Yellow Spot Shirt

Summer sewing at its best! Yellow! Spots! Seersucker! Sleeveless! I feel like I am on holiday!

I bought this fabric about 18 months ago, from Spotlight, in Australia, at the height of my spot obsession. They are getting a little dated, so I am really pleased that I finally made something with it.

I originally thought of a skirt, and bought some cream polycotton to line it with. I’m so pleased I came to my senses and made a top instead. I had been hoping to find a copy of the out of print New Look 6732. It even has a yellow spot version on the cover. But I haven’t been lucky and I knew that with only 1m (96cm) of fabric, I wasn’t going to get sleeves, or a Peter Pan collar, out of this. I shopped my pattern stash instead and came up with Simplicity 2447. View F, the sleeveless version would fit the bill. the princess seams make it easier to be frugal with fabric layouts. I don’t know why I grabbed this pattern on sale at Minerva, but I am very pleased to have it.  Based on my measurements, I cut the pattern tissue to a size 12. But when I checked the ease, it seemed enourmous so I had a look online for some reviews before cutting my fabric. Goodbye Valentino has made a lovely silk version and posted a very helpful review on Pattern Review. She said it came up huge, so I sized down to an 8.  I’m really glad I did because it is loose and fits me fine through the front, no pulling on the placket at all. A larger one, especially the sleeveless version, would have been ridiculous.  I might do it one day but I'll save it for a very sheer, or very drapey, fabric.

I made a sway back adjustment through the seam where the yoke and the back join. I also shortened the waist by 3cm. Otherwise, I made no changes. I should have trimmed 1cm from the armholes before adding the binding. The holes allow for a 1.5cm seam allowance and my binding only uses up .5cm of that. They are too small. I might go back and re-do the binding. But, equally, I might not! [Update: I re-did the binding - will wonders ever cease?!]

The fabric wasn’t too badly behaved. It is a very large scale seersucker so the puckers are very puffy and the rows of channels are large too.  It has a lot of thickness so it is not really a cool and light summer fabric. But I like that it is not sheer at all. My eight year old said in the sweetest voice, “Mummy, it looks like one of those cloths that you use to wash the dishes.” Why, yes it does, darling! Never mind, I like yellow spots, and it is so handy to have a nice bit of fabric close to hand when my sunglasses get smeary!

It pressed nicely, but pressing makes the puckers flatten, so I avoided pressing except through the seams. I am sure they will come back in the wash. I sort of matched the stripes, but princess seams don’t really make that possible. I can’t believe that this is my first time sewing princess seams! I knew from my favourite sewing guru, Caroline, that one should ease the curve to make it fit. So I did. And it did. Thanks Caroline!

It was also my first time sewing a button band and a collar stand. All went without a hitch. They are not hard, I just don’t really make, or wear, blouses. I haven’t made the inside plackets as neat as they should be. I forgot that they would be on show, that they are actually the right side, unless I am going to button the shirt all the way to the top. Which I am not. I’ll take more care with that area next time. I also forgot to interface one of the button bands, the buttonhole one, so I hand stitched a layer of interfaced fabric to the underside before I sewed the buttonholes.

I didn’t have enough fabric for the collar so I made the underside from the cream polycotton. I thought I would have a lot more trouble getting all the parts from my .96m than I did. I was planning to make the collar stand and the button bands from the same poly. It was nice not to have to. I used the poly for the armhole bindings and the hem binding. I learned from Lauren that a curved hem works better when bound, rather than turned, and it means you can be more miserly with fabric. Mine didn't end up curved. I don’t think I added back enough hem when I shortened the waist. I tried it on and decided that it was best at this length and didn’t want to lose any length from the sides.  My hemming isn’t great. I ignored the pattern instruction to hem before making the button bands and only discovered why this is a good idea after I had done it, so the front hem is too high. Next time, I will hem when instructed.

