The Base trousers by Ann Ringstrand, attempts 1 & 2

I have been really excited to make a few patterns from this book called SEW, by Ann Ringstrand.  It ends up that a pair of my favourite pants ever are her original Hope pants.  Seemed super thrilling to be able to make other designs of hers. 

The two included pants patterns were the priority.  I was going to make the work trousers first and had everything ready to trace the pattern (huge first step!!)  I got one page traced...and realised I had traced the base trousers, because half the pattern is on each pattern sheet (rather than both sides of the pattern sheet corresponding to the SAME pattern.)  But it didn't really matter, I made the Base trousers first.  They are a bit harder so it's probably good that way. 

Size S, by my measurements (waist 27 hip 37)

I did not modify these at all to start out with - this was an experiment, and I knew I would send the first pair to a friend if they didn't fit well as she has gained some weight.  I also worried a tiny bit I was making them even bigger than necessary because my seam allowances were done by eyeball and might not have been precise.  Honestly tracing my own patterns is like a game of telephone, it's a surprise I end up with something remotely similar to the original. 

The fabric is Japanese suiting from The Fabric Store, it's so sumptuous!  I really enjoyed the feel of this fabric.  It behaved well when sewing though my iron occasionally leaves marks because it is a shitty iron and gets too hot at times.  

I did a lot of mental cheerleading to get through these pants.  Like, day one was prep, next day was back pocket welts, next day was fly...it was very good to break it down like that.  The instructions are so super vague, which made it exciting to hunt for instructions that would really help me, and by making my own welts I had to reason through how to make a welt, which has presumably made me a better welter overall in life.  (in theory, as proven later.)

 

I think these pants fit quite a bit like the model pictures, honestly.  I wouldn't want them so loose, but they are wearable.  So I'm moving on to the XS, and I will shorten the rise 1 cm and shorten the height 1".  I'm going to make fake welt pockets for the back instead of real ones, since I never use them.  Whew, back to the tracing and seam allowancing.  

So that was done, and I cut out my beautiful, soft purple fabric and then procrastinated with a binge of knits.  Finally came back around to these, the stress of not doing them got to be more than the pain of doing them.  The problem is that I really wanted them to be nice, and I really just wanted to get on with it.  I didn't have the same amount of patience to really reason through every single step.  The result is that my welt pockets are not as nice.  My fly still has a funny gap at the bottom of the zip where the front stitching ends.  (I think you just HAVE to baste the fly together to get rid of that, I'm so sick of it.)  

I also realised something I have Never Realised Before, which is that in slash pocket pants, the pockets constitute a relevant part of the front waist.  Oooohhhh.  The pocket pieces here are a single piece, and because I made my pockets bigger, and the game of seam allowances etc, it wasn't really clear where to fold them in half.  I had to measure the distance from the side seam that made sense, and then match both pockets up to the front at that distance.  Noticing as I did it that the other pair of pants are HUGELY different at that spot. It's amazing how much you can sew, and then realise you still just didn't know something.  I did eventually recover from my disappointment that these are not perfect, and accepted that they are wearable and lovely, but I do still feel like they are kind of too big. Plus I really hate the mess of the fake welts on the inside. But it's a style, it's ok.  

 

However regarding this style, in particular, I think it's not very interesting.  I could have made a pair of Cali Faye Hampshire pants which HAVE INSTRUCTIONS and welt pockets and slash pockets etc and I would have had a better quality final pair of pants.  In fact I am going to make those, because it's been years, and I think it might be good for me to review the instructions.  If Ann Ringstrand wanted us to make pants to the same standard she does, she could have provided instructions online as an addendum to her book.  She doesn't - I suppose you need to look up the couture techniques elsewhere if you want to apply them.  Anyway, if you really want to make her patterns, you can, but I think books like this are more about inspiration and not about actually making the patterns.  

Despite all that, I think the other pattern in this book is a very different shape and I'm still willing to do it once I have a fly plan.  All the other pockets can be stuck on so I won't have as many dramas, aside from the tracing etc itself.  I will most likely go with the XS despite the size chart.  

Roberts Wood Flower Patchwork dress, a Frocktails adventure

 I have been wildly in love with this pattern since it came out. 

But in love like unrequited love.

There was the first big hump: what fabric could cope with so many unfinished edges?  I spent a year mulling this over.  I reckoned it had to be silk, maybe organza.  Something with body, so the flower petals would stick out.  The pattern consists of 3 separate sets of flowers, so you can use 3 different fabrics and you won't end up with the same fabric next to itself - or of course you can just use one fabric, or two. 

I got too curious and bought the pattern and had to recover from that for another year.  Both the financial hit, and the 5 tightly rolled up A0 pages with nothing on them but...flowers.  Hundreds of flowers.  The size is built into the pattern- and I was confident with the smallest size as it coincides neatly with my measurements.  The dress is a bit oversized, but I wouldn't have wanted it smaller, the neck hole fits just right.  It feels quite substantial around me I think that's because of the three-dimensional-ness of it. 

I bought three colours of silk organza and stuck it at the bottom of my stash.  I moved house a few times (always a good reason to procrastinate.)  I changed jobs and didn't get to sew enough...

