Portuguese tiles Nettie dress

Pattern: Nettie Dress + Bodysuit Pattern by Closet Case Patterns
Fabric: 1.4 m ‘Portuguese tiles’ fabric, part polyester part viscose
Haberdasheries: None!

Making this dress was so little effort that I hardly understand why anyone would go shopping! What was also easy is that it could be sewed on a regular machine, since the fabric doesn’t fray. I don’t quite understand why knit fabric doesn’t fray whereas a knit sweater that hasn’t been finished properly would, but it’s certainly convenient. I had some serger problems a while ago and didn’t feel like doing lots of test runs now, so I just sewed this on my regular machine using a zigzag stitch. I also zigzagged the hem and sleeves, as the usual double needle stitching causes a tunnel, which I find a lot less professional looking than a nice flat zigzag!

I got the pattern in Closet Case Patterns’ thanksgiving sale. I didn’t want the dress to have the bodycon effect it’s supposed to have as I have high hips, so a looser fit is more flattering on me. Therefore I cut a size 16 (!), although I ended up sewing a 14 – and grading to 12 at the arm hole. I ended up using the sleeves from the Lady Skater Dress pattern by Kitschy Coo as I thought the Nettie sleeves were strangely off the shoulder. And I added a seam in the back piece as a swayback alteration. So in the end I guess I might as well have improvised this dress based on my tried and tested Lady Skater pattern, while I was trying to make things easier for myself by not improvising… However, this way I also have a bathing suit pattern for when I want to make a 1920s bathing suit.

I liked the colour and pattern of the fabric (and its name, as I love Portugal – although Portuguese tiles or azulejos are usually blue) but I’m certainly not going to buy fabrics with a high artificial fabric content anymore. When I buy clothes I always check the label first and don’t even try them on if they’re not made of natural fabrics, since those are so much more comfortable to wear and also more environmentally friendly (washing artificial fabrics causes microplastics to end up in the water!), and it’s rather silly to put in effort making my own clothes by a different standard.

The zigzag sleeve hem

Kitty testing the fabric :P. She liked it!

Miette jeans skirt

Pattern: Miette by Tilly and the Buttons

Fabric: thin denim

Haberdasheries: none!

A while ago I made a jeans wrap skirt using the Miette pattern from Tilly and the Buttons. Another fine example of sewing with kitty! :P She attacked my scissors while I was cutting the pattern paper, my pencil as I was tracing… She sneaked up on me and I noticed for the first time that I do not hear her walk! One moment she’d be three metres away, the next, two metres closer. Veeery relaxed sewing knowing that you might be jumped at any moment without hearing it coming! Needless to say sewing this skirt went very quickly, too.

Hehe, Juniper isn’t a terrorcat by any means, she just gets playful around sewing materials! And I have since learned that if I want to make things easy for myself the best time to cut my fabric is during her afternoon nap of four hours!

So, I did finish the skirt eventually. Apart from the feline intervention, the pattern (which is meant for beginners) was easy and quick to sew and the resulting skirt is very comfortable to wear, although it does freak me out a little that the overlapping flap at the back could be lifted by the wind when I’m outside, or accidentally be pushed aside when I move. As you can see from the foliage I took these photos very recently :P.

 

 

Brasov wrap top

Pattern: Brasov wrap top by Itch To Stitch

Fabric: 1.6 m Modissimo from Textielstad (65% modal, 35% polyester)

Haberdasheries: none!

All credit to Welmode for this pattern+fabric combination. When I saw her Brasov I wanted to make one, too, and got the same fabric but in a different colour.

The pattern was quite easy to work with. Printing and assembling the digital pattern was especially easy, because of the option to print only your own size. It’s great that Itch To Stitch put that in! I didn’t always find the pictures in the guide very clear though, and I also had to alter the top a bit to fit properly, which I’m not too happy about. Why do so many patterns that are specifically for knit fabric put in so much wearing ease?! According to the size table, I should make a size 0 or 2, but luckily I read about this project and its sizing on another blog and decided to make the smallest size, 00, instead. And that fits great! Knit fabric is made for a little negative ease…

Besides making a different size, I also took about 2 cm off the shoulder because I don’t like the seam hanging off my shoulders, and to match the armhole of the Lady Skater pattern, as I wanted to use its sleeves instead. Finally, I made the shirt 3 cm shorter, which went fine using the instructions.

