While scoping out what’s soon to be our local grocery store (though we’re hoping to go back to 90% market shopping, with only one monthly supermarket run) on Easter weekend, my boyfriend and I found a screenprinting kit in the kids’ arts & crafts aisle at Tesco, for a mere £7! As you’re well aware, I do loads of sewing, but I’ve never tried screenprinting before since the amount of startup materials always seemed so intimidating.
What better way to kickstart January than with activewear, amirite?? Especially if it’s a pattern you’ve sewn a thousand times before, in a fabric you love, and made entirely with stash fabrics. Bonus points if it’s also essentially a clone of a garment you already own so you’re pretty much guaranteed of success!
In the years since launching our Tessellate Tee pattern, I found myself wearing the turquoise, yellow, and claret hoodie sample (featured on the pattern cover) for nearly all of my coldest runs – I can’t even tell you how many early morning run commutes this came along on! The key here was that I made it in Funkifabrics’ “thermo” fabric which is essentially fleece-lined lycra. It’s stretchy with great recovery, and has a smooth exterior, but the interior is fluffy and fleecy like the inside of a sweatshirt, which makes it really warm. I often paired this hoodie with a pair of Steeplechase Leggings I’d also made in black thermo, and the combo is one I’d wear on my coldest and wettest runs or cycle commutes.
For once I’ve actually coordinated my sewing with the weather! Though, like most of my makes, this had a rather long lead time… I actually bought this 1.5m of Atelier Brunette “Shade Ochre” viscose fabric from Lamazi Fabrics last summer but didn’t quite work out which pattern to pair with it until recently, when I decided I wanted to try another variation of the Saraste shirt/dress/top from the first Named book, “Breaking the Pattern”.
Happy Friday everyone! I sewed this a few weeks ago when I was in desperate need of a pick-me-up so I went off-plan for a purely joyful sew! It’s all because of this incredible fabric I found, the Lucha Libre kitties cotton jersey from Like Sew Amazing. I mean, how could I not click buy?!
Sarah had actually had some of this jersey in stock before, but it pretty much sold out immediately – I pounced on this the second I saw she got stock back in, and I’m glad I did, because that round sold out quickly, too. She actually restocked this last weekend, and (yep, you guessed it!) it sold out again. So what I’m saying is, if you want this fabric, definitely follow Like Sew Amazing on Instagram and keep an eye on her IG Stories so you can pounce when she gets another shipment.
Since I’m in lockdown for the foreseeable future due to my medical history, all of my running has been on the treadmill we’ve (temporarily) set up in our (still under renovation) bathroom. It’s got a skylight for air, and I’ve got a great fan to circulate it, but it’s still far hotter and sweatier than running outside where you create your own wind just by moving forward. So I’ve been reaching deep into my activewear stash for those summery garments I’d normally only wear for a few weeks out of the year in the hottest part of summer, and recognising that I need a lot more summery running tops!
So naturally I reached for View B of our Sweat Luxe pattern since I’ve been wearing my fluorescent orange version a lot. But this time I wanted to play with the pattern a bit so I scooped out the armholes a little further in the back and narrowed the straps by a centimeter or so just for something different.
I’ve been trying to sew down my stash a lot this year – picking projects that use up fabric I’ve already got (and love!) rather than buying new and running out of space in the little wardrobe that holds my fabric stash. So just before Christmas I was finally starting to recover from the dreaded flu and thought my sewing mojo could really use a boost in the form of a Quick Knit, err, Dress! Usually I sew a Quick Knit Top to boost my mood but this time I fancied a dress instead, and I had just the fabric to use.
I bought this particular fabric from the FabWorks stall at the Great British Sewing Bee Live show back in 2017 and I knew it’d make for a great and comfortable winter dress. I’m not often drawn to prints but I loved that this one was a floral with pixellation in places on a super stretchy but lightweight French terry, so it would be warm and very easy to wear through winter.
Since I was making our athlete model, Jenni, a full cycling set to her own measurements, I thought it only fitting that I also ask what sort of colours or prints she’s into, and I was delighted when she came back with a bunch of animal prints from Funkifabrics’ selection. A girl after my own crazy-prints-for-activewear heart!!
I narrowed it down to this pink, purple, black, and turquoise animal print (mostly because a lot of others had subtle stripes and I didn’t want to stripe-match!) which I had printed onto their new Life Recycled polyester base fabric. This was my first experience using this recycled base fabric and I’d definitely use it again – it had a similar in weight and feel to their standard Flexcite base but with the knowledge that it’s less harmful to the planet than standard, virgin polyester.
We’ve just come back from 10 days in America visiting my family spread across three states. My parents moved down from where I grew up in Pennsylvania to be closer to my brother and his family in Norfolk, Virginia a few years ago, so our first stop was down there to visit my immediate family.
I absolutely took the opportunity to order a few fabrics online to be shipped to their house before we arrived, since I knew the in-person fabric opportunities weren’t great down there. I have a limited space for my fabric stash (on purpose!) and that space is pretty full so I made a conscious effort to only buy a few fabrics that I had specific projects tied to.
A few weeks ago J and I took a long weekend away in Amsterdam, but the majority of these patterns actually came from a different trip he’d made for work a few weeks earlier. It turns out that the newsagent inside Rotterdam station is a haven of sewing pattern magazines, who knew?? So rather than do a post on each of these, I thought I’d pull out my highlights, and take the chance again to explain how accessible the pattern sheets and instructions are for non-Dutch speakers…
I started as new office job back in May (I’m a product manager in the music/tech space when I’m not designing sewing patterns or writing books!) and since this company is significantly bigger than all the previous offices I’ve worked for in the past, I’ve spent the last few months getting excited about the prospect of the first big office Christmas party of my life. And of course, with that comes What To Wear.
