The Friday Pattern Co Victoria blazer review

My experience with the Friday Pattern Co has been intense in the past few months, and it has seriously been pretty checkered.  I knew ahead of time that this pattern has a rather tight sleeve - during our sewing weekend in Auckland I got to try on an XS in progress.  Thus I went with a size S.  I knew it would be long and so my vision was a kind of coat/blazer crossover.

I did not really anticipate how much fabric this needs. I'd considered a lot of different fabrics for it, but settled on a loose woven silk from Nepal, and it's a loomed width (110 cm) and it was not enough...so for the facing I went with a contrasting green linen.  I did NOT at any point think about how the facing of the front lapels would be actually so visible.  Once I realised that I committed this in my head to pretty solid muslin territory because I was not super enthused.  

Things started with some challenges.  The pocket placement is extremely and oddly low, the marks line up the pockets near the hem of the blazer, so I moved them up in order to have a hem in the end, this was still not really helpful as the pocket location meant I couldn't vary the hem upwards by much (unless I wanted to sew into the pocket).  The lining gap is in a strange location, and so I moved it a less obvious location.  Naturally I managed to octopus my sleeve hems into a mobius strip and had to undo the first one, ugh.  I did hand sew the seam allowance of the sleeve cuff together so it wouldn't flip out, and that small amount of extra work did seem to improve the sit of the lining in the cuff, and keep the cuff from unfolding outwards.  I'll keep that in mind for future makes.  I think there are recommendations to sew the lining of the hem like this as well and that makes sense because my hems of lined jackets always droop.

I was already pretty down on this because of the non-matching facing, and so when the hem went to hell in a handbasket I didn't fight too hard. Nothing lined up.  In order to create a semblance of closure I had to create a hem from nothing and the result is this totally horrible curve to the hems and some super dubious handstitching.  Far from finally learning a cool way to get that tragedy of hem, lining and front facing to meet in a friendly fashion, this was a ruin because the length of the facing, the amount of seam allowance of the facing towards the lining, and the lining/hem interface did not match as the instructions suggested they should.  It certainly could be due to interfacing the facing, so it was longer and pulled differently than the silk. Maybe it cut differently than the silk.  No idea.  

My final feeling was that although the fit of this isn't terrible - it does fit -  I never really like lapel things and I don't like this lapel thing, and I would never make it again and never try to figure out what has gone wrong with these instructions and placement of things.  I have previously mused that I will only be happy with a real coat or blazer when I commit to a serious one with layers, pad stitching, shoulder pads, and other tailoring realities that I only know about in a hazy vague way.  I think that's still the case.  I'm too picky to like an easy sew when I want the result of a complicated and well-designed project.  

This might suit someone who really wants that easy sew (which is most of Friday's market) but I don't have advice for the hems except to say maybe it was just me.  I recommend putting on the pockets late in the process when you can double check you are happy with the location.  I don't like the way it fits across my back - maybe I need some kind of wide back or muscled neck adjustment, but overall the fit is not the problem with this pattern.

Linen knit Seaforth lounge pants: for maximal lounging

 I have two pairs of my favourite drop-crotch linen knit loungepants.  The pattern was made using the Anima pants and a drop-crotch online tutorial.  One pair is from 2020 and the other was made a few months ago...and they both already have holes.  (Linen knit is not the most durable, or possibly due to my crappy clothespins.) Clearly I need *more* linen loungepants!  I was envisioning a double layer of coziness, and mentally riffled through my patterns trying to figure out which would be loungy enough (the Hudsons are too snug and low waisted.)  I thought this pattern would be perfect and since it's meant for wovens I was guaranteed a good oversized fit - I used the same size (4) and pattern pieces as for my previous go at the Seaforth.  The pockets though, don't come with a non-zip option.  Also, the double layer business had to go, as this pattern takes...a meter of fabric...so I didn't have any to spare.  

 

For a quick pocket fix I used the pattern piece from the Linen Loungers. I overlapped the two pockets and created a pocket opening to replace the zip, and added a binding.  Otherwise, no changes to the original pattern.  I did all the darts and back pockets as per the woven instructions.  Very easy to make!  So pleased to wear!  And they match my new cropped linen Blomma top!  (This Blomma top has been the summer win, so perfectly cropped and very fashionable.) 

 

Friday Pattern Co Wilder dress review

 I have been planning to make this dress for years!  My enthusiasm ramped up when I saw pictures of it without the bottom tier - thinking this would have so much interesting potential.  I also was dreaming of see-through dresses with an underneath tank dress.  Last summer I even committed and bought some Liberty voile on sale, since of course I never buy 3m of fabric unless I am reminded to do so by a specific pattern.  

And finally it's the middle of summer again, and I had the time to put it together.  It was a fun and effortless sew.  I made XS, knowing that this pattern is very oversized. I hoped my shoulders wouldn't be too much for the smaller size but it has a lot of ease.  The fabric is well behaved and it came together without any problems.  I did want to add pockets, but I couldn't figure out exactly where they should go so I decided to save that for future renditions.  

