Beach Cover Up

A lovely day at the English seaside!

My wardrobe has not really needed a beach cover up, but I am a sucker for new sewing projects, so I kept my eye out for some cotton lace fabric and this one spoke to me when I was in Canada, at Fabricana.

It was sold in a tube, the fabric was manufactured in the round, so I decided to use that to my advantage when making the garment.

I bought a length of 85cm, and a burn test tells me that it is cotton. It has a very stiff hand and hasn't softened with washing. I would prefer if it had a bit more drape. It is also a little too bulky and heavy to be a really convenient beach cover up.

To make up, I sewed the shoulder seams together, by hand, along an angle. Then I trimmed off the excess to a very small seam allowance. The fabric doesn't fray. Then I snipped along the eyelets down the sides to create an armhole. The front slashed neckline was too high, so rather than trim it down, I folded it down and stitched it so that it forms a facing on the front neckline. I quite like the extra thickness there, and it is handy to have a quick way of telling the front from the back. I threaded cotton cording through the eyelets for the belt tie. That actually took some time, because the eyelets don't run straight around the tube in a circle. I was going a bit wonky and had to work out how to keep it level while still looking like I was going though a proper row.

I think it is not quite finished. I really should stitch a hem around each armhole, and possibly the hem. Because it is all hand sewing, it makes a good travel project to finish up when I really miss stitching.

But not on the Isle of Wight.

Costs:
Fabric: £6.85
Cording: 44p
Total: £7.29

Sleeveless Peony Dress

How many floral dresses does my wardrobe need? Quite a few, apparently.

This fabric has been on a long journey, and, guess what? I am so pleased to be wearing it as a dress, instead of having it tucked away in my stash. Ironic, that we like a fabric so much that we are afraid to do it justice, so we don't use it, but we don't get to look at it either. Although I am slightly envious of those with sewing rooms who can store their stash in a shelving system, with bolts of fabric wrapped around cardboard cores. But I digress.

Back to the fabric. Many years ago now, Marie from A Stitching Odyssey sewed and blogged a lovely Elisalex dress. When she had a de-stash and mentioned that she was selling 3m of the same fabric, I wanted it! I'm ashamed to say that I wanted it to make my own Elisalex. How terrible of me! But Marie was sweet enough to sell it to me anyway. I adore the colours, the creamy-beige background is not a colour that suits me terribly well, but the blues and the pops of dark pink are absolutely "my colours".

It is an upholstery fabric, apparently from the USA, and mentions Teflon in the selvedge. The fabric has some sort of coating on it which gives it a sheen, but it seemed to wash off. It is actually pretty lightweight for an upholstery fabric. It feels not much heavier than a quilting cotton to me, and behaves the same.

After I came to my senses, and realised what a sewing no-no it would be to make an Elisalex, I sat with the fabric for... oh, about 3 years. I decided to make a coat with it, instead of a dress.

Well, the coat is actually almost finished, but probably quite far from making it to the blog, so with summer here, I eked out a dress from the remaining 1m using the Colette Peony pattern.

I have made the Peony once before, but since realised that this pattern was crying out to be made in a super-sized floral. Well, those flowers couldn't be any bigger and still fit on a dress. Yes, it is a loud, statement dress, but I work in horseracing, so raceday dressing is pretty normal for me.

I didn't have enough fabric to add sleeves so I checked a couple of blogs to confirm that alterations are usually done by binding the armholes. I adjusted the pattern to take a lot off the tops of the shoulders and the front neckline. I'm delighted to report that, although the shoulder seams are very small, they hit exactly where my bra strap goes and there is never a strap peeking out.

I was taking a big risk with my coat, that nothing would go wrong. The coat pieces were cut out, but I used up every last scrap in this dress. So much so, that I cut the facing, the sleeve bindings and the pocket bags from, what else, a blue shirt!

I really wanted to add pockets. The skirt has enough fullness that they don't spoil the line of the side seams, but I didn't have enough fabric to cut even one side of the pocket bag. However,  I did have enough strips to add a tiny edging to the pocket bag. This isn't pieced, I cut a full pocket from the facing fabric, as much width as I could from the fashion fabric, and just folded in the raw edge and topstitched it to the inside fabric. The finished pocket looks great, even if my phone weighs too much to be carried easily in it.

