Spring tshirt binge sew

I'll just jump right in. 

 Ebony by Closet Core Patterns, raglan tee, size 2, which is what I've used before and liked the most.

-in pink interlock knit: I like this! 

Then I made a dress for a friend by lengthening the raglan pattern as much as I could to fit my fabric.  It was fine but I thought there's way too much fabric in the back, so I decreased the amount of hi-lo in the hem and took out a wedge from the back - not at the centre back but slightly to the side of that, starting at the bottom of the armscye which is where it starts to hang freely on me.  And that was fine but then I lost interest.  I gave version two to my friend as well (she's pregnant) - if I make this again, it needs pockets.

Finn Tee by Petite Stitchery size XS. I found it suspicious that the front and the back are the same!  But it does work.  The sleeve somehow seems to have extra fabric in it but I think in rayon or a more drapey fabric it would be fine. I was debating changing the armscye and sleeve to the Sasha Secondo Piano InstincTee though, still not sure if I need more shirts and want to spend the time frankenpatterning a perfect tshirt...yet.  Though last time I was pawing through my patterns I did kind of pause and think it would be a great combination.

 

 

Briar tee in 3 sizes and 3 lengths -
I made the briar in S (white) and XS (purple) of the old sizes, and then in 4, going to 6 at the waist of the new pattern. This is the same as XS according to the size charts.  I had never made the tunic length top before and surprise!!  I don't love it!  I hacked off a large chunk of the back hem.  My new cover stitch machine gobbled up this top after behaving fine on everything else, go figure.  I do like the longer length post trimming.  Then I caved in and made the size 2 (new pattern) with 4" added to the cropped length - out of some silk jersey. This is great and I like the tighter fit a lot -  but the jersey unfortunately gapes a tiny bit at the front neck, enough to irritate me.  I think once I'm wearing it a lot I will not care.

 

 

 

 

Made for Mermaids Avery - size is called purple - I did not end up liking the back feature. It does indeed flip out.  Overall the construction was straightforward, but this type of very long top are seldom my style and I didn't go on to make the dress. I am not sure what I think of this pattern company so far.

Patterns 4 Pirates Tulip front (or back) tee - in green merino, and I love it!  This was one of my favourites of the binge, as I kind of expected.  I have a top similar to this.  This type of top has a lot of caveats - it gathers funny at the front because the sleeves are attached.  The back swings open in unreliable ways.  I love all of it.  I will eventually make the tulip front version.  Not soon.

Pixie tee (or dress) - made in organic cotton from Alabama Chanin - very firm stuff.  I thought this was stupendously boring until I saw the pictures and noticed it has a subtle flare to it.  Hm.  Maybe in a drapey knit?  Also really needs pockets.  I cut my size according to the chart - it's meant to be a pretty breezy top with a lot of ease, and I think that's true.  It fits me well, other than being too long.

tilly and the buttons Agnes - decided to make a short sleeved tee and this time use a better length binding! Well, that was fine and good but it's so tight I can barely breathe.  Oops.  

Hemlock in black - with various modifications that I had applied last year - a bit of curve to the hem, a dropped sleeve...this silk jersey just isn't good for me here.  It makes it into a heavy, oversized top and the pattern would be cute on a dress but does not work.  Silk jersey is funny - sometimes it is amazing but because of the weight and drape it can behave very differently to other jerseys.

 

 

Made for Mermaids LOGAN

Ooh, this is an absolute winner. Surprise winner!  I made a tshirt version to check fit (note to self: add a hem band, even in my photos I wanted to hug my belly out of view...) and then I made one in interlock jersey, and I adore it.  Except for the colours.  I will definitely make this for myself.  Do note: the front pieces are not mirrored.  Don't be like me and accidentally cut some of them wrong side out.  That's what led to the blue in the tshirt, as I didn't have enough greens to re-cut.

 

Luckily I have some new colleagues imported from the US with a teenage daughter keen on cropped items so a lot of these went to her.  This binge was during hard life times when I needed the simplicity to keep me going, but it was good food for thought on why I sew, and also on what results I want.  It's inspired me to stop binge cutting (I have a tendency to cut a bunch of projects which then sit around) - but rather to work on a single project at a time beginning to end. I have a bunch of things I really want to make that I never start because they will be a bit more work, so hopefully this will move me to do those instead of easy things.

