Back on the Blog, with TWO Finished Objects

 

Hello!

It's the first appearance of my face on the blog since July. Eek! That was a long time ago.

So here I am, modelling one of two recent makes - a Renfrew. Nothing new to say about how I made it since it's my third. I just added an inch to the length for a longer fitting top. The fabric is a John Kaldor remnant bought for £5 from Mandors when they had a load of John Kaldor jersey for sale back in April.

 

I bought it at the same time as I bought the fabric for my Juniper dress and to be honest I wasn't sure how much I actually liked it. Do you ever find that about fabric - you are attracted to it but aren't sure how much you actually love it? Anyway, I'd planned to make a maternity top with it but as I didn't get around to that and the fabric was still in my stash, I thought why not make a trusty Renfrew? So I just did. It's nice quality fabric and the colours go with loads of things I usually wear, I've decided that in the end, I do like it.

Second garment - a wrap skirt, which was actually the first thing I made post-pregnancy, which turned out to be a bit of a struggle!:

 

I was absolutely determined to make this skirt. I really wanted to prove to myself that I was still going to be able to keep sewing, and keep my hand in before I got out of the way of it and sewing became daunting. It was a few weeks in the gestation as I mulled over what I could make using my existing fabric stash and also what would be a forgiving fit. I wear skirts frequently but only a couple of them currently fit. The skirt was nearly scuppered by a couple of big mistakes but my desire to sew something and to have a new skirt to wear kept me stitching- I was going to make this bloody skirt, come what may.

My original intention was to make an A-Line wrap skirt, similar to the Miette skirt, but I would use the Sew What Skirts book to draft it using my own measurements. This is easy to do, and I've used the book before to make a wrap skirt. In my stash I had some lovely green wool which was intended for a pencil skirt from a 1950s pattern last Winter but was shelved once I became pregnant. Now not only have I no place to wear such a skirt, I think there are other shapes which would suit me better.

(bit of a crappy photo, but it shows the side view and wrapover, plus you can see some little legs on the changing table beside me!)

My first mistake was to follow the wrong set of instructions in the book to draft a straight skirt block instead of an A-Line block. I didn't notice this mistake until I'd already cut out the wool. Argh.

So, I decided to keep going and just go with a straight wrap skirt. Originally I was going to use silk to underline the skirt but as I wasn't sure I'd be happy with the final result I decided against it. I used some leftover green lining fabric which was a good match but I made another mistake in cutting it out. Double Argh. I wanted to use this lovely neat underlining method but I didn't cut large enough seam allowances so I had to do it the regular way. Again, I was determined to keep going.

I added a patch pocket with decorative button, using a pattern piece from a vintage men's dressing gown pattern. I'm pretty pleased with how this looks.

 Terrible quality, and rather self-conscious photo of the pocket in use!

One thing I was really chuffed about with the construction was finally using my blind hem foot to do a machine-worked blind hem. I had never tried this before as I was always a bit confused by how it worked, but spurred on by a Twitter conversation with Vicki Kate Makes I gave it a whirl. What a revelation! It really wasn't that complicated at all and I know it's a feature I'll use frequently as my hand sewn hems often come undone (plus I'm lazy about hemming too). Thanks for the inspiration Vicki Kate!

So how about the finished result? Well, I wouldn't normally wear a straight wool skirt for casual wear and I think the tie looks a little weird with the straight shape, though maybe that's just because it's not how I originally envisioned it. It's also not particularly practical to wear a wool skirt around a baby, as it was nearly pooed on and was thrown up on, on its first outing. The wool is also the perfect magnet for cat hair, of which there is a lot in my house, so I have to remove cat hair on each wear. Nevertheless it will certainly get worn fairly frequently since I'm relatively happy with it.

So what's next up on the sewing table? An A-Line denim skirt, then we'll see what other delights my stash holds

K x