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My Mexican adventure – sewing highlights

Wow, what an adventure! We’ve been back home for a few days now and I still haven’t quite processed all the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes (oh, the tastes!) we experienced during our nearly 3 week long journey through Mexico. I’m pleased to report that both my travel wardrobe and my last minute travel bag were completely up to the task and all my abuse, and I’m glad I brought my leggings and long sleeves, too, because it was rather chilly in Mexico City and San Cristobal in particular! Detailing the entire trip would take far too long (let’s just say that in my first day there I ate 3 new fruits and vegetables previously unknown to me, and I’d need both hands to count all the amazing places I swam!), so this is just a rundown of the sewing-related highlights of the trip. (For the fitness-related highlights, pop over to RiverRunner!)

I knew at some point I wanted to buy an embroidered blouse, but I really wanted one I could wear in real life that didn’t scream “Mexican holiday”, either. We found a lovely artistanal boutique shop in Oaxaca that had a ton of blouses and dresses that were both modern and contained elements of traditional Mexican embroidery, too. This blouse was in the window, and when I tried it on and it fit, I knew I had to have it. I utterly adore it.

It’s exactly the same in the front and back, and the embroidery is all black, stitched by hand, and with a lot of open cut-work. The fabric of the blouse itself feels like rayon, and it unrolled from my backpack wrinkle-free like it was born to travel!

In San Cristobal de las Casas, we at at a fabulous cafe run by the Zapatistas (now no longer in active combat mode) run as a co-op. Around the edges there were a bunch of little handicraft shops selling goods made by villagers and political prisoners, and I couldn’t resist this little pouch that has “Rebel Women” and a fierce Zapatisa lady (aka “Mexican ninjas”!) embroidered onto it.

The Sewing Weekender Number 3

No sooner were we back home from Iceland than I was on my way up to Cambridge for my third Sewing Weekender! The first year I was lucky enough to buy a ticket, then last year I gave my “Sewing for Movement” talk as a speaker, but this year I was determined to attend again and set my alarm in order to buy my ticket as soon as they went on sale.

No joke, these tickets were hotter than Glastonbury – we crashed The Fold Line’s site and tickets sold out in like ten minutes despite having doubled capacity this year to 100 places!

My day on set

I wrote this post back in October, but couldn’t talk about it until now!

I got a call on my mobile and in less than two hours I found myself on the set for The Great British Sewing Bee, rifling through the on-screen sewing supplies and marveling at the endless array of haberdashery available to the contestants! The next day I was whisked off for an emergency manicure, and before I knew it, I was demonstrating sewing techniques in front of two cameras under the bright lights on set!

Now, before you jump to any conclusions, no, I was not a contestant! (I did apply again this year, but my Mexican holiday fell right over their filming dates). I stepped in at short notice to help the production team with some extra “how-to” videos they film for BBC Learning, to teach people how to sew projects that relate to the challenges made in the show. Kinda like saying “You know that cool thing that you just saw a contestant make? Well, look how simple it is to make something similar!”

For this, they needed someone who could sew (obviously!), write sewing instructions which could then be translated into cues for the cameramen, editors, and voice over artists, and also perform well in front of the cameras. And those three things are pretty much what I excel at and enjoy doing, so it was a massively enjoyable day for me!

A Day of the Dead refashioned tee

I know I’m technically a day late for Dia de Los Muertos, but if Mexico City can hold their official celebrations today, then so can I!

This project actually started life in a market in Brittany two years ago, where I bought a pair of sugar skull print leggings off a market stall for a grand total €3. But they were “one size fits all” and “made in China”, which means that really, “one size fits most Chinese people”, so the fabric stretched over my thighs making the print pale and unattractive. I still liked the print, though, and the jersey itself was soft and surprisingly nice for the price, but I didn’t wear them much.

