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Hands in many pots

I’ve got my hands in so many different projects right, it’s almost hard to keep up with myself!

My first priority was re-creating my piece for the upcoming book, which (as I’ve seen it talked about elsewhere online) I believe I can now reveal is tentatively titled “Pillowcase Challenge” and is all about recycling vintage pillowcases into other items. You’re going to have to wait until next spring to see my creation in the flesh (along with a few other pillowcase-related tutorials I’ve got tucked away), but here’s a teaser of my sample ready to be posted:

Silk tartan overblouse

Sorry for the delays in posting these photos, but I really wanted to do some proper photoshoots, and last week I had 8 hospital appointments in 5 days, and it gets dark by 4pm now in London so it makes matters even more difficult!

But if you’ll recall, my neighbour Helen gifted me a bunch of fabric from her fashion school days earlier this year. You’ve already seen her wool tweed turned into a skirt, but now’s the chance for the silk to shine! I had a browse through my vast pattern magazine archive and discovered that overblouse 114 from the Nov 08 BWOF (on the right in the first photo below) was the perfect design as it actually called for the exact type fabric I had, and it didn’t have any fiddly button openings that would make a clean finish difficult here, either.

This silk is a semi-sheer crepe chiffon, with a wonderful tartan printed onto it. This was printed onto the fabric after it was made, as opposed to most tartans which are made with the pattern woven into it with different coloured thread. The extra cool thing here is that the tartan is actually printed on the bias, which gives so much more interest to a fairly plain top, without adding any visual width that a wide horizontal stripe might give to the wearer.

Pillowcase Challenge giveaway!

Cast your mind back to May last year, when I posted about sending off some submitted projects for a book about reusing old pillowcases… You there yet? Great!

Because Craft Challenge: Dozens of Ways to Repurpose a Pillowcase has now been published! Or rather, it was a month or so ago, I’m a tad late…

I’ve got my copy here, which is full of really basic, easy sewing projects that are perfect for beginning sewers. The other cool things is that you don’t really have to use pillowcases for your starting points here – you could just as easily make things like the hat, stuffed toys, kimono (pictured above), remote control armchair caddy, cape, etc, from equivalent lengths of scrap fabric or fun quilting cottons. I sourced all my vintage pillowcases off eBay to make my samples for the book, too, so you don’t have to feel bad about cutting up your family heirlooms if you don’t want to, either.

So without further ado, here’s my winning submission, the “Flirty pyjama set”, featuring a camisole and French knickers made from one pair of pillowcases!


(Photo of the Flirty Pyjamas compliments of Lark Books!)

I love a man in yellow

I started work on this shirt so long ago it almost seems amazing that I finished it at all! I was first held up by buying some machine feet for this project back in the beginning of April, and here it is in June and I’m finally showing it to you (though I did finish it over a week ago so it was technically May!).

I’ve made quite a few button-down shirts for my boyfriend James over the years, but after reading through Shirtmaking: Developing Skills for Fine Sewing by David Page Coffin I had the epiphany that they were all really badly done and I couldn’t possibly ever go back to my old ways after that. Really, I cannot recommend this book highly enough – even if you never sew menswear, it is essential reading for all shirt and blouse construction.

So instead of using the old Simplicity pattern (OOP 5273), I thought I’d break with tradition and make my first long-sleeved shirt for him using BurdaStyle’s Jakob pattern. According to his measurements, I made a size 52 and it fits him perfectly. He also adds that he’s “a textbook 15 1/2” in dress shirts in case that helps anyone at all.

A shirt, two dresses, and 10,000 meters

This past weekend was a Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK, so technically I got another day though it doesn’t really feel that way! I did manage to get some sewing in amongst the DIY, cleaning, baking, running, and hosting, however. I finally finished James’s linen shirt, and even made myself a new day dress from La Mia Boutique using some of his excess linen/tencel fabric and some raspberry tablecloths…