The Four Tops

If you read my last post you will know that I'm joining in with sewing dares and received a dare to 'make more tops for MMM'15' from Gillian at Crafting a Rainbow.  Well, I've made four!

I abandoned the scout I've been playing around with as a bad job (not sure it'll ever be wearable) and I didn't even reach for my trusty Renfrew pattern.  Instead I went a bit freestyle and traced off a couple of RTW tops.   

I've had this pashmina for a while that my mum gave me.  The colour, pattern and drape are all lovely and I thought it would make a great top if I used a simple Kimono sleeved pattern.  I looked at Portia's tips for refashioning pashminas, but I wanted something a bit less boxy and a bit more fitted.  In the end I traced this M&S RTW top:

This top is actually made from a fine jersey, and although the shape is good the fabric is too sheer to wear on it's own and I tend to find the jersey sticks to whatever I wear underneath and stops the top from hanging properly.  I thought it might work better in a lightweight woven.

I folded the top in two and traced it using a Sharpie and tracing paper, then added a half-inch seam allowance before cutting out.   

Before embarking on sewing with the pashmina, I decided to try the pattern with another fabric as a test.  I used this cotton lawn that I've had in my stash for aaaages.  I've been holding onto it waiting to find the right thing to use it for, but I finally just got impatient to be able to wear it so I decided to throw caution to the wind and use it for my test garment.  It's lovely and soft, but still presses well, and the print reminds me of indian handblock designs.  

As the fabric was so fine and liable to fray I french seamed the side and shoulder seams.  I double turned the hem and armholes but I had to make some bias binding for the neck.  I've used shop bought binding a fair bit, but this was my first time (successfully) making and using self bias, as in I've tried it before and gotten into a perfect mess!  Thankfully it wasn't as bad as I'd remembered from earlier attempts and the self bias works so much better than any stiffer shop bought binding would.

Also, I *ahem* sewed my bias on back to front, so instead of turning in I had to turn it out so it is visible on the outside.  Thankfully I think I prefer it like this, so I could pretend I meant to do it!!

I was pleased to find that the top is a good fit and is definitely wearable.  However, once I'd made it up and tried it on I realised very quickly that I'd need an under layer to protect my modesty and stop me from getting cold!  The fabric is pretty sheer!  I had some white viscose jersey in my stash so I grabbed an existing vest top and traced it off to make my own.  The RTW vest top was too short, but otherwise a good fit, so I simply lengthened my pattern by a few inches.   This was such an easy make.   I was really rushing to get it done as I wanted to wear my top the next day so the stitching of the binding/straps is a bit iffy, but even so I'm happy with the result and it only took me a couple of hours from start to finish.

Here's a terrible selfie of me wearing these tops during Me Made May.  I'm sacrificing outdoor photos for the chance to get this post out before the holidays!  Next week is half term here in the UK so the kids are off school.  This means sewing and blogging are unlikely to happen! 

So, I repeated exactly the same process to make my pashmina top, although this time it was quicker as I already had my patterns.  It would have been really quick, but the fabric was not as co-operative as the cotton lawn!

It was shifty and stretchy and hard to cut properly.  I've no idea what it's made of, but I did manage to melt it a couple of times when I was making the binding!  Thankfully I didn't melt the top itself and eventually it all came together.  

I french seamed again, and bias bound the neckline.  It's still pretty fragile so I'll have to be careful not to stretch it whilst wearing it, unless I want to pop a seam!

This top is even more sheer, so I made up a second vest top out of blue viscose jersey - the same that I used for my viscose jersey renfrew.  

All in all, four tops that I am very happy with.  I expect they will all get worn to death!  Thank you Gillian for the dare - it really gave me the boost I needed to get these tops made, and to attempt some pretty speedy sewing.  Sewing dares rock!

MMM'15 - Week 3

Day 15 - Yellow Brick Road cardi, Indigo moss skirt, shop bought polkadot t-shirt.

Day 16 - February Lady Sweater, Indian Print top (sewing dare top), white viscose jersey vest top (sewing dare top), Denim Moss Jean Skirt.

Day 17 - Refashioned edged cardi, shop bought white t-shirt, white viscose jersey vest top, Maria Moss skirt.

Day 18 - Purple Renfrew (unblogged), Denim Moss Jean skirt, shop bought hoodie.

Day 19 - Sweatshirt Renfrew, blue viscose jersey vest top, refashioned jeans skirt (unblogged).  

Day 20 - Viscose Jersey Renfrew, Indigo Moss skirt, shop bought jumper, crazy print infinity scarf (unblogged).

Day 21 - Pashmina top (sewing dare top), blue viscose jersey vest top (sewing dare top), Yellow Brick Road card, Denim Moss Jean skirt. 




Boy, the weather sucked this week!  What happened to spring?  By Wednesday I was back to wearing multiple layers and waterproof winter boots!  Other than that it's been a good week, and this roundup gives a sneak peek of the new tops I made for my Sewing Dares challenge - to be blogged shortly!  

One more week to go...