I sewed the shirt up in just an evening, after the cut out pattern pieces had been in my cupboard for about two months…

My Make Nine 2018 choices

A few years ago I took part in Lucky Lucille’s Sew For Victory and Spring For Cotton sewalongs. Here’s another one that seems nice to take part in, especially as her website states “This is a gentle challenge. It’s not one that you can fail. It’s meant to be flexible”! =) I’ve been trying my best not to stress myself by imposing deadlines on myself anymore, so a gentle challenge is the only thing I want to be going for…

Here are my choices, though in no particular making order!

Project #1: 1920s-40s knitted men’s slipover

I’d like for my husband to have a full civilian outfit for both the 1920s and 1940s, and this is the first part of it. This project’s already on the needles!

Project #2: Napoleonic short cloak

Last year I made a 17^th century cape for my husband, and I’ve got enough left of the wool fabric to make myself a short cloak for another era. Since I always borrow his Napoleonic cape, it would be nice for both of us if I had one of my own!

Project #3: A new 1940s dress

I’ve been (occasionally) doing World War 2 events for a few years now, but there aren’t that many clothes in my 1940s wardrobe yet, and even fewer that are a colour that actually suits me! So I want to make a new 1940s dress in a nice bright colour pattern. My husband and I have been taking 1910s-40s dancing lessons, and I'd like to go to a lindy hop party in full 1940s attire.

Project #4: 1920s party dress

Last year I went to a nice historical clothing exhibition at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht (well, actually it was both historical and more recent fashion, but I largely ignored the contemporary pieces! :P), where I saw, among other things, this lovely 1920s dress that I’d like to recreate. Probably in blue, though. I’d love to wear this dress to a 1920s party!

Project #5: The Drawers of Doom

(Imagine dramatic background music) These are the drawers of my fabric cupboard. There are four of them. And since they are full of UFOs and bought clothes needing alteration (yes, all four of them!) I call them the Drawers of Doom (D.o.D.). This year, one of the main sewing related things I’d like to do is to get the D.o.D. a lot emptier than they are now! Then I could do something nice and handy with these drawers, such as storing my yarn stash in them =).

Project #6: Brasov wrap top

I really like Welmode’s Brasov top, and would like to make one as well.

Project #7: Underwear!

For years now, I’ve had trouble finding nice underwear, so I thought I’d have a go at making it myself. It would be awesome, once I’ve got a good pattern, to never have to look for underwear that it exactly to my liking, again!

Project #8: WW2 QAIMNS uniform

I’ve got two World War 1 nurse uniforms, and a Boer War one, and since I already bought suitable fabric for a WW2 version a couple of years ago, and had a look at an original last year, why not make the WW2 one as well? I suppose this project has the lowest priority, though, as I haven’t got any WW2 nurse events planned yet.

Project #9: It Cannot Fail To Please sweater

As I said under #3, I’m hoping to add more deep winter colours to my 1940s wardrobe, so I’ll be making this in dark pink.

Gordon tartan skirt

Pattern: improvised

Fabric: about 70 cm wool tartan fabric and 70 cm black acetate lining fabric

Haberdasheries: an invisible zipper

This fabric was a present from my husband, bought in Edinburgh on one of our holidays in Scotland! I decided to make a contemporary skirt from it, rather than anything resembling a kilt.

The fabric was very easy to work with. Wool is easy anyway, but I could also follow the tartan pattern to cut straight, to determine the height of the waistband and the length of the skirt, and to make the pleats.

I lined the skirt with black acetate; just attached it to the tartan fabric and sewed them as one, and invisibly hemmed the skirt by folding the tartan around the lining and hand stitching it in place.

I used an invisible zipper. I’d used one before, on the previous contemporary skirt I made, but that was almost a year ago, so I didn’t really remember how I did it. This time I wanted to get it in even more invisibly, but on my first attempt I hit one tooth with my machine needle, which meant the zipper didn’t work anymore and I had to take it out again. Oh no! After that I ended up sewing the new zipper in by hand, as that gave me more control over how close to the teeth I sewed. I did my best to precisely line up all the lines in the tartan pattern, but of course some got away! Still, the skirt looks a lot more neat than most store-bought tartan and check items, which appear to be cut and sewn randomly...

This skirt turned out just how I imagined it! =)