Tag: White

Coloured Lines & Yellow Plaid

So I have been sewing quite a lot and then not posting about the exploits. That’s going to change again. This time, I’m going to tell you about more blouses. During the Great Utrecht Fabric Haul of 2019 (first described here), I got two more fabrics that were destined to become popper-tops. As per the original, the pattern is Simplicity Naaimode 9, model 59 (aka Simplicity 2255), but with smaller armholes and thinner sleeves.

I started with a white fabric with little bits of coloured lines on them. I sewed it up pretty quickly and added white poppers. However, the first time I wore it, everything itched, so I’m afraid this one is ending up in the goodwill pile.

The second one was the same exact pattern now in a yellow plaid fabric. At the market I’d spotted a completely white line about 20-30 cm in from the cut edge, so I negotiated and got that 30 cm + 1 meter for the price of one meter. I cut the shirt from the non-fault bit of the fabric. It’s very stable so that was nice. I have been wearing this one a little. Yellow is one of my favourite colours, so that helps.

 

The yellow plaid was also used for two other things. A handkerchief and a baby slobber scarf. I can’t remember ever using a fabric handkerchief in my life, but since we were invited for a family reunion and asked to bring a handkerchief, I thought I’d quickly sew one up. This one is cut over the fault line because, who cares. The spit scarf was the same as the ones here. Even using the same backing, since I’d cut out 8 more at some point in the past.

All in all I still have some of the yellow left, so I’m not sure yet what it will be. I’ll think of something eventually!

Plaid Poppy

When I went to the fabric market in Utrecht the last time, I also bought some really, really soft white/red plaid flannel fabric. I cut out a rectangle and smaller rectangle, brought a bit of pantyhose and tons of stuffing and set off on the train for a friend’s birthday party. During the trip, I set off to sew a new poppy. Not that I needed one, but the fabric was soo soft that I couldn’t resist.

The hat was embroidered on using red thread and I think it looks quite cute. This probably will not be the last one I make from this fabric, although I may decide to dye it first for the next go. Not sure though, I guess we’ll see.

Polar Bear

Recently, I got a free pattern in my e-mail inbox of the cutest little polar bear, courtesy of Claire Garland. It can be found here. On Friday the 9th, I decided that it was imperative that I made the little polar bear. So I set off to find the ball of white furry yarn that I remembered I had, somewhere. I also got some thicker white yarn that was also required. I did not follow the gauge or yarn thickness as stated on the pattern at all and just wing it.

I finished the back of the bear up to the front legs on Friday and set out to finish it on Saturday. The furry bits have the thicker white and the fur yarn held together. I did manage to finish the entire knitting and most of the sewing. When I’d finished all the instructions it didn’t really hold the right shape, but it took a few days to get around to stitching him down so that he held his shape correctly.

There’s only one real deviation from the pattern, and that is that I used a dog-nose for the tip of his face instead of stitching. I’m not sure what I’ll do with him, so we’ll see where he ends up. He’s quite adorable though.

Spiders and Dinosaurs

I made even more shirts from the free fun summer tee pattern. These ones were cut from jersey fitted sheets. I got a blue one and a white one. The pattern has shoulder seams that are far towards the front. Since the white fabric wasn’t very long, I only managed to get two fronts out of it. I then determined what the shape of the shoulder piece needed to be and cut that out of the blue.

Once the actual sewing was finished, I couldn’t figure out which side was the front. Then I had the bright idea to add some embroidery to the front. So I looked through my pinterest boards for some inspiration. I’d already decided to do a lace-collar-spider thing, but on blue, so that wasn’t an option. So, dinosaurs it was. I pinterested a lot and couldn’t find something that I totally liked, but I used this as my inspiration to draw something myself. It’s a little sitting dinosaur that is looking up to the sky. This shirt has been worn quite a lot so far. It’s very cute.

I also cut the complete shirt from the blue fabric. Then I went in search of the perfect lace to fake a spiderweb. I found some in Amsterdam that I bought, but then I went to a local shop for something else and thought that I might just take a look. There I found the perfect lace. This lace was sewn partly around the neckline and then covered by the neckline binding.

Throughout an episode of Blown Away (Netflix show about glassblowing), the lace was handsewn down. At the end of the lace, a bit of embroidery was added to mimic a spider. I think this one is very fun. It’s also been worn regularly already.

Ham?

Recently, I’ve been working on a gala dress, made out of some red glittery stuff. Since this thing will have a built in boning layer, it also has some curves. I’d been attempting to press out the curved seams on a flat ironing board. Not particularly smart, I know. Then I remembered the Pressinatrix and her suggestion to always use a ham. Of to the googles I went and found a free pattern made by Victory Patterns posted on the website of Tilly and the buttons (here).