 

Made for Mermaids Willow romper review

 Size "purple"

Fabric: lightweight merino, probably a blend, from Otara, which is the land of cheap fabrics in south Auckland. 

I bought 4 patterns by this new to me company.
I have now made 3 of them: the Avery, Logan, and the Willow. 

As far as I can tell this is either a friend, subsidiary, or someone who stole the concept from Patterns 4 Pirates.  The designer uses a very similar layout in her instructions, though the patterns are slightly different - using colour coding for sizes.  They feel very similar in character as well.

My first large irritation is that I had these printed as A0 patterns and the paper usage was horrible.  Pieces were not placed tightly on the paper, and I think there was an entire huge sheet for a single A4 element that could have been put somewhere else.  I pay for the luxury of A0 and it's $7 a sheet.  When a pattern lazily takes up 3 sheets, that's 21$ I have paid on top of the cost of the pattern!  

I have mentioned elsewhere that I passionately hate instructions done as colour photos.  This is unchanged.  The way I survived these instructions is that basically, I rarely needed them. 

This was a fast pattern, as were the Logan and the Avery. Thus far my feeling is that this company puts out easy to make patterns with very lazy drafting, in knits where it doesn't matter.  I made the higher crotch romper, and I might have shortened it.  The fit is fine, though not at all flattering. The pockets are a bit too low.  I don't really like the strap method.  You precut the straps and sew the ends together then treat it like a bias strip, sewing it it as a binding for the armhole which is just not sewn to anything at the top. There's instruction on how to put clear elastic in the tops - which I recommend, but my straps are gaping all the way around, suggesting that this method overall doesn't create a very good structural finish for a garment.  I do like the bodice fit enough to be semi tempted to make the dress, but not until I have decided how to fix this strap issue. 

Chalk and Notch Marcel dress review

 I really liked this pattern when it came out and I managed to avoid buying it until summer, thus keeping my enthusiasm fresh.  I also pretty quickly chose this subtly striped Liberty lawn for it - one of my hoarded fabrics that I'm trying to finally use.  

I found the instructions clear.  I do wish pdf instructions would be aligned vertically instead of portrait style, which means you have two pages across and very small print.  I used A0 printing and there was a moderate amount of free space on my pages - almost one entire sheet, which is 7$ of wasted paper.  I cut size 4B - you have the choice of a larger cup size, which changes both the bodice and the centre front piece. And I aligned my stripes as the model has done on the Chalk and Notch website, though my instinct would have been to do the opposite.  If anything I'm surprised and the subtleness of the effect but I think it's smarter in fact to have the vertical stripes be the main focus of the dress. 

I expected to ADORE this dress.

In fact as I've been binge sewing my way through a post-surgery week, this was a highlight plan.  I am sort of getting tired of sewing, but I popped it out over the course of a day.  It's straightforward. Except for the straps. 

Here I am recalling some dissatisfaction I had with the Peppermint/Elbe textiles pattern from last year, which required you to insert the straps at your own personalised length.  That ended up being too hard to identify and my straps were too short and I couldn't stand them.

Here, you have the option to slightly angle the straps on the front. I did this.  I have sloped shoulders. Then you can try on the wee bodice piece to your heart's content until the straps are adjusted to suit you. I angled the back straps as well.  I should have even shortened them a bit.  So my main irritation with this pattern is that you really can't do just one.  You need to do one, identify exactly what happens with the straps during wear, and then make that a permanent feature of your pattern. 

 Also, in the end, this is quite billowy, with the gathers mostly at the sides and the front just...roomy.  Good for pregnancy.  I'm not pregnant though.  And in the short version it feels very very short because it doesn't touch my legs.  So, good if you are somewhere so hot, you want to feel like you aren't wearing clothes.  But I feel like it's not enough dress.  A breeze would be dangerous.  I recommend heavier fabric, like tencel, rayon or linen (unless you want that nothing effect.)  I think I would not make this length again - I'd add one more tier.  (I'm 5'4")  Also, this dress suffers a severe lack of pockets, and nowhere to put pockets, unless you put them on the side panel.  

Overall I am satisfied but I am not in love.  I'm not rushing to make the second one but I could see it happening one day.  Definitely would be a fun make for lots of scraps.

Elizabeth Suzann Georgia top & dresses

I made the Florence pants first and then this top.  It was a very fast and easy make.

On this I wasn't sure how much ease I would like so I traced the OS (one size) and OSM (one size minus).