Sewing dares

So Gillian at Crafting a Rainbow has been handing out sewing dares this month, and I've thrown my hat into the ring.  Thankfully she went easy on me and my dare is 'to make more tops for Me Made May', something I had been talking about but now need to get down to actually doing!

Thanks for the dare Gillian, and watch this space....

MMM'15 - Week 2

Day 8 - Sew Liberated Esme Top, February Lady Sweater, Denim Moss Jean Skirt.

Day 9 - Yellow Brick Road cardi, shop bought stripey top (refashioned from Maternity top), Kelly/Moss mash up skirt.

Day 10 - Agatha cardi, charity shopped stripey top, Kelly/Moss mash up skirt.

Day 11 - Yellow Brick Road cardi, Crazy print Renfrew, Denim Moss Jean skirt.

Day 12 - Agatha cardi, shop bought breton top, Kelly/Moss mash up skirt.

Day 13 - Purple Renfrew (unblogged), Sweatshirt Renfrew, Fatface PJ bottoms.

Day 14 - Turquoise Sorbetto (unblogged), refashioned jeans skirt (unblogged I think!), shop bought slouchy jumper


Wow, quite a lot of repeats this week, especially around the weekend when I was full of cold and lacking imagination!  No new makes yet to help fill the gaps - I'm still working on finding the time.  On Day 13 I spent most of the day in workout/running gear (I haven't yet tried making anything in that line), hence the slobby lounging clothes I changed into for the evening.

The Kelly Moss mash up skirt

This skirt has been a long time in the making!  Back in 2013 the Kelly Skirt pattern by Megan Nielson was one of the first sewing patterns I bought.  I had seen a lot of versions of this skirt on the web and loved all of them.  The fabric is a lovely rich navy blue corduroy (the photos don't really do the colour justice) bought from Coventry Indoor Market.  This is what the skirt looked like when I first made it:

The original Kelly Skirt

 Nice huh? However....

I made the skirt without incident.  I liked the way it looked flat, and I even liked the way it looked on, sort of.  I just didn't feel comfortable wearing it.  Such a shame!  I think it might have been something to do with the amount of fabric it used, or the way the pleats fell, but I felt like I was wearing a bell!  It probably didn't help that the fabric I used was quite heavy, without much drape.

I tried playing around with the proportions to remove some of the excess fabric.  I tried reducing the size of the pleats, taking in the side seams, taking wedges out of the waistband, but the shape of the skirt really didn't work if you took the extra fabric away, so eventually my poor Kelly skirt was left to languish on the UFO pile.  

In the end the thought occurred to me that I could remake the skirt completely using the Moss skirt pattern, so out came the seam ripper.  I cut the back skirt panels pretty much as the Moss skirts pieces, although I kept the old hemline.   I also cut a yoke and sewed up according to the Moss instructions.  

I didn't cut much off the front pieces as I didn't want to lose the pockets and I needed a bit of ease to prevent the buttons straining.  I couldn't keep the deep inverted box pleats at the front though because the poofiness just wasn't working for me.  Instead I folded out a couple of inches either side of the buttonband and sewed it down.  

I kept a small pleat on each side, near the pocket to add interest and keep some of the spirit of the original design, but the front of the skirt is fairly flat which I think is more flattering on my body type.

Here's what the skirt looks like flat now, compared to the original Kelly Skirt:

Original Kelly Skirt                                               Kelly/Moss mash up skirt

I didn't take as much care with the insides as I have with other skirts.  I wasn't prepared to invest the time since I wasn't sure whether the skirt would end up wearable, so the pockets are just pinked and I cheated flat felling the back seams - I trimmed the seams, zigzag stitched them together and then sewed them down flat with a parallel line of straight stitch.  It may fray a little but it's sufficient.   I tried doing the same to the side seams but it was distorting the hang of the skirt so I ripped it out and bound them instead as they would have frayed badly otherwise.  I hummed and hawed a bit about the hem as I wanted to increase the length from what it had been on the Kelly Skirt.   A double turned hem would not have worked due to all the folded out excess creating bulk, so I bound the bottom edge and turned up once.  

I love the way the buttons and buttonband look.   I don't have any other button up skirts in my wardrobe and it's nice to have a change from the flyfront design.

It's not perfect.  There's definitely something not quite right about the side seams from the point where the pockets end, and the finishing inside is less than perfect, but I think it's eminently more wearable now.  This is a silhouette that I am going with a lot at the moment (as evidenced by my MMM'15 pictures!) but I think that's ok.  It's tricky to branch out when you sew for yourself as you don't always know whether that 'new shape' is going to suit you until you've already invested a lot of hours into making it, and then it's pretty discouraging to find that it doesn't look how you hoped.  Quite different from shopping trips when you can try on a stack of clothes and still leave without buying a thing.  I'm getting better at understanding what styles work for me, and how to fit to my shape - just what sewing should be about!

MMM '15 - Week 1

My first year of joining Me Made May has started - hooray!  Here's my round up for week 1 - get ready for some terrible selfies! 

