Success!

I've got two complete tops! The white one and the blue one (that I'm currently wearing) are finished and the gold, silver and green ones only need their cuffs sewing on.

I've got a load more that I'm going to sew together with black tread when I get the overlocker rethreaded, but I think I need a break from making the same pattern again an again, and I don't mean just the darn tidying.

I'm currently trying to pack my life into a series of plastic crates and trying to get rid of everything I don't need or don't use, and there's a lot of it. I'm a clutterbug, a hoarder and a mess.

At least if I cut things out I can leave the scraps behind.

T-shirts And Studdies

I was a bit late getting this out because I spent most of the day with my older brother. Me, him and his boyfriend went to wetherspoons and talked about what I'm going to do this year. I've got to get on with researching universities and talking to everyone about what my options are but I'm feeling pretty good about it now.

I did manage to get quite a lot of work done on my t-shirts. I cut out four more and sewed the shoulder seams, as well as the back center seam on the neck band. I had a go at chain stitching (I think that's what it's called when you leave hardly any space between pieces) to save thread and make it go quicker. It worked pretty well and I ended up with the hideous neckband garland. You probably can't see but that things got 30 sharp pins sticking out of it.

The next thing to do will be sew the neck bands to the tops and sew up the sides. I think I should be able to get them finished by the 7th, and then I'm going to try making a wearable muslin of the dress I traced over the Christmas holidays.

First Projects Of The New Year

Yesterday I managed to leave my purse, with my train ticket, money, and house keys in it, at my parents house when I went to go home on the train. I managed to get on the train before I even realised and ended up having to pay again (well, dad did) and sitting for over an hour surrounded by a loud family, trying to read but unable to because of the noise.

When I finally got home I was tired, hungry and feeling a caffeine withdrawal headache coming on. Add on to that a growing feeling that I'm studying the wrong subject and managing to make dinner only to spill it on the floor and it felt like a pretty bad day.

I ended up talking to my older brother about it. We're going to meet up tomorrow and he's going to help me look at my options. I'm going to finish this year at the OU but it's not what I want to do in the long run. I wasn't expecting the new year to lead to quite so many changes.

After that I felt better. I did the washing up and even felt up to getting on with sewing! I got a blue velvet T-shirt cut out and I'm going to do another four before doing them all production line style with white thread. Then I can change to black and do the rest. :-)

Holiday's Over

The fun of Christmas has kind of worn off, and I spent yesterday evening tracing my little white dress pattern. I didn't realise it was unprinted and not very well cut. God knows what it'll look like.

The longer seam lines down the body were wonky and the notches were all uneven depths like it had been used before by someone who wasn't used to using scissors but when I get it everything was folded up like it had just come from the factory. I don't know if it was like that originally or if someone used it and then folded it up and compressed it well enough to look new. If they did they didn't use pins, but maybe that explains the wonkiness?

Today I'm going to get to work on NewLook 6150 so I can use it on some of my bigger knit stash pieces. I'm actually excited about making the version illustrated in red. :-)

Holiday!

Tomorrow I get to go home to my parents place and spend ten days sleeping in the dining room on a futon. I'm looking forward to playing board games, staying in a heated house and slogging books that I won't get around to reading there and back.

 But what about my sewing and this blog? Well, even though my mum has three sewing machines I don't know how many of them are working at the moment and I'm concentrating on knits anyway. I'll just have to wait till I get back home to my overlocker.

Also, I just wanted to point out that the stuff in the picture isn't all of my stretch odds and sods collection. It's about half of it, but the rest is just more velvet in a huge range of colours I don't wear at the moment.

I can, however, get on with copying off some of the patterns I haven't tried yet. I just have to find out if I'll have to bring my iron with me.

If I just fill this blog with pictures of the copied off patterns then it's going to get a bit boring, so I'll try to carry on with the (hopefully) interesting musing on various sort of related subjects.

I'm also going to take the opportunity to get measurements for my family so I can make muslins if I feel like it and bring them home the next time I'm going. (I might move back to the town before I get around to it but that's beside the point.)

Hope you guys have a fun Christmas!

White Lace (New Look 6230)

I put together another toile! I took the pictures with it on my sewing dummy because it's a bit see through but you get the idea. It looks a bit better on me, partly because I fill out the arms better, but one torso is very much like another in a loose knit top.

It's got raglan sleeves that would look great in a contrasting colour to the main body and there's a seam at the back that adds a bit of shaping (but not much).

Now that I've got a couple of T-shirt patterns muslined I went digging through my stupidly big fabric stash and pulled out any peace of stretch fabric too small to be made into a dress. I'm figuring I can make what I can into tops and what I can't I can finally get rid of.

Maybe I'll take one or two more patterns down to my parents house for Christmas? If I can't get any sewing done I can at least get ready.

Yay! T-shirts!

I got an overlocker (serger) a couple of days ago and I've been having fun with it, making my first stretch garments. I don't have any ball point needles so I'm going to wait to sew anything with good fabric, and I can't sew any seams on my sewing machine because I need to fix the bobbin tension before I can use the zigzag stitch, but both those things can be easily fixed.

Sorry you can see my bra! I didn't realise how see-trough the fabric was, but at least I found out here and not out in the real world. Also, did you notice my new haircut? I got my boyfriend to cut my hair and when he got it wonky (I shouldn't be surprised) I got the hairdresser to just go with it.

I made both the t-shirts in NewLook 6216, but the sizing got me really confused. According to the size graph I should have sewn a 14/16 but when I looked at garment measurements I got confused. It looked like I could wear an 8 with room to spare.

Turns out cutting the short sleeved one in an 8 was just fine, which is a bit annoying. But even more annoying was the long sleeved version, where the body was just fine but the sleeves where tight. I guess that's where the inflated sizing came from but it just looks horrible, and I think it would have whatever size I cut. I would edit the top to add size 16 sleeves to the size 8 top but it's such a wasteful pattern in terms of fabric I don't think I'll bother.


I will sew up the short sleeved top, probably again and again, and I'm going to try the trousers at least once, but I'll get a sleeved top from somewhere else.