Me Made May Week 2

Yep - I'm still behind schedule, but I will catch up.  Here's a quick round up of week 2 for those of you who don't check the Flickr group.

Day 8

I had to do a big presentation to senior management today so I wore Butterick 5627, I love this dress and always feel good in it.

Day 9

Wearing my Simplicity 2443 jacket and Simplicity 3686 pants to celebrate a promotion.

Day 10

Running late today so grabbed whatever I could find, BWOF button down skirt and Simplicity 3538 gold linen jacket.

Day 11

I celebrated my birthday in another BWOF top and a self drafted wool cardi - had big plans to check out the offerings at Tessuti but ended up staying home with a sick child.

Day 12

Forgot to take a photo today so I borrowed an old one - I wore Vogue 8771 and some me made undies under my jeans.

Day 13

Mother's Day and I managed to find a bit of time to make myself the short sleeve version of Butterick 5247 worn over the top of my other BWOF top.

Day 14

Had a daytime date with hubby today - coffee, shopping, lunch and a movie - and wore my striped BWOF t-shirt and my gold Simplicity 3538 jacket.  These two items are probably get the most ware of everything in my wardrobe because they're so easy to mix and match.

Mother's Day Makes

Happy Mother's Day to all you mums out there and extra special wishes to my Mum!

I found some wool knit scraps when I was transferring my fabric into my new cupboards and really didn't want to put it away, never to be seen again.  I knew I wanted a loose t-shirt style top - something I could pull on to give me some extra warmth but could also be worn on its own.  So I used the same pattern that I used last time I used this fabric - Butterick 5247.  Because I only had scraps I had to cut the back and collar in two pieces and significantly reduce the length (I cut five inches off view A).  This top turned out exactly the way I wanted.

And since it felt like ages since I'd done any fun cooking (as opposed to the required breakfast, lunch and dinner) I decided to make these raspberry scrolls today too.  

Source: thecurvycarrot.com via Robyn on Pinterest

This was one of my first pins on Pinterest and I'm so glad I found it.  These are fantastic, definitely worth the time it takes to make them.  My picture isn't as pretty but boy were they good.

A great day to celebrate being the mum of my best three creations.

MMM - Week 1 Round Up

OK I'm a little bit slow to get this done, but better late than never right?

I always have way too many plans for Me Made challenges but this one got off to a really slow start.  I have been able to stick to my pledged two items a day or a dress (even if one day I had to count my undies), but they've been a little less than inspiring.  Let's pretend I'm building up to a big finale.  

Day 1

I was home from work sick on day one so I've gone for comfort - yoga pants and t-shirt both from old copies of BWOF.

Day 2

Back to work and I'm still on a comfort kick in my  Ottobre leggings (2/2008 #16) and thick wool jersey dress (Butterick 5247).                            

Day 3

Feeling more alive in Simplicity 3686 pants and striped Kwik Sew 3740 top.

Day 4

An all Me Made outfit today - my pants are another version of Simplicity 3686, my top is a self drafted t-shirt and my jacket is Simplicity 2443.                       

Day 5

Another Kwik Sew 3740 - this time in a merino jersey and some me-made undies (I won't be modelling those online!)

Day 6

Wearing my latest creation McCall's 5630 shirt and my Kwik Sew 3740 striped top again.

Day 7

A miserable day so I pulled out a couple of old favourites, my dress is Vogue 8685 and my jacket is Simplicity 3631.

Week 1 is done and dusted and I've even managed to squeeze in a little bit of sewing so I should be able to debut a new outfit soon.

Horsing around

Winter has well and truly reached Melbourne and Paige was in desperate need of some new pyjama pants.

I had to use this picture of Paige jumping off her bed - it cracks me up!

A quick rummage through the stash and I found a couple of pieces of knit fabric and a new t-shirt that I bought a couple of years ago.  I used Butterick 5853 (so old it's not even listed on the website) for the pants - just one pattern piece so they were super quick.  The t-shirt was a little bit short in the sleeves so I added some contrasting cuffs and to give my horse loving girl a bit of a thrill I added an appliqued bright pink horse too.

Then in a recent trip to the fabric shop I picked up some horse print flannelette - I couldn't use my one piece pattern as the narrow width and directional print made it impossible to fit so I pulled out Simplicity 3577.