I also got to use my new overlocker to finish the seam allowances. I overlocked the side seams, the pocket edges and the facing edges, and I am very pleased with how they look. I was a little surprised though, that my iron melted the overlocking thread when I was pressing the seams open. I'm not co-ordinated enough to use a pressing cloth to press open seam allowances, and besides, I was pressing an adjacent seam, not the overlocked ones, they just happened to end up under the iron.

The melting was a bit of a problem, because it made a scratchy, plastic blob on the insides of my dress. I covered it with a piece of hemming lace, in the method of a Hong Kong seam finish, but that defeats the purpose of overlocking as a seam finish. (But imagine the decadence of lace Hong Kong seams in all my dresses!)

I used an old gifted/thrifted zip, lapped with the help of Lauren's tutorial. It is not perfect, showing at the bottom, and at the waistline, but it is pretty near perfect at the top, completely hiding the old zip in a not quite right colour.

I cut the skirt length to the pattern pieces this time. I have shortened my previous Peony, and like it much better. Such a large scale print is better in a smaller dress. I might even hem it shorter still.  I used my lovely lace as a hem facing, and hand stitched it down.

Costs: 
 Fabric: £9
 Lining/facing fabric: £0
 Pattern: £0
 Thread: £0
 Notions: zip £0, lace £1
Total: £10

Calligraphy

I learned another new skill this week: Calligraphy at Tea and Crafting.

This is my second workshop there, I learned to crochet last year, and am happy to say that I have been doing it ever since.

I just love Copperplate Calligraphy, and I tried to teach myself in the past. Like all worthwhile endeavours, it takes practice, and I just didn't put the work in. Then my pen ran out of ink cartridges, and... you know how it goes.

So I tried again, this time with the help of Suzie of A'Laise. Her elegant branding and fun personality were a delight, and we got lots and lots of writing done. The sample above, was my final page of the night, although Suzie was the one who wrote my name!

I'm definitely inspired to keep practicing, and am so looking forward to buying more supplies from Suzie's beautiful online shop.

Me Made May '16: what I wore

Week 1

Sun 1 May

Entertaining

White floral skirt (altered to remove lace from the hem), long sleeve teal t-shirt (dyed from bright blue), Ruby Tuesday Cardigan

Almost counts as a complete me-made outfit because I have altered every piece.

Mon 2 May

Gardening

Brown Cashmerino Jumper
This is so old now that it is really not suitable for wearing out of the house.

Tue 3 May

Work

Grey Flannel Dress

Wed 4 May

Work

Megan Dress

Thu 5 May

Work

Chiffon Top

Fri 6 May

Work

Sashiko Birds Dress

Sat 7 May

Activities for kids

Green Sprig Top

Week 2

Sun 8 May

Gardening

Ruby Tuesday Cardigan

Mon 9 May

Work

RTW
Tried on B&W Stripe Skirt but it needs shortening, and lining.

Tue 10 May

Work

Liberty Mimi Blouse
Felt frumpy all day.

Wed 11 May
Work
Ashton Shawlette, as scarf

Fri 13 May
School run
White dress
Felt way too conspicuous and ordered denim coloured dye to change the colour asap.

Sat 14 May
Kids activities
Miette II

Week 3

Sun 15 May
Gardening
Mustard T-shirt and Cardigan

Wed 18 May
Work
Wool pinstripe skirt
I really want to reduce the hips and peg the hem to give it a proper wiggle. But there are so many seams, and I spent so long taking them in when I first made it, that I am really unmotivated. Maybe next year.

Fri 20 May

Home

Silver pin dot t-shirt

A proper wardrobe staple. Right fabric with the right pattern.

Sat 21 May

Child Birthday party

Pink Liberty Sweatshirt
Silver pin dot t-shirt

Week 4

Sun 22 May

Gardening

Yellow Spot Shirt

Mustard Cardigan

Tue 24 May

Work

B&W Skirt

Wed 25 May

Work

Camel Cashmere Skirt

Fri 27 May

Tea party

Zig zag dress

Sat 28 May
Gardening
Ruby Tuesday Cardigan
Dyed teal t-shirt

Tue 31 May
Home
Miette Cardigan

I was not very motivated to wear my me-mades this year. There were a lot of days that I was grateful to skip. I don't know if I have higher expectations of clothes that I have made, but there are so many items where I want to tweak the fit. When I do, I like it much better.

I have been sewing less than usual and my machine needed a service, which I successfully sorted out myself (I think). I didn't finish any projects this month, but I did have an intensive session of making very useful alterations.

