetically I prefer the elastic on the outside, which I didn’t expect. Maybe because it looks more like something you’d buy from a shop, which is what I usually try to avoid.

[Later…]
In fact, I liked the elastic on the outside so much that I trimmed off the waist elastic and sewed it again to match the legs. Much better.

Matching set

Kwik Sew 2489

Once I’d finished making my winter coat, I thought it would be fun to have a go at making a bra to go with the knickers I made at the weekend.

The pattern for this one is Kwik Sew 2489, and I have to say that I found it remarkably easy to put together. It is fiddly, but it’s certainly not difficult – you just need to pay attention to the instructions.

There are a few little alterations I’ll make to the next one:

  1. The straps are too narrow, both for my comfort and for where they join the top of the cups. Next time I’ll just make wider straps. I also didn’t bother with the slidy thing, because if I make them the right length I won’t need them to be adjustable.
  2. The little triangular panel in the centre of the bra needs to be slightly wider at the top. At the moment the band is fine, but the cups pull away from my chest at the centre. If I make the centre part wider and the cups narrower, that should pull the bra in a bit.
  3. I need to make a very slight alteration to the shape of the cups. I might make another bra, unlined and with the seams on the outside, so I can (carefully) pin the seam and make two different cups if I need to.
  4. I might leave out the powernet/lycra panel on the back of the band, and just make it the right length. It’s elasticated all the way round anyway, so it’ll stay put, and the powernet just annoys me by being a different colour from the rest of the bra.

That’s it!

Oh, and I left out the underwires.

So, there are changes to be made, but it already fits better than some of the bras in my wardrobe, so I think I’m going to call it a success!

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!