Tag: sewing

A year in pictures.

These are all the things I’ve made during 2009 – or at least all the ones I’ve remembered to photograph!

There doesn’t seem to be very much knitting in there, which surprises me, although I did spend most of the summer working on two large items which aren’t finished yet.

I also still haven’t really shown you very many photos of all the things that we made for the wedding. We do have the official photos back now, so I’ll be able to show you some of those very soon.

What’s really strange is that I can’t decide whether this represents a heck of a lot of sewing, or a really quiet year!

This is why I write tutorials.

Pink Salamander's Bird Skirt

Pink Salamander made a skirt, using my Gathered Skirt Tutorial.
The bird fabric is from IKEA – isn’t it adorable?

You can read all about the project over on Burda Style.

British Cowgirl's Flower Brooches

Ariane had a go at the Flower Brooch Tutorial, and came up with these gorgeous creations.
Not having a huge stash of buttons, she got creative and gathered up a strip of fabric to make the centre of the flowers. Beautiful, and clever!

You can see how Ariane did it over at her LiveJournal, British Cowgirl.

This is why I like writing tutorials – because I get to see what comes back from them. All of my projects use the absolute simplest of techniques, but you can come up with such an amazing variety of results. As Ariane demonstrated with her flower brooches, it doesn’t even matter if you don’t have all the “right” materials! You can use your own imagination and ingenuity, to make exactly what you want.

That, for me, is what sewing’s all about.

If you want to, you can learn professional techniques and make astonishingly complicated things. But these simple projects show that even as a complete beginner, you can pick up a needle and thread and make something beautiful.

Summer brights

Karen's orange dress

A seam ripper is one of the most useful tools you can have as a dressmaker. Not just for those inevitable wobbles and wonky bits, but for tasks like this one.

My very petite friend had bought a dress that was too long for her, and she asked whether I could remove the ruffle from the hem. I don’t usually do alterations, but this was a nice simple one, so I brought my seam ripper to the rescue.

Rather than attack the dress with scissors, I used the seam ripper to nip out the stitching that was holding the ruffle in place. This allowed me to get a lovely neat edge, and expose the lace trim that was holding the two sections together.

It’s so tidy that I don’t even need to hem the new bottom of the dress. Marvellous!

Stained Silk.

Stained silk

I’d always wondered why you weren’t supposed to wash silk. I bought three metres of ivory dupion a little while ago, but it had a dirty mark on it, so I knew I was going to have to clean it somehow. In a fit of “what the heck”, I chucked it in the washing machine, on cold, with a bit of Ecover wool & silk detergent.

The dirty mark came out just fine, but unfortunately a couple of strands of bright pink silk had made it into the washing machine, stuck to the ivory.

The reason you don’t wash silk dupion?

It isn’t colour fast.

Oops.

As it turns out, this isn’t a disaster. I’m planning to make a summer shirt for myself, so I don’t mind if it has a couple of pink squiggles on it. Although I’m kind of hoping that the next time I wash it, the pink marks will come out again.

New summer wardrobe.

As well as taking over the world with tunics, I also want to make a couple of new additions to my summer wardrobe.

This shirt is McCalls 5433, and it’s a Palmer Pletsch design.

I was a bit startled to discover that the instructions ran to seven pages, and was worried that the shirt would turn out to be unnecessarily complicated. As it turns out, the first two pages are a very useful guide to tissue fitting. It also gives the details for several common alterations, such as how to make a full bust adjustment, and how to accommodate a high back or rounded shoulder. I didn’t know that Palmer Pletsch produced a range of sewing books and DVDs, but they look really useful!

I’ll be making the longest shirt, with the longest sleeves. In a lightweight lawn this should hopefully be the perfect summer cover-up.

Chloe’s psychedelic jacket – finished.

Psychedelic jacket - complete

From a huge roll of fabric, via a PhotoShop drawing, to a finished jacket!

The most difficult part was sourcing a truly enormous orange button. I bought this one on Etsy, from TheKitschEnd.

The jacket’s now in the post – hopefully Chloe will send some photos of the jacket in action, when it arrives!

Smocked and embroidered shirt.

Embroidered & smocked shirt

This is what I’m wearing today – a smocked and embroidered shirt.

It started life one of Paul’s old work shirts. It’s in perfectly good condition, it just doesn’t fit him any more. So I’ve smocked the sleeves and a bit on the back, and embroidered the button stand and collar.

I did this to see whether it would work as a project that could be taught in a workshop – how to revamp an old shirt with some simple decorative needlework. Unfortunately this was such a nuisance to make that I think the answer is no! There’s a reason why the smocking and embroidery is always done before you assemble your garment – it’s much too fiddly to try and do it afterwards.

On the plus side, I’ve gained a pretty addition to my wardrobe, and have every intention of wearing this with my huge floppy trousers. Also, it tells me that smocked and embroidered shirts made from scratch are definitely in my sewing future!

A very pleasant turnaround.

I spent half of the weekend in what can only be described as “a bit of a state”. Things seemed rather hopeless on the sewing front, and I wasn’t at all looking forward to coming out to my Shed to start work this morning.

I decided to finish off this fleecy skirt, which had been waiting for its contrast hem band since November.

Polar fleece elasticated skirt

Within an hour of its completion, it was sold!

Since then I’ve updated my Etsy store and taken orders for a dress, a corset and another skirt.

Maybe things aren’t all bad…

Knitting neckline.

New neckline

Work has been progressing at a snail’s page around here this week. I’ve finally put together a new bodice, but I think this neckline’s going to be too low. I like the shape of it, and I think it showcases the necklace beautifully, but I think it needs to come up just a little bit.

I’m not too worried about it for this dress, as I can just wear a white t-shirt underneath. But it’s back to the drawing board before I cut the silk for the next dress!

A tiny piece of history.

Inspired by Ruth Singer, I’ve spent this afternoon making a wall hanging organiser for all my reels of thread.

(Possibly not the cleverest thing to do when suffering with a bad wrist and a splitting headache, but hey.)

My new thread organiser

Take one enormous cork board, a hundred and eighteen panel pins, and a big hammer…

Grandma Rose's old sewing threads

I particularly like “Turkey Red Shade” and “Dk. Shrimp”. Giving all of the colours numbers instead of names just isn’t as much fun.

Vintage threads

I think these are my favourites. “Barbour’s Linen Thread” is perfect for sewing together my little shoes – I only wish I could buy some more!

The Glacé threads are very fine, but strong enough for sewing shoes, books and bags. The 40 weight is also good for quilting, apparently.

Less than forty of the threads on that board are mine – the rest came from my Grandma Rose and my Aunty Sue. My Grandma’s 87 now (I think), and I haven’t known her to do much sewing during the past 34 years, so some of those threads must be pretty old. I don’t know that I’d want to use some of the oldest cottons for sewing seams, but they’d be lovely for decorative work.

I’m extremely amused to notice that, with very few exceptions, these reels of thread represent three generations of loyalty to the same brand. Sylko, Drima and Coats have all become merged over the years, into the thread division of Coats Crafts.

Shame the packaging isn’t as beautiful as it used to be.