So I quickly grabbed some leftovers from my paper bag shorts and got to work. I followed all the instructions for sewing and added a loop. The loop inspiration I got from another post, but I’m not sure which one anymore. Very useful to have a loop. Once the body was sewn, I filled it with fabric scraps that were in my ‘to be chucked’ bag. I even managed not to salvage anything that I’d already decided needed to go. Very proud of me. The ham proved very useful for pressing the bust curves of the dress. It’s now hanging on a part of my ironing board, so hopefully it’ll see some good use in the future!

Wheels for Days

Roller derby is played on all kinds of floors. We skate on a wooden floor that has qualities that shift with the weather. What this means is that we tend to skate on different wheels in the different seasons. Harder wheels (ranges 90+) allow for more speed and slide and less grip, softer wheels have more grip but may feel slower at times (78-88). I’m currently skating on 92 (summer, so the floor has grip of its own), but in winter I skate on a mix of 84 and 88. If we play on a soft sport court floor elsewhere, we go up in wheel hardness, last weekend, I skated on 98. What this means is that I have accumulated an almost uncomfortably large amount of wheels.

I used to store all my wheels in ziplock bags and tried to stack those, but they always rolled everywhere. So a little while ago, I went on the hunt for patterns for wheel bags. In the end I resorted to an adapted version of a zippered box pouch. There wasn’t a ‘right size’ pattern online that I could quickly find, so I resorted to making a scale version from paper to determine how it worked exactly.

After the scaled version was completed, I drew it out in the right measurements, added seam allowance and got on with it. The considerations where the the bottom should be flat for the bag to stand on, there should be enough zipper to allow the two stacks of wheels to enter and exit the bag, it should not be so large that the wheels slide around and it needed a carry strap. I cut out the first iteration and sewed it together. My wheels are also different sizes, I have one set of 38 x 59 mm (S), one set of 38 x 65 mm (L) and 3.5 sets of 38 x 62 mm (M).

The first bag (black mushrooms) was too large for the medium wheels, it needed about a cm in width reduction, but the large wheels fit in fine. For the second iteration (yellow mushrooms) I removed a cm along the width sides but I made a mistake in making the bottom smaller, so that one has an additional pleat. It again didn’t fit the M wheels, but the S wheels fit in fine. Next attempt, I reduced the width by .5 cm and made the correct adjustment on the bottom. This version fit the M wheels, so I cut out another and found that I didn’t have the right length zipper anymore. So I shortened the height by 8 cm on my paper pattern (which was a little too much in hindsight) for the half set and cut it out. I did have a zipper long enough for that one, so it was sewn together quickly. At night, I went to the sewing supplied shop and got more zippers – luckily it was the one night a week where the sewing shop was open until 21:00.

All of these bags are made from waterproof tablecloth fabric. The first and second fabric have also been used for the EDC, the pineapple fabric was already in the hoard for pouches, but I never got around to it. All pouches have a carry strap from a bit of fabric left over from some part of pouch making. I specifically gave the pineapple pouches different coloured zippers and carry straps to be able to differentiate the wheels inside with a single look. I will also add labels to the outside. For some non-deliberate reason, all my harder wheels (88+) are black. All the softer wheels (84-) are green. Happy coincidence? Anyway, my wheel pouches are now nicely stacked two high in the closet with less chance of them falling over and rolling everywhere. So far, this project feels successful.

Baby Rabbit

I was browsing the internet recently and came across the cutest little rabbit: here. It was posted by From Britain with love as a free Easter bunny pattern. Of course I decided that I needed to make it a.s.a.p. So on Monday night, I started knitting. I finished knitting the body late Monday night, then on Tuesday I knit the legs and arms and went out to get eyes. On Wednesday I finally put it all together, notes here.

The instructions were a little hard to follow at times but knitting it was fun. Always nice to finish a knitting project so quickly. I think the finished project is really quite cute although I had a hard time getting the head to be the way I wanted it to. Tip for next time is also to not push the eye backs in as far as they can go. They should have a little more space.

I probably pushed my arm a little too far by knitting the entire body in one night, and I really should pay more attention to myself. It didn’t hurt excessively, but it was a little uncomfortable.

Skyline Skirt

At some point in the past (my downloads folder claims August 15th, 2018), I decided that I needed a skirt with the skyline of my town on it. So I scoured the web looking for a picture with the skyline and managed to find one on a Christian website that seems to have been taken down since. The picture went though some fine MS Paint-ing and had all the coloured background removed. I then printed the results on A3 paper to see how large it would need to go to be able to cover a skirt. That was .. September 2018 and I promptly forgot about the whole thing.

