Sewing With Purpose and Repurpose

I think I might be overdoing it on the Watson Bras. I have made 8 so far, 5 for myself and 3 for friends. I prooobbably don't need anymore for the time being, and I'm thinking of switching to the underwear pattern and making 5 pairs so I can have pretty sets. I've decided to do Me-Made-May this year and I'm thinking this new abundance of Watson's make it a hell of a lot easier! What I like to sew doesn't really align with what I buy RTW and wear on a daily basis (hilarious novelty print dresses don't look cute with steel-toe boots) so I think  good chunk of the me-made pieces are going to be undergarments and athletic gear. The three top pairs in the photo are my 3 new ones. The snakeskin one is the true to the pattern, but I've made slight variations to the other two. The white floral one is my favourite. I am absolutely in love with the fabric! I made a silly mistake when ordering the straps. I totally didn't look at the width and wa...

My closet. So I have a long standing love affair with quilting cotton, I know some people frown upon sewing garments out of quilting cotton, but the patterns are just so much better . I can hardly stand to walk into a store that has quilting cottons and walk away empty handed, I feel like I need to own those bright colourful patterns! I have found the perfect pattern that for my obsession: The Tate Top . I know I made this pattern in my last post, but I didn't realize its full potential for quilting cotton hoarding until this project. I can squeeze out a Tate Top in my size in a half meter of fabric!!!! (if one of the panels is upside down) This justifies soooo many future quilting cotton purchases for me I can hardly wait. I don't need to buy like 3m for a dress, I can spend just ~$7 to satisfy my needs! I got this fabric at  Needlework on James St N in Hamilton Ontario. I was drawn to it first by the bright colours, but the little bees hidden in the mystery frui...

Last weekend a few friends and I got together to sew pencil skirts! My friends are interesting in getting into sewing, so I promised I'd help them out and we'd pick an easy pattern to go through together. Two of these friends have a pretty extreme waist to hip ratio (we try to balance things on one friend's butt, Kim Kardashian style), and a common complaint I get is that its really hard to find pencil skirts and dresses to fit their bodies. So when I saw the free (!!!) Lekala pattern #5088 three seamed pencil skirt, I knew it was the perfect pattern. With Lekala patterns, you input your measurements and a pattern is custom drafted for you and a pdf pattern is emailed to you 10 minutes later. The sewing party was very successful, one friend was having machine troubles so fell behind, but the rest of us all had some fit issues to work out so we finished at the same time! As wonderful as the personalized measurements seemed, something as form fitting as a pencil skirt is ...

Before I get started into my post I wanted to share a neat photo collection I stumbled upon, Christopher Payne's "Textiles" collection . The photos are so fascinating! I love seeing the technology that goes into the materials for my favourite past-time, and the colours in the photos are absolutely delicious. Doesn't this look like it should be cotton candy, not fabric?? Back to business! This was my last sewing with non-purpose dress of 2015, first and last! (Hopefully) I had just walked into fabricland, saw this gorgeous stuff on sale for $3 a meter (!!!) and had to have it, even though I didn't really have a plan for it. My original idea for it was to make a long collared shirt-dress with the white border at the bottom. However, I had a friend who was feeling a bit down in the dumps so I asked his opinion to get his mind off things. He's very into minimalist and edgy fashion and I thought he'd really like the fabric. He was very adamant that it...

I absolutely fell in love with this pattern while I was living in London, its a 1920's inspired cocoon coat from  Ralph Pink . I absolutely love 1920s and 30s fashion, and was looking for a project that would challenge me and I could learn from, this seemed to fit the bill. I decided to make the cropped version of the coat, as I'd only seen one other make from this pattern pop up google, and that was a long one from The Wallinna . I got a good start on it while I was over there, I bought some wool suiting and beautiful printed lining in Walthamstow market, this was the most amount of money I'd spent on a garment as the fabrics are quite good quality. Unfortunately life happened and I started packing up to come home and didn't get around to finishing it off until very recently...when I found out this pattern fits very very small. Like I could hulk rip out the back of it. The material was hard to iron so the coat is pretty wonky in the pictures below: I g...