Photos are very useful, but I didn't take a daily outfit photo. The effort of setting up a camera, downloading and posting photos was more than I was interested in. Especially because I wasn't feeling great about my outfits in the first place.

A lot of my me-mades do not fit with my personal style, particularly on work / weekdays. I reach for a dress almost every single work day, and I have a collection of dresses which I love. I also wear them most days off. Separates are not very "me".  The problem here is that I am a stingy fabric buyer. If I like something, and am not buying for a specific pattern, I often only buy 1m of it, which limits me to a skirt or a top. I am slowly getting over it and trying to buy 2m at a time. I also need to stick with buying solid colours in the fabric store. All of my makes with solids/neutrals are wardrobe staples while I have tired of my prints.

The weather in May is always variable. It is bright and sunny but cold, and sometimes rainy. We even had some snow! The gardens are blooming so we all fall into the trap of wanting to put our winter things away, but not having warm enough weather to wear summer clothing.  Luckily I have a few RTW things that are made of summer-looking fabrics, but in a heavy weight.

Alterations

There are so many of my makes that need tweaking/altering, but I only got motivated to do so in the last week of May. It did give me a boost to finish off the month stronger than I started.

Here are the things that I altered:
Navy pin-dot dress: shortened hem by 4.5cm. Reduced girth of cummerbund to account for weight loss and enable wearing at high waist/under bust. Still struggle to find the right occasion to wear this: too formal for home, too casual for work, not pretty enough for garden party.
Black & White Skirt: Shortened hem by one band. Lowest band is now black. Still unlined so can only wear with bare legs.
White dress: Hooray! Dyed with Dylon Denim Blue. Came out a bit too dark but I'll leave it out on a few sunny days in the hope of fading. I unpicked the hem before dying because the 100% cotton thread had shrunk so I need to re-sew.

Note to self: get pictures of these changes when worn.

Not worn this month

Stride Socks. Actually, I wear these around the house all the time, but they are painful to wear inside shoes so I never wear them out.
Not cold enough: all cowls/wool scarves/wool jumpers/wrist warmers.
Not warm enough: Linen shirt dress, beach dress, cowl top, Sorbetto dress, Garden skirt, Red skirt, martini skirt, Cambie dress.
Red bow dress. Terrible oversight! Mainly due to having to wear it without tights, which is only acceptable to work in June, July and August. Plus my office is coldest in those months. But I will pledge to wear it to work this week.
Dahlia Dress. Frumpy. I do wear it in Winter with a cardigan/jumper over the top, but I have 1000 other stretchy dresses that are way cuter.

Northern Lights Shawl(ette)

In April, while my parents were visiting, we spent a weekend in the lovely city of Norwich. It is a charming place, full of history and beautiful buildings. A small and perfectly formed city.

One of my favourite parts is the covered market. It is row after confusing row of all sorts of stalls selling everything: butchers, greengrocers, cafes, cards, ribbons, toys, clothing, gifts, luggage and, of course, yarn. I had to get something while I was there, and what better souvenir for a knitter than a skein of yarn? I loved the colours of King Cole Riot, so while it is not an artisan yarn, nor a fibre composition of particular merit, I was taken with it and bought it in the colourway Rhapsody. I liked the blues and pinks, although it has come up with red as the dominant colour. The colour changes move evenly and then reverse through the skein so that each stripe is flanked by the same colour. Eg: violet, teal (start), violet, grey, red, pink, lavender (middle of change), pink red, grey, violet. And so on.

I was going to crochet a ripple scarf but there wasn't enough drape so I browsed Ravelry specifically for a scarf or a shawl in this yarn.  I loved the way this pattern really showed off the dramatic colour changes to their full effect. Most makers had used two skeins but I went ahead with one and knitted until I ran out of yarn. It is enough for a shawlette, which I find more wearable than a shawl anyway.

Tragically, I found this really boring to knit. There are no changes, just a yarn over at each segment and a psso once every 4 rows. I enjoy lace knitting and wanted more of it.  That said, the zig zag stripe effect is lovely and would have been more pronounced, had I had more yarn to carry on with. The acrylic content of the yarn means that the blocking has worn off and the points have lost their prominence and it curls when I wear it, but it is a nice flash of peacock brightness on a grey day.

As a souvenir from the epicentre of the worldwide wool trade, once upon a time, I'm extremely pleased. Ravelry link here.