 

It was fun to make and I think it's pretty hilarious, as oversized floppy muumuu type things go.  As anticipated I really hate the neck finish/long dangling ties.  I think on future versions I'll just stick elastic in the neck instead.  Definitely without the bottom tier, and definitely with great big pockets.  Also I have seen a sleeveless hack and I would be up for that - so this pretty much went as I expected.  I don't know how much I'll wear it in life - it go out a few times while I was in Fiji but overall I expect it to spend most of its time in my closet - but I want to do some experiments and see if I can get it to work for me. 

Megan Nielsen Amber dress, though maybe it's hard to tell...

 Paulina requesting breastfeeding dresses and we settled on this, with the caveat that the cross front should be underneath, and a tshirt panel over top.  (As designed I'm self-censoring my opinions on how sickly this dress is...) But THEN she texted and said sleeveless please!!  

So, I cut my size - XS (though my hips are slightly larger) since it said go by pre-pregnancy size, and other people said it was very oversized.  I had 1 meter of the birds, which are DIRECTIONAL fml, and you know "very oversized..." so I cut 2x the back skirt instead of a front skirt.  Used the Deer and Doe Givre, which was handy, to recut a tank top armhole and some bindings, as well as the front overlay panel, I think I just overlapped the two patterns to get a tshirt front piece.  I made the tshirt overlay as long as the front waist panel, then added a binding of the same length so it wouldn't really be snugger. 

Got the top bit put together on one side and though I had best try this baby on...and hm, it really doesn't fit below the waist, oops.  I luckily just had the one side sewn together and I had ONE triangle of leftover fabric, so I stuck in that entire triangle from the waist down to the hem and sewed it in.  Whew, dress goes onto ME now and looks a bit like designer post-partum wear.  I hope Paulina can get it on!  

Sent it over and the verdict - PERFECT! It's really snug on her, as you'd expect just having a baby, but she doesn't need a bra with it, and luckily the front is roomy enough for the post baby tum.  She has requested another so now I'm stuck trying to recreate my skirt-saving fix again...(might just add a few cm to the waistband and skirt...) 

I would say this is TRUE to SIZE though I can't comment on the exact front as designed since I hacked it quite a bit. I do think it's reasonable to size up if you aren't in the market for a snug designer look breastfeeding dress, and of course use the skirt as designed with pleats if you want it to be a pregnancy item as well as functional post-partum.

Vogue 1821 - Rachel Comey dress review

I really thought hard about this project before I started.  My friend Tam had made it and sent me the pattern, recommending I leave off the pockets.  I thought this kind of fit might suit me very well indeed, but I did want pockets for my first attempt.

On size: because I was tempted to size down in the Merchant & Mills Box box dress, and the problem with the slightly dropped shoulder is that it actually needs to be oversized to hang straight down, when I sized down, the entire bodice fit poorly.  I was considering that when I evaluated which size to make here, thinking long and hard about oversized vs too oversized.  I checked the measurements of the sleeve to make sure they'd fit and I think that's why the size XS seemed ok, as I knew it wouldn't be too snug on my biceps.  I think maybe the hang of the dress would be better in S, but it's such a huge tent that I'm not sure that would change how I feel about it.

I was really excited prior to sewing this and was willing to commit this silk - woven in Nepal - because it was a big enough piece with the recommended weight (oops, I was supposed to give half of it to Tessa...)  There's a shop in Kathmandu willing to sell me these pieces of silk yardage, the factory is outside Kathmandu and although I haven't toured it to report on the conditions I am making the assumption it's not a huge or crowded factory.  

For some reason once I started sewing I lost all the enthusiasm.  Maybe because the order of sewing didn't feel very neat.  The fabric is a rough weave, and it's not that much fun to sew.  The pockets hang kind of straight down, going out to the hips, rather than hanging to the front as usual pockets do (it makes sense when you look at the pocket/hand angle) and I didn't like all the weird extra instructions for them - I followed the instructions, but I think I got a worse result than if I had just stitched and undersewed in the standard way.  It's been a long time since I made a big 4 pattern, and in my memory the instructions always taught me things, and had really clever ways of doing stuff.  Now, however, I disagree.  The pocket method is crap.  Once you understand how the pockets will hang I do like the fact that they are there, and I like their position.  If they were a bit bigger they would turn this dress into a nice purse, with big handy storage areas...they definitely, however, add a lot of extra work to the pattern.  I have read in some comments that they are valuable in balancing the weight of the skirt in the back to keep the dress hanging straight, so that's interesting (also a good reason to make them larger and put lots of stuff in them.)

The sewing wasn't particularly onerous after that but I felt like I was slogging through at that point.  I skipped the extra sleeve detail and just created little cuffs.

I tried on the dress as I went along and felt very meh.  It feels like a huge, heavy tent.  The pockets are flapping all over the place.  

 

Then of course I took my blog photos and I have to say I like the way it feels when I'm out and about wearing it.  It's not a seasonally appropriate item and because of these conflicted feelings I decided to pack it away for winter and see what happens.  When I leave things sitting out I tend to donate them if I don't wear them right away so this way I can give it a break and see what I think when I pull it back out in the autumn.

I did think that I might like this as a sleeveless dress. I know others have said a heavyweight fabric suits the style better but I would be tempted to make it from linen, and sleeveless, and see what I think. (Very tempted!)