Flowers for birthday

It’s pretty normal to get flowers for birthday. Meanwhile it is almost as normal for my friends to give me fabric or a voucher for fabric for my birthday too. 🙂 Lucky me.

It must have been two years ago when I got this lovely floral Jersey. For me it is always interesting to see what people think I might like. Jersey is always a good choice. And those colours… just perfect! (I try to stay in my autmn colour palette… but sometimes I get carried away by a nice pattern or the structure of a fabric)

I got 1,8m of this sleek and heavy Jersey. That’s always enough to cover my tiny body. Since the print is quite busy I didn’t want it to be interrupted by to many seams. So I found the perfect pattern in a magazine, that I discovered when I got several issues for birthday from a dear friend (she knows me well) some years ago. It’s the CUT Magazine . This dress pattern called “Izzy” was in the latest and sadly last issue of the magazine, No. 14. A casual and comfy t-shirt dress with pockets! What I liked about the dress was the construction of the sleeves and the shapes of neckline and hem (round and angled in the front and angled and round in the back… I’ll just insert the line drawing and you will know what I mean 🙂 ) I made the smallest size with no alterations!

The pattern isn’t designed for knit fabrics. They even used wool for their original version. I guess everything that has some weight will work. Meanwhile I did another version in a ponte knit (still not photographed, because there is so much more in the pipeline). It was a solid colour this time so I had to be more accurate with the top stitching. Yes, top stitching on knit fabric…it always seems impossible until it’s done 🙂

I wear this dress the whole year round! It’s is a very good travel companion because it doesn’t get wrinkled. And even if it would, the print would hide it 🙂 It was just last year when I finally got around to get it photographed properly, on a work trip to the lovely greek island Kos.

Black Merry Melon

Black and merry might sound a bit weird together but it’s the truth. These pants are black and I am merry… and the pattern is called ‘Merry Melon’. It’s another make from my beloved CUT magazine (No. 13). Everytime I get a new issue I browse through it and want to make almost every pattern (there are just about 3 patterns per issue… but over time that sums up). I like the mix of simple silhouettes and special details. This time I was sold on the darts that transform into pleats.

You might ask yourself ‘what is she talking about?’ I confess that black fabrics are not very photo-friendly when it comes to showing details. And the fabric isn’t even plain black. It has a subtle Paisley pattern (Did I mention that I went to university in Paisley (Scotland) one summer… my campus was right across the street of the museum where they show the history of this pattern… but it seems that nobody there cares much about that famous pattern… ) So I tried my best to create some enlighting detail shots.

Yes, that’s a Welt pocket. My first one. Because of the detailed and pictured instructions I dared to give it a try. Not that bad for a first try, isn’t it? (Why can’t Burda take those instructions as an example? Most of the time I just get their wording after I figured  out how to do it by myself.)

As you can see in this picture from the magazin, these pants are supposed to be ankle length. I don’t know if a dwarf like me could wear this length. (My culottes were a similar case…I just left them long.) But this circumstance saved me from having to shorten the legs, as I have to with every normal length pants.

I wore these pants a lot. They are very very comfy. There is no zipper behind the flap. You can just slip them over because of the elastic in the back.

This is a cutout from pics we shot at my companies christmas party (isn’t it sweet how they hunker down to not let me be the smallest one 🙂 )

And I wore them in South Africa (I even climbed the Table Moutain in it…Yes I know that there is a cable car… but why always take the simple way…) Here are some pictures from the Diaz Beach at Cape of Good Hope:

Right now I am dreaming of a summer version in a lighter fabric and with the cropped length… but there are some more CUT (and other) patterns on my to sew list…

Do you have favourite pattern brand or magazine? Recommendations welcome 🙂

The cosy coat

Recently I sewed a lot of cosy and comfy things. Wearing them makes you want to hang out on the sofa or take relaxing walks in the park… just enjoying lazyness. So it’s easy to forget that they aren’t even blogged about or photographed yet. I finished this coat back in october and wore it a lot since then. So it deserves to be finally introduced to the blogosphere.

I intended this coat to be something like a bathrobe, but a bit more soft and cozy and more appropriate to wear in semi-public (a.k.a. open the door for the postman or take out the rubbish). In the end I would even wear it as a real coat when it gets warmer outside.
Once again this is a make from my beloved CUT Magazine . It is based on the coat from their issue No. 6.

They called this coat ‘Grinch’ but I have no idea why. It’s a simple coat with raglan sleeves and a pleat in the back. Originally the sleeves are lined. I dropped the lining, because I like to have the soft backside of the fabric against the skin. Usually after tracing and cutting the pattern pieces I do my SDA (Skinny Dwarf Adjustements… making the pattern tighter and shorter where needed). But since this is a wide coat per se there was no need to narrow anything. I did not even shorten the hem or the sleeves. I wanted to use these extra centimetres for hemming. The instructions tell you to  leave the hem raw (as incomprehensible as the name…). The sleeve hems would be finished by attaching the lining (which I dropped). So I could use the extra length as hem allowance there too. One last adjustment was to separate the pockets. It surely was a nice idea of them to put the pockets and the front and back in one piece. But that way you couldn’t fit any other pattern piece next to it when working with regular wide fabric. By cutting the pockets as an extra piece I could squeeze the whole coat and a matching belt out of 2m fabric.
Again I have no idea what my fabric actually is. I bought it at the fabric market because I liked it’s texture, it’s pattern and it’s feel (well and the price… 3€ per metre) It’s a bit like a sweatshirt fabric especially in thickness and fluffyness of the backside.

I used my serger for all seams and finished the collar and hems by hand (something I could do while hanging out on the sofa)

This coat has no closure. So I quickly sewed a matching belt from the remaining fabric.

Meanwhile this coat is my go-to outfit for sunday mornings. But the photos were taken when I wore it to work. We were shooting in an old factory building and I knew it would be quite cold there once we turn off our spotlights. My colleague and I used a shooting break to do ‘our shooting’ in the hall in front of the studio.

As mentioned before, this coat is not my last piece of ‘lazy wear’. I took two pairs of jogging pants and made a cosy pullover dress from it. Soon to be blogged 🙂

What is the cosiest garment you ever made?