Nursery Quilt

 

I’m usually pretty resolute that two children is just right, but I admit that this quilt caused me to waver! But my lovely sister has given us a nephew so off to Australia it goes. I must say, she has got some of my best stuff – aren’t I kind?

A few things converged and inspired me to make this quilt: 
 - Devon’s lovely Wonky Log Cabin Quilt and tutorial on Miss Make
 - Fabric gifts from my MIL this Christmas
 - Making my first quilt block
 - A visit from my parents who could transport finished object back to Australia

I went through my stash and pulled out everything that is quilting cotton. It had to be a unisex design, so I discounted anything pink and/or girly immediately.

These fabrics are quite sentimental to me, all in different ways. There are a lot of them and they all have a story for me.

Quilt Top

The centre squares: animal pictures. These are perfect for a nursery. I had saved an Ikea pillowcase, which came with a duvet cover. I liked the cute animal print and knew it would come in useful one day. I never used it because my girls didn’t use pillows in their cots.
Reds: red spot (very special, my first fabric purchase and E’s favourite dress, also used multiple times afterwards), red apples (child’s dress), plain red (so useful!)
Blues: navy pin dot, 3 blue shirt scraps (all my quilts will have some shirt or other in them, due to my lifetime supply of salvaged shirts)
Oranges: owls (too cute!), orange on orange (I’m learning so fast how important it is to have plains in a quilt)
Greens: lime squiggles (really bright and fun), green flowers (the biggest outlier here so tried not to use it too much), eau de nil plain (gorgeous quality – I’m supposed to be making napkins, but I could spare a few centimeters)
Brown: almost didn’t make the “cut”, but I’m glad it’s there, it adds depth and texture.

I had SO MUCH FUN doing a lucky dip with the fabric selection! I had my centre squares (which were not square) laid out, and my fabric strips in a massive pile. I closed my eyes and rummaged for every single piece. Then I had to attach it to the next square. I gave myself one veto for each turn, in case the match was awful. I also made another concession and allowed myself to use up any shorter strips early on, while the blocks were small. I didn’t want to be left with a lot of short sections which wouldn’t fit later on.

I just loved watching the blocks forming before my eyes and watching them change as they got larger. I do confess to having a couple of favourites: the little hedgehog with the blues and browns, and the monkey with the orange and navy (picture below).

Devon’s tutorial is really easy to follow, and she is an excellent writer, who makes it a lot of fun. I did waste a bit of fabric though. The quantities required were massive, and I would cut down in future. I cut slightly less than specified, mainly because I had a lot of scraps, or Fat Quarters, not full width fabrics as specified. I still had lots left over.

Quilt Back

I pieced the leftovers into stripes for the quilt back and used them up that way. I like how it ties the two together, but it is not flat: those long, straight seams let me down.

I am delighted with how the top and the back turned out. I am really happy with my fabric choices, it is a fun quilt to look at, it was fun to make.

I cut out on day 1, pieced most of the top on day 2 and finished up on day 3. Backing took about the same amount of time.

Batting

I ordered the batting via eBay and chose 80% cotton, 20% polyester. When it arrived, I was disappointed by how thin it was. 100% polyester batting has much more loft, but as a beginner, I wanted to work with cotton. As it is going to be used in Australia, the warmth is not so important, and it is pretty heavy. But it is worth noting that this is not soft enough to use as a playmat on a hard floor.

Basting

I was quite unaware of the need to baste a quilt, until I looked up tutorials on all kinds of basting, including specialty-tools-to-buy-to-close-the-curved-safety-pins. My goodness! I'm not in that league. I decided to hand stitch a long, straight stitch as basting. I started in the centre, did one along the width (to 9 o'clock then to 3 o'clock), then a lengthways one (to 12 o'clock to to 6 o'clock), then radiating out lengthways from there. Each row of thread was pretty fast, but there were quite a lot, so it did take a while. I'm sure they weren't all perfectly formed stitches, but the did the job and held the 3 layers together for the quilting.

Quilting

I was very undecided about how to quilt this. I loved the top so much, that I didn't want to "spoil" it with stitches. In the end, I went with wide spaced wavy lines, believing they would be very forgiving  of any mistakes. It was the right choice: the wavy lines don't compete with the geometric shapes of the log cabin squares and my stitching was off - mainly due to the weight of the quilt dragging on the machine, which made the stitch length shorter in places, and the waves turn oddly. I deliberately avoided keeping them uniform. Some are long and sweeping, some wiggly, some both, and I didn't measure the distance between them. I picked a low stress quilt top and I wanted a low stress quilting method for my first effort!