Finally, my dear yellow buttons. I have a massive stash of men's shirt buttons, but these yellow ones were just too much fun not to include. I think I got them in a pack from a dollar store. The fabric is so thick that I didn’t need to go any higher with my buttons, so it looks a bit rude. [Update: Since I took these photos, I have gone back and added one more button at the top. I put it on the buttonhole side of the placket, with no buttonhole. It would be covered by the shirt if I sewed it on the correct side.] The best part of making your own blouses is that you can position a button at the centre line of your actual bust so that there is no chance of gaping at all. Why do so many of my RTW shirts have one button above the bust, and one below? This creates a lovely window in my shirt, showing off my bra. Not pretty. Seriously, I have a number of shirts that I have to fasten with a safety pin to stop this happening.

I really like the back pleat. I think it looks very smart. The pattern instructions made no mention of seam finishing. The yoke seam just said press towards yoke. I decided to make a flat felled seam instead. I had cut the yoke on the straight grain and I wanted some extra strength there, plus it is a nice, neat finish to use on a horizontal seam. The fabric didn’t behave perfectly, the puckers ended up puffing out under the presser foot. My seam looks wobbly even though the stitching is straight. This happened with all of my seams in this fabric. Anywhere they went over the puckered part, it puffed out. This was also a problem when I tried to zig zag my internal seam finishes. They became really large and wavy so I ended up pinking them instead. Luckily they don’t show through and I hope they won’t fray too fast. If I make this again, I will do flat felled or French seams throughout, but this time was untested (no toile) so I didn’t want to unpick and re-do French seams.

The final verdict is that I am really pleased with this shirt and this pattern and I can’t wait to make it again. A light, airy fabric would be just perfect.

Costs

Fabric: Spotlight, (A$7) £4

Pattern: Minerva, £4.65

Thread: Stash, £0

Interfacing: John Lewis, £0.90

Contrast Fabric: gift, £0

Buttons: dollar store, £1

Total: £10.55

Sashiko Birds Dress

My beloved Navy Spot Sundress is now, officially, replaced. Sadly faded beyond wearability, it had to go, so I made a new dress from the same pattern, New Look 6968. Now a TNT pattern for me, I have made it up three times.

The fabric is more fun, albiet less sophisticated, than its predecessor, and I love it deeply. It is Sashiko Birds by Gennine for Cloud 9. I got the quilting cotton, even though the collection also includes voiles, which The Village Haberdashery were stocking too. I wanted the heavier weight for the more tailored pattern. I bought 2 meters the day after I saw it on Annie's blog. I just had to have it, she hadn't even had time to put the bolts on the shelves - they were still on the community table when I rushed into the store.

I decided to skip lining the bodice and drafted new facings instead. Even though I had enough fabric to cut these from the fabric, I decided to hoard it and cut them from a deceased business shirt. The shirt was quite a bit thicker and stiffer than the cotton, so I didn't need to interface.

I've made quite a few fitting edits to the pattern, which now include: shortening the waist by about 1.5cm, a sway back adjustment, shaving width off the hip curve at the side seams and less depth on the bust darts. I made two small pleats in the skirt, instead of the skirt darts. I still need to take up the shoulders by about 1cm so I have gone back to the pattern pieces and cut .5cm from the top of each shoulder, ready for next time. On wearing the dress, I've discovered that the armscye is rubbing against the front of my arms. I need to take out about 0.5cm from the front edge of the armscye. I'm not going to re-do this dress because I don't want to take out the zip. But it will be much more comfortable to wear had I known this.

I kept to my new philosophy of simple seam finishes and just zig zagged all of them. I can't believe how ok with that I am! I promise it is not laziness - I'd be the first to admit that - but the simple fact of wanting finishes that add no bulk to the seams and don't make them pull or pucker. You can't beat pressing flat and zig zagging. I remember when I was sewing as a teen, I really, really, really wanted an overlocker. I wanted to avoid having my garments look home made, and an overlocked seam was the ultimate in RTW. Now, I am totally cured of that desire, I really don't need the extra hassle to get a finish like that. How's that for moving on and new-found maturity?!

