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.

 

 

Colette Lady Grey summer coat

Pattern: Lady Grey by Colette, modified

Fabric: blue canvas-like fabric

Haberdasheries: two snap fasteners, grey fusible interfacing

Mid-November… Interesting time to post a summer (or inbetween seasons) coat. Actually, this coat has been finished for weeks and I’ve worn it lots of times already, but I didn’t get around to blogging lately. We had a 17^th century event in Groenlo in late October and I was busy making lots of things for that, and also we just got a kitten!

I found this pattern on the Colette website when I was looking to buy the Ceylon dress, and since there was a sale going on, I got both. They were a more reasonable price than usually, although having to print the pattern (78 pages…) and stick all the pages together is a task I could do well without. Having done this a couple of times now, I think I will actually save myself the trouble get myself more printed patterns in future!

I love the design of this coat, with the large collar and tie belt, although I hate the 3/4 length, wide sleeves – I can’t believe most people actually make them like that, rather than modifying them. I have absolutely no use for a coat without full-length sleeves in winter, but I also don’t want one in summer, as I wear a coat for warmth. And I’m not going to bother with gloves in summer, either. So I made the sleeves quite a bit narrower, and full length. And while I was about it, I decided to add cuffs as well, with the same height as the belt.

Other alterations I made are taking off about 3 cm at the pointy bits of the collar, because I think it was a bit too wide and thought it looked strange, and lengthening the coat by 20 cm. I had been wanting elegant, longer coats for a long time, but as usually, fashion did not comply, so I had to do it myself again.

I used large snap fasteners rather than buttons and buttonholes, because I thought it likely that the buttons would just be visible besides the tie belt, and we can’t have that!

 

 

Zebra skater dress and shirt

Pattern: Lady Skater dress by Kitschy Coo

Fabric: 2.3 m zebra patterned knit and black cotton knit

Haberdasheries: none!

How many Lady Skater dresses is too many? I don’t know, but I do know the answer isn’t four! So here’s my fifth one! (See my other four)

It is getting quite boring to use the same pattern, and cut the same pieces, again and again, but I like these dresses so much and they are so easy to combine, that I really want more of them! And on the plus side, at least I can just get started and don’t need to make a toile. This time, it was even more of the same, because the zebra fabric I found was very thin and needed another layer of fabric underneath it, so basically I had to cut two dresses to make one. But I’m happy with the result. I like bright coloured animal prints :).

The skirt is the original length, as in the pattern. Once again, I made elbow length sleeves, my favourite sleeve length for Skater dresses, and a low neckline at the back. And as the zebra fabric, which I got on Etsy, came in a fixed length which was enough to make a shirt as well, I did!

Two Regency fichus

Pattern: Single thickness neckerchief (included in Past Patterns #031, 1796-1806 front closing gown)

Fabric: about 75 cm of blue cotton and about 85 cm of white muslin

Haberdasheries: none!

 

As with my previous fichu, I used the ‘Single thickness neckerchief’ pattern included in Past Patterns #031. I am now trying to get more items in my re-enactment wardrobe in colours that actually suit me, so I wanted a blue fichu, but also a white one, to match my new ruffled cap, a present from Welmode =). I hand hemmed both fichus in the car on the way to Disneyland Paris and back, and was happy to return from this short trip with nice memories as well as two finished items!

The blue fichu is a bit smaller than the white one (more so than it seems in the photos). The pattern says to cut a square of 74 to 82 cm and then halve it, and the fichu is supposed to be cut on the bias. I didn’t do that with my previous fichu because I used a patterned cotton for it and didn’t want the pattern to go askew, and forgot about the bias, so while I thought I bought plenty of the blue cotton, it was in fact only just enough. However, the blue fichu fits well and stays in place well without the need to pin it to my clothes. The white fichu is actually on the large side, but because of the thin fabric, that isn’t an issue, either.

In my previous fichu, I replaced the pin that holds the pleats in place by a few stitches, and didn’t use pins here, either. I didn’t really like the idea of having a pin at the back of my neck, and this is handier for laundering as well.

Leopard tartan floral skater dress and shirt

Pattern: Lady Skater dress by Kitschy Coo

Fabric: 2.7 m viscose and polyester (?) knit

Haberdasheries: none!

I ran into this slightly crazy fabric at a store and wanted to buy the usual amount for a skater dress, but since there would have been a very small piece left over, I got that for free. Therefore, as I think this fabric will look nice with a jean skirt I plan on making, once I had cut out all the pieces for the dress, I also cut a shirt out of the leftovers.

 

I had just cut the front of the dress when I realised the part of the fabric I liked the least would be the main visible part when I wear a cardi over the shirt. So I cut the front again, with a nicer layout, and just used the first front as the back, resulting in a low neckline at the back of the shirt. I had been thinking of doing this anyway as I saw it on another skater and liked it.

This fabric was difficult to serge – I took a serging lesson and thought I now understood the machine, but it gave me a hard time again with this dress and skirt – and also nasty to hem, as it’s got velvety swirls on it which are thicker than the rest of the fabric. The twin needle hem initially looked like this:

Eek. This made me think about why I twin needle the hem of the skirt anyway. The sleeves, sure; they need to be elastic, after all. But the skirt doesn’t! So I ripped the hem and restitched it with a single needle, and that looks much better.

Basic black skirt

Pattern: Drafted based on my WW1 nurse aprons, which are loosely based on the Wingeo #411 1910-1915 skirt pattern

Fabric: Thick black cotton twill

Haberdasheries: An invisible zipper

A first: Putting in an invisible zipper

A nicely warm long cardigan I own doesn’t look that nice with trousers, but also not with flared skirts. I thought it would look very nice with a basic black fitted skirt slightly longer than the cardigan itself, but couldn’t find one, so – the usual, I made it myself.

As the bottom part of my World War I nurse aprons came quite close to what I had in mind for this skirt, I decided to base it on those aprons! So it’s got the same panel layout at the front, English seams, and I also added similar pockets sewn between the panels.

This was my first time working with an invisible zipper, and I’m happy with the result! Sewing it in was easier than I expected, even using a regular foot.