And then moved to Auckland, a city with a Frocktails!  I put this dress on my Make 12 list for the year, deadline: Frocktails in early September.  I also reorganised my stash and thought actually the cranberry red dupioni silk, previously purchased for something else, might be a perfect fit for this.  The organza idea just didn't feel right.  Months passed and trips came and went and suddenly I actually only had two weeks until Frocktails.  

I spent two days cutting out paper flowers while my partner watched.  This improved when I realised I had an audiobook to attend to.  I thought I would stick the flowers onto the silk, cut roughly around them and then cut more precisely one by one.  To make this possible I bought the sharpest little embroidery scissors in Spotlight, a new micro-olfa cutter, and a small pink cutting mat, plus three spools of matching thread, and I hijacked the kitchen table.  

This phase took another 2 days.  And catastrophe then struck: a pile of flowers were neglected on the sewing room table...a RANDOM cross section of flowers from the three different colour ways.  And I had run out of fabric.  An emergency trip to The Fabric Store - a very lucky grab at a bolt of red dupioni silk - the last of the dupioni in stock - and an early morning trip to the laundromat later whew, all the flowers are accounted for, and hopefully the different shade of red will add texture.  Four days to go. 

I quickly realised it was better to pin the flowers to the silk for the rough cutting phase.  I just needed to get them into a pile of flowers, it didn't matter if they were a bit askew on their individual fabric pieces.  An unexpected participant joined the fun: Paivi LOVED all the excitement happening in her personal playground and joined the sweatshop with enthusiasm.  She particularly liked all the sharp objects, and unpinned bits of paper...

Cutting the flowers out on my new surgical desk: 2 days. 

I now had 2 days to sew the dress, plus the day of Frocktails which was after night shift so I could do some sewing, but nothing too strenuous.  It ended up being the bindings, done on the day from that original organza.  Organza is a terrible thing to cut and also to sew on the bias and was a horrible choice to use for bindings, so if you look closely, they are a bit messy.  

The insides! There are many micro holes at the corners where my sewing lines weren't perfect, but you can't see any of this in the dress when worn.

 

I showed up at frocktails slightly glassy eyed post night shift, and with a few faint chalk marks here and there on my dress - but DONE!  and it was a perfect way to celebrate a project that ran my life for about two weeks, while also being a kind of sanity-saver and distraction from some simultaneous health drama.  To give you some scale: I consumed 4 audiobooks during the simple parts of cutting these flowers out. 

And you know, I would do it again.  I would actually use fabric scraps and just not worry about the fraying edges and make a wildly ridiculous patchwork version of this dress.  Also, it has heaps of room and needs pockets.  I was absolutely not going there this time around but I see no reason to skip it on a future attempt.   

Merchant and Mills Factotum bag: white leather

 I bought 2 skins of white lambskin from The Fabric Store so long ago it's embarrassing, with the plan for some kind of varsity jacket with leather sleeves.  It morphed through so many ideas because it is really beautiful stuff and I didn't want to mess it up.  But lately I'm just impatient with all these ideas and the years that have gone by and stash in general, and I'm really mowing through it.  The desire to buy new fabric is at a strange low.  Very weird. 

Anyway so I did see this bag in Miss Maude in person a year or so ago.  I wasn't sure I would think it was too small for my usual pursuits, but it is bigger than it looks - could hold a novel, water bottle, plus the usual junk.  And I thought if I pair such a beautiful leather with this bag, I need to use this amazing Tula Pink fabric as lining.  I had a piece of leather strap left from a different M & M pattern kit, and enough rivets too.  I bought a zipper to match since the length was important.  

 

The process was exceptionally painful.  Leather, it ends up, has grain.  It stretches.  A LOT, but in only certain directions.  And this smooth surfaced leather was hard to mark, for things like...pockets that have a pleat at the bottom.  Sewing the pockets onto the bag was truly torture, as they didn't line up, the leather stretched, things moved, etc.  The result is that the pockets are a bit lower than they should be, although I managed to get the pleated top over them.  I was really worried that I was going to run out of space between the pockets, but the overall look is symmetrical despite the drama.

Sewing the body had similar issues, with the leather stretching at some points and refusing to stretch at other points.  

 My final confusion was how the strap is meant to insert into the side bag.  This area ends up a bit open on my bag.  You can see in the photos that there is a gap behind the zip, and when the zip is closed there's a gap against the tab leading to the strap.  I would consider this area more durable if that were closed, but the instructions were confusing.  The side tabs are made of the leather, they are quite long, and they are not interfaced.  This is clearly the weakest part of the bag and will stretch too much to make me happy.  Speaking as a person who will forever carry around a bunch of books...I would make this out of a very tough webbing, preferably. 

I added an inside pocket because I like them.  That is just the usual seaming open with a zipper and adding a piece of fabric behind it.   

 Final result - this is a really cute bag that I will never use.  Thanks again to my friends who accept the things I make and even love them - it makes it possible for me to keep sewing whatever I want.  I would consider making this again by increasing the pattern pieces by, say 40% to make a larger bag, and then I would make it out of waxed cotton, which just seems so lovely for bags but not for jackets, and I would add hooks so it could have a short strap or a cross body strap.  

The other way I would consider using this is as a camera bag if the sides were made with thick padding!  I'm not saying I'll never come back to the pattern, but it does seem too niche for my liking.