Paige sat and watched me hem the pants so that she could put them on straight away!  I love sewing pj pants - they're pretty much instant gratification and you know they're going to get plenty of wear.  AND that's one more thing crossed off my list.

McCall's 5630 - Chambray shirt

I've been seeing chambray shirts all over Pinterest and blog land for quite a while and I wanted to get in on the action.  I searched for fabric that matched the version in my mind for quite a while and then last week I found exactly what I wanted in Spotlight (of all places).  I didn't want to buy any more materials to make this shirt so I used McCall's 5630 from my pattern stash and I'm pretty happy with the results. 

You don't see many shirts on my blog because easing in sleeves is my kryptonite.  It's something I've always struggled with and has caused more than a few problems, but it was time for me to get over it, and I really need some new shirts.

Now the fit on my finished shirt isn't amazing - but it's better than anything I've been able to buy in RTW and over time I plan on improving it.  The pattern, however, is great.  Lots of tips and advice and adjustment lines.  Pretty much every review of this pattern mentioned the excessive ease in the sleeves but I was determined to beat my demons.  I read a few tutorials on removing sleeve cap ease but in the end I kind of fudged it and it work pretty well.  I simply cut down the middle and overlapped the pattern pieces by about a 1/4 inch.

Other than that I added 1-1/4 inches to the waist length and added 2 inches to the hem and that was it.  The instructions were great, the sleeve length was spot on and the shoulder seam sits where I like it too.  There does seem to be a fair bit of excess fabric in the back (maybe a sway back adjustment?) and as a cut a straight 14 a little extra ease at the waist and hips wouldn't go astray - but it's not too bad.

Sorry again for the crappy photos - we've had rain all week and the only person willing to take my photo is my eight year old and she's not very good at holding the camera still.  Might be time to investigate a remote.

This is my day six outfit for Me Made May and I'm really enjoying the challenge.  My two items a day pledge (with the exception of dresses) is pushing me, but in a good way.  I'll post a weekly round up on Tuesday.

My Sewing Room

There's still not a lot of sewing going on around here.  I'm home from work sick (can't remember the last time a bucket was an essential accessory) but daytime TV is doing my head in so I thought I'd show you my newly updated sewing room.  Last week's public holiday turned out to be a building day, rather than a sewing day, but I'm not complaining.  I should probably have tidied up before I took the photos!

 I hadn't realised how plain the room looks

Oh look - there's the vacuum cleaner...and a stubby holder. 

I can't tell you how much I love all that storage and the beautiful big cutting table.  It's not finished yet - holes need to be cut in the bench top for the machine leads, the buffet (side table) needs to come out and there are some built in shelves going in eventually as well.  And it needs some colour, I'd love some prints from Etsy but we'll have to see how the budget goes.  We still need to work out what we'll put on the top of the cutting table, at the moment it's an old piece of laminate, but I'll sort that out later.

So what have I been able to do?  Well I've started a refashioning project, cut out three pairs of PJ pants for my youngest and OOP McCall's 5630 is on the go for me.

And just as I was congratulating myself on how well my shirt was going, this happened.

Total rookie mistake - added the extra length for the waist but not for the hem.

Me Made May kicks off tomorrow - are you ready?

Updated Vogue 1257

Thank you all so much for your feedback on Vogue 1257.  The general consensus was to shorten or remove the sleeves and/or shorten the hem.  I couldn't believe that it hadn't even occurred to me to do that, clearly I'm not very imaginative at the moment.

Sorry - it's raining and this is the best the kids could manage.

As you can see I chose to shorten the sleeves - I've lopped off 34cm and then used a 1 inch hem.  I forgot to mention in my previous post that I hadn't hemmed the dress at all so the skirt now has a 1.5 inch hem.  It's definitely an improvement.  I wore it to work today and it was comfy, but it doesn't rock my world.  I've also decided that this is a dress for someone with a bigger bust than me - I really don't fill out all those pleats up top!

Tomorrow is ANZAC Day so I'm planning a day of sewing and football.  Go Bombers!