After I had my fabric and decided on the pattern, I saw this dress in the window of a popular store. How on-trend am I?

Costs
Fabric: 2m, The Village Haberdashery, £28.00
Pattern: used previously, £0.00
Facing Fabric: reclaimed, £0.00
Thread: local art store, £0.50
Zip: Mood, £0.60
Total: £29.10

Papercraft from a five year old

 

My five year old makes the cutest paper crafts. Of course, since she is my child, I think she is the cleverest, cutest, most wonderful creature who ever walked the earth. But seriously, she is so great at this type of craft. Give her a pair of scissors, an unlimited supply of paper and rolls of sticky tape and she spends hours, making outfits for her dolls, shoes for herself, and costumes for her bears.

Her current favourite bear is a panda that she has named Bamboo. Last week, I found Bamboo all dressed up and wearing a scary mask! Apparently he was dressing for Halloween, going out in a wolf’s costume! It was so adorable that I had to take pictures and post them here.

Frozen Ice Palace Cake

  

Elsa's powers are great indeed. How did she build an ice palace in less than 2 minutes, with no engineering help? My cake version took significantly longer and was structurally questionable. But it tasted good and the kids were happy, so it all worked out well!

I started with my previous effort at a cake castle, covering upturned ice cream cones with icing. Elsa’s palace is very tall and rounds towards the top, so I planned a stack of cakes with a small, rounded cake at the very top. This one was baked in a Pyrex mixing bowl. The other three are layers of round cakes.

I’ve learned a new trick which is to make party cakes as a marbled cake. This way, each child thinks their slice is more exciting and they don’t go as crazy clamouring for the icing. I’m going to stick with this plan in future. It is not so much extra work, it just involves mixing up and pouring out the vanilla cake batter, then making up a chocolate batter and adding that to the top of each pan. A tiny stir with a knife is all the marbling it needs.

So I had my stack of three round cakes, pudding cake on top and ice cream cone on top of that. I also iced a “tree” with white icing and put that to one side for later. But it needed a balcony. I didn’t get a special cylinder cake tin, instead I cheated and bought a swiss roll cake and leaned it up against the side. Unfortunately, this cake let me down a bit. It was too light and not dense enough to take the weight of the icing. Despite quite a few skewers driving through the middle, it is still the leaning tower of Piza.

I used up all the white icing in the first layer of icing. (The “crumb coat”, as it is known in the parlance.) So it was going to have to be all turquoise. My royal icing mixture was too runny. I wanted it dribbling down the cake in an iceberg effect, but mine was more like a slow moving river than a glacier. Then the humidity climbed as it started to rain and my icing started to properly pool on the cake board. I spent rather too long scooping it off the board and re-dribbling it down the cake. You can see the mess on the board, and the perfectly visible lines of the cake layers and the patterns on the cones. Much too runny!

It eventually dried over night and the fondant icing and snowflake cutter saved the cake in the end. Despite my loathing of working with fondant, I bought a roll of ready to go white fondant and a snowflake cutter set. Hooray for not having to colour a block of fondant, or having to roll it. The cutters actually worked great. They were well worth the high cost of next day shipping (twice the price of the actual cutters!) Cutting out those hundreds of snowflakes (I didn't have time to count them) didn’t take that long, and I stuck them on the cake on the day of the party. They covered all the icing boo boos and added a great turquoise and white effect to the cake. Plus, I got my balcony properly set out. A round piece of fondant with a snowflake stamped on the surface using the largest cutter painted with food colouring.

Making special occasion cakes is definitely a three day process for me. I make all the cakes a week, or more, ahead, and freeze them, well wrapped. Day 2 is mixing the icing, as the cakes defrost. Then two layers of icing, and cutting out all those decorations. On the day of the party, I stuck the snowflakes on, dusted all with icing sugar and took the cake to the party. I waited till I got there before I attached the top of the balcony and added the white snowballs to the edge.

I don’t mind that my cakes look home made – I hope I am in the vicinity of home made but looking good!