Binding

My first thought for binding fabric was the lime green squiggles that I used for the back. But I wasn't sure if I had enough left, and big sis also wanted a skirt out of the scraps. So I considered plain navy too. I really like how the dark binding on Devon's quilt gives a strong border, and really sets off the colours. But the green is bright and fun, so I went with that. I used this tutorial from iCandy Handmade. When I sewed the binding to the back, it came out very wavy. For the second half of the binding, I pulled the binding tight agains the edges of the batting and it was much better. That means there is only 1/4 inch showing from the front, and closer to 3/4 at the back. In future, I would sew the binding on just under 1/2 inch from the edge of the quilt so that the front and back binding widths were the same, with no wavy edges. You can see the difference in the picture above. That's one of my favourite blocks, the orange and navy monkey block.

Washing

Nothing to report here. The batting and the thread didn't shrink as much as I expected, maybe because my quilting stitches were not that close together. I had washed all of the fabrics that went into the top and the back, so I didn't expect any changes there.

I'm trying to work out how long this quilt took. It was a great way to get my sewing mojo back after Christmas. I started it mid- January and finished mid-Feb. I didn't work on any other sewing projects at the same time. The piecing was fast but there were a lot of different elements to contend with after that, and the hand stitching for the binding took some time.

I must say, I loved this project! From start to finish, it was fun and interesting. I loved working with colourful fabrics, and not having to worry about fit or fastenings. I don't think I have been converted to quilt making, but a quilt here and there is a good thing.

I had to wait for the baby before I could post this...

Me Made May '16

May has snuck up on me and I am so excited that it is time for Me-Made-May already!

I have decided to increase my pledge to 6 days a week, up from 5 days in 2015. I am sure I could go for the full 7 days, but I would rather keep it back so that I can continue to increase my pledge year on year.

So, here is my pledge:

I, Cathy of Cathy Makes, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May '16. I endeavour to wear an item of me-made clothing six days a week with one day each week in an entire outfit of me-mades for the duration of May 2016.

Plus, as an extra twist, and a bit of fun, the children are going to participate, in Mummy-Made-May! Their pledge is to wear Mummy-Made clothes as often as possible during May (but not to school)!

I you would like to sign up too, there is lots more information on Zoe's blog, here.

To make it a good deal easier to expand my pledge, there are quite a few things I have made for myself since last year's Me-Made-May:

Pin Dot Peony Dress
I don't actually love this, I am going to try shortening the hem to see if I like it more.
Ashton Shawlette
I love this and I wear it all the time, it is my favourite scarf.
Sashiko Birds Dress
I am very happy with this and can wear it to work as well as at home. 
Yellow Spot Shirt
Despite the wonky collar, I will wear this as a work blouse too.
Navy Linen Dress
I live in this in the summer. It goes with every single one of my cardigans too. Collar is terribly wonky so I don't think it can have an outing to the office, unless the weather gives us a heatwave in May.  A shorter length will make it a proper summer frock.
Megan Dress
A staple in my wardrobe, I have to stop myself from wearing it every week. I wish I was brave enough to tackle a matching jacket.
Infinity Cowl
I wore this daily in Winter, but it is now washed and packed away with the Winter woolies.
Liberty Coco
I lived in this at the end of the Winter. I will probably get enough chilly day in early May to pull this out and wear quite often.
Cashmere Delphine
Love this! If I had to describe my signature style, this would be one of my choices.
Stride Socks
Hmmm. Does wearing around the house count as MMM?
I have also altered my Ruby Tuesday Cardigan to carry the buttons all the way down the front. It looks much nicer, and is far more wearable.

A few items in my handmade wardrobe could do with some alterations to increase their likability:
Black & White Skirt has had the lining removed. The cotton lining wasn't working and I took it for doll's clothes. I have new lining fabric, but I haven't put it in yet. 
White Dress needs dying, test swatch pending and I am still trying to decide on a colour. Turquoise, navy, magenta?
Cambie Dress, needs to be shorter.
Pin Dot Dress, ditto, as discussed above.
Linen Dress, probably would be better shorter too. Maybe I am just getting tartier in my old age...

Finally, the next thing in my sewing queue, which will probably take all month to make, is a Spring Coat. This will solve my MMM pledge in one garment!