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Showing posts from April, 2014

Skirt Sew-a-Long: Completed Project

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Pattern Review: Vogue 8711 My sewing group ran a skirt sew-a-long through February and March. I picked an oldie but a goody, Vogue 8711 . I absolutely love this pattern and have made it twice before, once in my blogging lifetime here . You might recognise this fabric from my last tank top  but for those of you not up to speed, this jersey was purchased from Simply Fabrics in Brixton priced at £2 per metre.  I sewed this straight out of the envelope, cutting a size 16. The only minor alteration was that I reduced the waist elastic to ensure that waistband was snug enough.  This fabric is thinner than the jersey that I used for my last skirt so it definitely falls differently. This fabric clings less, which isn't a good or bad thing, just different. I have one other confession to make which is that I didn't trim the seams back enough when sewing this. The lovely Giselle  photographed this for me a couple of weeks ago, but when I looked at the photos on

April Garment of the Month - Dress for Easter

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Pattern Review: Butterick 4443 Happy Easter! After spending Saturday in sunny Brighton, today in London is a such a contrast. Grey and miserable, but the perfect excuse to curl up in bed with a coffee and catch up on sewing blogs. So here is my April garment of the month - another version of Butterick 4443 . I have made this previously here  and I really love the style of the dress. I picked up this crepe like fabric from Goldhawk Road priced at £3 per metre sometime last year. I knew instantly that it would be great for another version of the dress. It drapes perfectly. As the fabric was quite thin I underlined all of the pieces with some stretch lining picked up from Simply Fabrics in Brixton, priced at £1 per metre.  I cut a size 14 and made my usual alteration to take in the waist and under the bust. I was very proud of myself as last time I made this dress I altered the skirt to make it shorter and remove some of the fullness. For this I traced a new ski

Transitional Sewing

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Pattern Review: McCalls 6209 Between the crazy month I had work-wise during March and all of the constant fabric shopping, I had actually been working on some sewing projects. One of them is McCall's 6209 . I thought that this would be a great Winter/Spring transitional garment. So if any of you follow Mimi G's blog, you will know that that this is pretty much a rip off of her fab version . If I had not seen her brilliant fabric choice, there is no way that I would have touched this pattern with a barge pole. I don't know why, but for some reason I found the pattern envelope really unappealing.  The fabric is a wool and polyester mix that I bought from  Toto Fabrics  in Poitiers, France whilst visiting my Godmother. I paid €10 for 2 metres - not bad at all. The fabric was a dream to work with and feels lovely when wearing it. In fact it feels like I am wearing a blanket outdoors. This pattern is supposed to be one of those super quick 1 hour sewi