Vogue 1257 - the problem child

I love a good wrap dress.  They can be casual or dressy and flatter so many body shapes.  So when Vogue released 1257 I couldn't wait to get my hands on it.  Lucky for me this was released as Australia headed into summer so it didn't get made up straight away and I got to benefit from other people's experiences.  Unfortunately I had one of those moments when you put on the finished item and groan.  It's just not for me.  I'm not sure why, maybe I'm too covered up, but this dress makes me feel very matronly.

 Doesn't look too bad...

 No. No good.

If you've looked at this pattern on Pattern Review then you'll know that the sleeves run super narrow.  I'll also say that this is one of the most bulky dresses that I've made in a long time.  Often the pleats overlap and then have a facing or another layer over the top again.  Way too much fabric and no easy way to trim away the bulk like you could with a dart. 

The 'knot' before the band is applied

So what adjustments did I make?  First off I added some extra inches to accommodate my height; 1-1/4 inches was added to the body and the sleeve hem and 2 inches to the skirt hem.  Also, to reduce bulk I didn't use the bias binding on the front cuts for the band, and I reduced the band size to eliminate the gathers.  With all the pleats at the front 'knot' there are 9 layers of fabric before you add the band.  Then you have to sew it to the bodice with all its pleats and facing - they're so many layers my machine couldn't handle it.

The waist seam where the knot meets the pleats

After reading all the reviews I decided I could tackle the problem sleeves in two ways.  I could remove the sleeve from the bodice front and add a separate sleeve (Vogue 8387 was suggested as a possible template) or I could increase the width of the sleeve.  I played around with 8387 but I just didn't feel like it looked right so I decided to add some extra width to the sleeve.  I cut all of the dress as a size 14 except the sleeve which I took out to a size 20.  I forgot to adjust the armhole curve so there is a lot of ease in my sleeve cap!

Also, you might have noticed that I've added a tab to the top of my blog.  This is my electronic list of all the garments I'd like to make for Autumn/Winter (I've got a little notebook too that I take to fabric shops)  I doubt I'll get everything made but it's fun to dream!  No point moping, I'm off to start my next project.

Signing on

Not much sewing happening over here.  I've got patterns and fabrics matched up and ready to go (I've even pre-washed my fabric) but all the options seem to have overwhelmed me and so I'm doing nothing (except shopping - but that's another story).

To help get myself moving I've signed up for Me Made May.  While I struggled at times with the challenges last year I actually really enjoyed completing them.  This year I'm upping the ante a little and pledging to wear two me made items a day.

'I, Robyn of Sew Love Red, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May '12. I endeavour to wear at least two me made pieces each day for the duration of May 2012'.

Last night I forced myself to cut out a dress in the hope that it would give me a bit of a jump start...it's sort of working.  Hopefully I'll have something to show soon.  Aside from a melted credit card that is :)

Holy cowl - Vogue 1282

Going back a few months I treated myself to a couple of beautiful fabrics from Tessuti in Melbourne and this pale lavender silk/tencel (10/90) blend was one of them.  I knew when I bought it that I wanted to make a cowl top, but I didn't have a pattern in mind.  Then Vogue released their new patterns and 1282 went straight into my shopping basket.

It's a pretty clever design, all cut in one piece, but it's cut on the bias so it's a bit of a fabric hog.  

I found the drafting on this top wasn't as good as other Vogue's I've made recently.  The instructions have you reinforce two spots on the front cowl, yet when you sew it together they're on the outside.  I removed them, but the needle marks show on my delicate fabric so I wasn't very impressed.  I didn't like the way Vogue instructs you to finish the armholes either, and finished then my own way.  Rather than leaving the band as a single length, I sewed it into a circle and attached it in the round, then under stitched flipped to the inside and top stitched.   Also as a few others have noted the back neck sticks out and needs to be shaped.  Finally - I used a 5 cent coin for the weight in the front and left the hem unfinished.  Oh - it's reeeaally low cut.  I sewed it up as instructed because my fabric is sheer and I knew I'd need a cami underneath - but you might want to sew it a bit higher if you don't want everyone seeing your girls :)

Are you still with me?  Who knew there was so much to say about one little top!  This has been perfect for the indian summer we're having at the moment and the pastel colour is just right for Easter.

Happy Easter.