Day 1 - Viscose jersey Renfrew, Yellow Brick Road cardigan, denim Moss jean skirt.

Day 2 - Purple Renfrew (unblogged), Sweatshirt Renfrew, Indigo Moss skirt.  

Day 3 - Crazy print Renfrew, FLS Lady Sweater, denim Moss jean skirt. 

Day 4 - Shop bought T-shirt, Yellow Brick Road cardigan, denim Moss jean skirt. 

Day 5 - Purple Renfrew (unblogged), Indigo Moss skirt, shop bought hoodie.

Day 6 - Turquoise Sorbetto (unblogged), Maria Moss skirt, shop bought slouchy jumper.   

Day 7 - Agatha cardi, shop bought stripey T-shirt, Kelly-Moss mash up skirt (ready to be
           blogged!)

Well, I'm sticking to my min. 2 garments a day, but this is turning out to be a little trickier than I had expected.  I definitely need more tops!  I may have to do some emergency sewing to fill that gap.

Happy Me Made May-ing everyone!

Me Made Roundup

Thought I'd better do a quick roundup of my handmade clothes in preparation for Me Made May '15.

6 handmade tops (4 Renfrews including 1 sweatshirt Renfrew, Esme Top, Sorbetto Top)
4 handmade/refashioned skirts (3 Moss Skirts, 1 refashioned jeans skirt)
1 pair handmade shorts (Maritime shorts [unblogged])
1 dress (Coco [unblogged])
3 handknitted cardigans (February Lady Sweater, Agatha, Yellow Brick Road cardigan)

That's the lot, excepting maybe one refashioned skirt that I seem to have misplaced but don't wear very much anyway.  Can I get through a whole month?  I feel a bit short on tops, which is a problem since all my sewing plans are revolving around skirts at the moment.  I might have to squeeze in a couple of quick top projects.  I have an unfinished Scout Tee that has sat on my sewing shelf for a long time.  MMM may give me the push I need to finish it!

Denim Moss Jean Skirt

Yes, it's another denim Moss Skirt, and yes, I'm still working my way through the same length of stretch denim bought from Coventry market (in fact I still have enough left to make a pair of Maritime Shorts for the summer - hooray!), but I did make some changes to make this skirt distinctly different from my last denim Moss (blogged here).

I was going for that 'authentic' jean skirt look so I left off the hem band, lengthened the skirt piece by 4 and a half inches (which is about the width of the hemband and used golden brown topstitching thread to double stitch all the flat felled seams and I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

I wanted back pockets this time so I looked out the pattern piece from the Maritime Shorts pattern which worked perfectly.  I had to guess when it came to placement, and I might have sewn them a little too wide apart, but I'm pretty happy with them all the same.

Clearly should have ironed it before taking these photos!  Anyway, I'm glad to have iphone sized pockets on this one.  

I used a 6 inch metal YKK zip for the fly, bought from Hobbycraft.  The buttonhole was a total nightmare!! No matter how many practice buttonholes I did I could NOT get it to work on the garment itself.  Typical!  I think it probably had something to do with the thickness of the denim and the seam allowances on the waistband, but boy, I had a fight on my hands even to achieve this half decent buttonhole, and even then I had to touch it up by hand with a needle and thread.  As usual I used a contrast fabric (I think this is a poly cotton) for the pockets and bound all the visible seams with bias binding.  I made a huge error (HUGE!) on the waistband.  After being so careful to make sure I attached it the right way up this time, I realised I had cut out, interfaced and sewn on the wrong fabric for the facing. The wrong fabric!!  And it really clashed!  How did I not notice?  I considered leaving it, but in the end I unpicked it all and cut out another waistband facing in the fabric that matched the pocket bags.  So glad I did!  

The hem was another almost disaster. On my first attempt I cut the bottom of the skirt to an inch longer than I wanted the final length and turned up twice to make a small, half inch hem, which I then double topstitched to match the flatfelled seams.  It wasn't till I tried the skirt on (thinking it finished) that I realised that the denim had completely stretched out, leaving the skirt with a fluted hem that stuck out from the rest of the skirt.  Gutted!  I wasn't immediately sure how to fix it, or if I could fix it at all now that the fabric was stretched, but in the end I took my husband's advice to to unpick it and try ironing it back into shape.  A good steam did seem to help in shrinking it back, but on the second attempt I took a different approach.

To stop the fabric stretching out again I interfaced the bottom inch and a half of the fabric.  I also bound the raw edge so that I could single fold a slightly wider hem without losing any of the length.  I basted this time on a long stitch before topstitching and that seemed to work a lot better.   I gave it all a final blast with the iron and now it's pretty straight.  Phew!   I will be more careful when i comes to sewing hems on stretch fabric in future!

I think I can definitely now call the Moss Skirt my first TNT pattern (tried and true, meaning I have the fit requirements worked out and can depend upon the finished garment to come out well).  It's just such a wearable style and I'm really glad to have this skirt finished in time for Me Made May '15.  I know it's going to be in regular rotation!

As a bonus here are the outtakes featuring my little helper.   A camera on timer is an irresistible draw!