About two weeks ago, I remembered this project and decided to go ahead and try to get it started. Step 1, find a good skirt pattern. Step 2, cut out the pieces of the skirt from the smallest bit of fabric possible. Step 3, serge the sides of the skirt pieces and put them together. Step 4, measure the amount of coverage the skyline needs to be. Step 5, print the skyline again because the older version was too short. Step 6, embroider the skyline on the skirt. Step 7, finish sewing the skirt together.

Step 1 was a bit of a struggle to start with, since making choices is HARD! At the end I made the choice for Simplicity Naaimode 27’s model 3-4 (aka Simplicity 1324). A knee-length skirt with a contrast mock wrap at the front. Going through the hoard, I found a piece of fabric that I also used for a larp thing ages ago. There was only little fabric left, so the skirt pieces were on one grain, while the front bands and waistband were on another grain entirely. The sides were serged and put together after which I measured and printed the right size skyline. I sat down for a night and managed to stitch the skyline in with some thick white thread.

I did make a change the skirt and added a pocket in the right seam, since skirts without pocket(s) are not useful bits of clothing if you ask me. In the same vein, I also added belt loops to hold my keys.

On Friday there will be a little reunion for employees and I figured that would be a good time to test whether this skirt works. It should be somewhat appropriate, I hope.

Shrooms on the EDC

Some people have a pocket knife that they drag around everywhere, some people have a pen and a notebook, I have a whole pouch of stuff I transfer from bag to bag to make sure I have everything I might possibly need on a day to day basis. We call this the Every-Day-Carry. Mine’s been living in a pouch made from a weird kind of rain-coat-ish fabric that was never pretty but fairly functional. However, that pouch was completely flat with a zipper at the top, as such, fitting stuff in was a little hard at times. It needed a revamp.

Enter the tablecloth-type fabric sale which had some fantastic white on black mushrooms for sale. I got myself .5 meters and set to work creating a block zip pouch. I chose to do one 10 x 10 x 28 cm, since my original pouch was 28 cm. After finishing it, it turned out it was too big. So I made another one that was 8 x 8 x 28 cm. Perfect size! Left is the large one, middle the medium one and right the original one.

Next, I set out to create a little pouch for my dice. This was based on the Pyramid Pouch, mainly because I thought those looked cool and could hold some dice. The dice pouch now lives inside the larger box pouch that comes with me. I chose to do a red zipper because I had one on hand and I thought it looked cool.

After the success with the black pouches, I went back to the shop and got half a meter of the same fabric, but now in an ochre yellow. I was going to go on holiday for a few days and I wanted to have a nicer looking toiletries bag. So that is why the ochre came to be. It’s a little shorter than my original, since the longest thing in the toiletries bag would be my toothbrush. And saving space is always good.

Lastly, I made a tiny coin pouch based on some half-moon type thing (here) and attached a longish loop to it so that it could be fished out of my bag easily. My wallet does not have space for coins since it is cards only, but I wanted to have a place to put coins if I happened to pay in cash.

All in all, I had a good few hours of pouch making and am now set to create a cover for my new miniature scooter thing. It’s foldable to allow carrying, which is useful. However, if the wheels are dirty, my pants become dirty also and I want to prevent that from happening. Hopefully I’ll manage in a short enough time for it to be of use.

Pants: Red, Short, Striped

So, as it was extremely hot this summer, I wanted to have some more pairs of shorts. I’ve also been obsessing over a paper bag effect waist for a while now, so I figured I’d combine the two. Especially after starting my search on pinterest and finding some nice inspiration (here). I had a piece of fabric in the hoard that came from a colleague of mine. There wasn’t a lot, but it was red striped and the stripes were on grain, so I started creating my pattern and sewing up the project at the end of July.

I don’t exactly remember why, but I decided to eliminate the side seam. So I put the back & front of the red pants pattern onto paper and traced, also adding at least 5 cm? to the top to allow the creation of the paper bag waist. I also created some pockets that would be integrated belt loops. Then I stitched some thin white cotton to the top to allow for the creation of the elastic channel on the back and to finish the waist nicely. Some more sewing and belt loops later and I had a pair of shorts!

I’ve worn them a few times this summer, and eventually decided that they really needed back pockets too, so I cut out some and put them on last weekend, during a spree of small fixes, which also included adding elastic to the red pants waist to make them stay up slightly better.

They will probably not be pants I’ll wear very often, since the weather usually isn’t as scorching as it was. However, it’s still nice to have some variation to choose from. I think the finished result is quite fun, so yay for this project!