I made up the OSM first in a piece of linen I had leftover, from Miss Matabi's online shop.  This linen is oddly textured and shiftier than I expect linen to be.  It is really beautiful but might be a bit lighter than the model version.

Here it is on the model:

And here it is on me:

My first try-on made me think the arms were too tight.  There's a pulling from the neck down the sleeve which I think feels very apparent in my linen.  So I went and made the short version of the dress in OS.  I used a light, almost flannel rayon from Guthrie & Ghani, a soft feeling teal fabric with gold lurex stripes.  It is too big.  I'm not sure it's too big in a bad way.  The fabric has the most beautiful drape but I was moving house and gave it away to a pregnant friend before I could even take photographs so you have to take my word for it.

This was an excuse to now make the midi dress in OSM in a mystery weave from Nepal.  This was loomed in smaller villages, and is either silk, wool or hemp because that's why I bought it, but I don't remember which...it has a kind of sticky feel to it, and is quite gauzy and a relatively light weave. 

I find it totally amazing that a dress which is a sack, and that currently takes me 45 minutes to sew - can be so flattering.  However, the length on this means I can't really walk with my normal stride, so I would shorten it 4" in future.  Other people have added a slit, which seems like the other thing to do.  I ended up taking my seam ripper to this and creating a slit, because I am a strange creature and tend to love my most raggedy creations, I now love this dress.

AND having proven that the OSM was the right size, I shortened the (already rather short) dress pattern by an inch and made one out of this LONG HOARDED piece of light pink Valentino wool crepe.  I'm trying so hard to use up my hoarded fabrics in sensible ways.  This piece of fabric has been not quite large enough for many projects - it was almost...so many different dresses. Or tops.  Etc.  This is the last thing I made prior to moving and my sewing machines are going into hibernation, so it had a lot of meaning attached to it other than the fabric from 2013.  A lesson cropped up: the fabric has travelled around the world with me so many times that it now has holes in it, as you can see by my Fashionable Patch on the back of the dress.  If I need a reminder to use my fabrics and not hoard them, I think this is it.  Initially this textured wool weave had quite a bit of drape...but after washing it's shrunk even smaller and become cozy rather than drapey.  This dress is amazing. The weirdly lit sunset photos may not show it, but it feels like a hug. 

I decided to expand the potential and made the short version in a heavy viscose.  I wanted to see what happened with knits. I don't really like this actual fabric, so this version is for a friend - though I'm really happy with the pairing of the heavy viscose and the short pattern.  It became longer due to the added weight. I stabilised the shoulders with some twill tape in the seam. Next will be to add pockets....

 

Initially I wasn't sure how many Georgia dresses my wardrobe could tolerate (any? lots?).  It seems like I need more long ones.  

Elbe Textiles x Peppermint magazine Bardon dress review

 Peppermint magazine have popped out a new free pattern!  And like last summer, it's Lauren from Elbe textiles who has provided us with a new, trendy summer dress.  Just like everyone, I want to make all the gathered things.  (Aw you winter people, it will go with a long sleeve baselayer and a cardigan! DO IT!)

So I made this.  I did a shocker and actually planned ahead when I went to the fabric store, though 2.5 m of fabric was JUST BARELY enough.  I rarely convince myself to buy that much fabric!  It's rayon from The Fabric Store which I got in Auckland. 

I put together this dress in one day.  Size 3, though I could have sized down.  It has a reasonable amount of ease as it's supposed to be a loose dress, and the darts are a bit wide on me.  I have a solid inch of ease on each side of the bodice.  I shortened the bodice 1 inch and the first tier by 1 inch.  My hem is probably something like 2" deep.  Elbe patterns tend to be for tall people so shortening was an imperative.

The pockets are delightful. 

 Instructions were sufficient, and I did read them through.  Construction...well, wtf bias taping?  Really?  I cut out two bodices and did a simple burrito to make a clean finish which will support the weight of the dress better.  I do not think a 3 tier dress should be supported by bias tape.  But be my guest, if you like bias tape, go wild. 

 

 I'm gonna use these pocket pieces for everything from now on.  They are beautiful, deep pockets. Did I say that already?  You get it. 

This was easy, and I wore it the next day even though I hadn't pulled out all the stray gathered threads.  I am wearing it right now.  I wore it the day after surgery for these photos, and you would never guess I could barely stand up straight! This dress is a winner.  In order to wash it I might actually have to consider making another one.