Did some faffing while I was too tired to witter

It's been a while.  A long, horrible, while.  Reader, I've been flared-up* to the point where I've been doing the less-than-half-a-mile school run in the car and stomping round with a walking stick**.  I hate this.

But.

I haven't had huge amounts of brainpower available to me, so I've been faffing around with other people's instructions in between sofa sessions with whatever rubbish is on Movie Mix.

Some highlights -

 A TNT Vogue tunic for my sister.  I've had this fabric for ever - purple is one of her favourite colours - and finally got round to making this up. It's Vogue 8116 and in their 'Very Easy' line - which it is.  This is the plain neck version with 3/4 sleeves as per request.  My favourite version however is the draped neckline  - if you can find a lightweight draping linen (and when you do let me know where as it's my favourite summer top fabric) then you've got a tunic you can live in over the summer, keeping covered from the sun without sweltering in mugginess.

As you can see, this is a very thin fabric, chosen as sister is a camisole wearer - so she can get the layering without too much warmth.

 

 A Lisa Lam purse pattern - the Fortune Cookie Clutch.  This would have gone together in a heartbeat on a sewing machine, but I wanted a hand-project so I put it together over a few evenings in front of the telly.  It's a perfect size for a handbag, holding bits of makeup, handcream and a few pills without taking up huge amounts of space - and opening wonderfully wide so you can find stuff quickly. 

I also put a lining into a RTW linen jacket for my mother.  The reason for the lining was because the linen was snagging and pulling on whatever tops Ma wore underneath.  As her favourite top at the moment is a jersey Breton this wasn't ideal, and she didn't want to limit herself to silky chemise-y things - hence the challenge to me.  I needed to cover as much of the construction as possible with something slithery, without adding bulk and without deconstructing the existing seams.  

This was tricky...  First pattern cutting, which is always good to practise.  I measured and traced and measured and traced, and still got things a bit wrong so I had to ease a lot on the front armscye.

Well, I call it an armscye.  Because it was designed to be unlined, the front facing went all the way across the bust to the shoulder, so a quarter of the sleeve was left dangling when I put the lining together.

As bagging the lining was out, I handstitched it all onto the Hong Kong finished seams to reduce friction - Ma shrugged it on and off for me to demonstrate success - Hurrah!

And I made some trousers and a t-shirt.  Both Burda downloadables from their Stop Traffic collection.  The trousers required a fair bit of grading for sway-back and wide hips, but out of that I've created a sloper for a couple more pairs - one I'm going to cut as-is into a black linen wide-ish leg; the other I'm going to reduce ease to zero and turn the front-facing into a waistband to make some slightly stretch straight-leg jeans.

Photo of trousers?  No.  I'm really not ready to put my arse on the internet ;-)

And the shirt.  Finished just in time for a barbecue at the weekend.  There's some lovely detail on this - which this photo doesn't really show...  So have a badly copied construction view -

The squared yoke I love - giving you bust space without putting in darts, which I don't like in jersey.  However the construction means it can be made in wovens as well as stretch stuff, so I've got a floaty navy lawn to make another version of this which will hopefully be cool enough for France in August.



So, what have I learned in the month since I last posted?  A variety of things which you may or may not find useful:

• When sewing stretchy things - especially if on something light and slippy and with pattern changes - baste your construction lines with a long zigzag.  Going straight for a built-in machine stretch stitch can lead to hours of unpicking and some new and inventive swears.  

• Use fusible hemming stuff to interface hems and neckbands on t-shirt type fabrics - this really helps avoid skipped stitches and tunneling on twin-needle straight stitch

• When increasing the width of a dart on trousers throw a ton of extra height onto the pattern piece - it's easier to adjust to the waistband/facing and then trace the new shape back to the pattern tissue than it is to recut the too-shallow piece from new fabric.

• And when making a box-tote (I'll put photos up another time) if you want a firmer base without waiting for proper peltex-type stuff from a specialist seller, large-grid plastic canvas from Hobbycraft and similar makes an excellent - and cheaper - substitute.

And the final lesson is - I really need to up my game on the photo front.  I'm not sure that my 10 year old Ixus is really up to the job.  Any recommendations for a replacement?


*Fibromyalgia.  Google it - it's very dull
**I try to channel Gregory House or the dance teacher from Fame but let's face it I'm probably more like one of the old codgers from Last of the Summer Wine