So when I came across these leggings when I was switching over to my winter wardrobe last weekend, I pulled them aside and thought they’d be a great candidate for refashioning, especially since we’d planned to attend the British Museum’s “Days of the Dead” festivities. So I cut them apart along the inseam and unpicked the coverstitching, and I was left with a sizeable amount of fabric:

I took my basic tee sloper and my long sleeve fit perfectly into the leggings piece with only a few inches spare at the bottom (added to my scraps pile). Then I sifted through my jersey stash, and after a brief, ill-chosen combination of burgundy, mustard, and black (way too “German flag”, and thrown in the bin!!), realised I had enough of some royal blue ponte to make the body and neckband.


Photos taken before work on a very foggy morning with my phone camera…

Diary of an indie patternmaker, part one

Quite a few of you were interested in hearing about the process of launching my own line of exercise sewing patterns, and since I tried to keep everything very quiet until the launch day, I couldn’t really talk about the process at the time, either (I decided to keep it quiet to minimise the “Are they ready yet? Are they ready yet? How about now??”, etc pressure when people get excited!).

I’ve been thinking about the possibility of making some of my own patterns for a while now, testing the waters last year with my Lacey Thong pattern, of course, but a full time job, marathon training, boat work, and busy social schedule mean that it always seemed to be on the back burner and never at the top of my To Do List. But I was made redundant from my tech job in August (really, it’s ok!) so I had time to think about what I wanted to do while we were in Mexico, and I realised that I wanted to give sewing a shot as my main career, with patternmaking as a large part of that.

I had lots of ideas in my head (and in my sketchbook!) but I opted to specialise in exercisewear because that was something I a) was passionate about, b) had lots of practice sewing and designing for myself, and c) there wasn’t much on the market for already. I knew I wanted to release at least two patterns at the launch, but I developed these sequentially, starting with the XYT Workout Top.

The first step in the XYT development was to draft my own sloper and make a series of muslins for the different versions, chopping and redrafting the basic shapes until I was happy. Then I made a muslin which had a bra the same basic shape as the exterior with one layer of power mesh, but I found that even though I took the side seams in closer and closer, I still didn’t have the support I needed for running. It was only after talking to a friend that I was able to make the leap to the arrangement of the second mesh layer that made all the difference and stopped the bouncing! I then finished off this muslin version, wore it for a few runs, and only then did I start the process of transferring my hand-drafted pattern pieces into digital.

I started by scanning in the paper pieces and re-joining them digitally in Photoshop, and then came the laborious and tedious process of tracing around all the pieces with the Pen Tool (ie: vector paths) in Illustrator. I’ve used Photoshop for 10+ years, but I was a complete Illustrator novice when I started this patternmaking, and my god there’s a steep learning curve!

Turquoise lingerie set – bra and Lacey Thong

I arrived home from Mexico and wasn’t particularly filled with sewing mojo, to be honest, but happily this was short-lived, because I saw that Pattern Review had announced a short, two week Lingerie Sewing Contest for the second half of October! This was just what I needed to kick me into action and remind me that I’d been meaning to alter the seaming on my bra cup pattern after I’d made the eyelash bra.

The cups on that one were fine, but I have some gorgeous turquoise lace in my stash from Danglez’ closing down sale (sniff!), and it was too narrow for my one-dart cup pattern. So before I could even start sewing, I had to do some pattern drafting manipulation first – introducing some seam lines to account for the narrow lace, split and rotate the dart around a bit, and voila! Now I’ve got a three part cup!

I was so happy with the fit of this bra that I made myself a matching pair of Lacey Thongs (my free downloadable pattern, if you’d forgotten!) to go with it.

Seriously though – I think this must be about the 8th or 9th bra I’ve sewn, but only about the second I’d wear out of the house. Sewing a bra is easy – getting the bra to fit properly, feel comfortable, and look flattering is beyond challenging. I think I understand other people’s frustrations with trouser fitting now, because this bra fitting journey has been character-building!

My real breakthrough came when I stopped using commercial patterns and just traced existing RTW bras instead. For me, they were a much, much closer starting point than the bizarre cup shapes provided in the KwikSew and Elan patterns I’d previously tried.