Tag Archives: McCalls

Sequined Bomber Jacket

Quite a while ago Fabric Godmother had this amazing sequined fabric and I had to snap some up!

And my immediate thought was to make a bomber jacket out of it – especially after googling to find inspiration pics and finding out that loads of designers make sequined bomber jackets.

Sorry not sorry for all of the photos, I’m in love with this make and want to wear it all the time!

The pattern is McCalls 7100, which looks terrible from the styling on the pattern cover, but is actually a great bomber jacket pattern when you look at the line drawing. I actually had this pattern in my mind for if I ever decided to make a bomber jacket after seeing Sew Dainty’s lovely floral version.

I made the size small and made no changes – it’s only semi-fitted and I didn’t want it to be skin tight, though I don’t think I’llĀ  be able to get a thick jumper underneath!

The ribbing I got from my local sewing shop, along with the zip. I’m not sure I love it as much zipped up, but I’m glad there is the possibility to zip it up. I used a pack of cuffs for the cuffs (obviously!) and 2 packs of ribbing for the hem band and the collar. Luckily this pattern comes with a pattern piece for the collar so there’s no guess work involved.

This jacket is not lined, but since the sequined fabric was see-through I underlined it and bound all the seams with a matching binding, also from my local shop. The lining fabric was (I think) from Minerva Crafts. I think the colour was peach as I kind of wanted it to look almost like my skin tone was showing through, but the fabric was a but more pink than I thought it would be – but I think it looks okay.

The binding isn’t my neatest work every, but it serves the purpose of enclosing and hiding all the raw edges.

I really like the detail on the front where there is a square of matching fabric either side of the zip before the ribbing is attached.

I went for black ribbing, zip and pocket flaps (which are made of some mystery black fabric I had in my stash) because the lines on the sequins are black and I thought it would be the most neutral colour to pick out of the sequins – and the easiest to match in all the different bits.

 

Do you every make something and think ‘this is bonkers, I love it’?!? I have! And I’m so glad I’ve got something silly to wear to cheer me up in the dark times we’re currently living through.

I think that’s why I love sewing so much – you can make something you can imagine in your head into a real garment you can wear. And I find what I wear can really affect my mood – if I wear something colourful or that I feel really reflects my style and what I want to present to the world then I’m in a much better mood than if I wear something dull (or have to wear 8 layers of clothes to be warm enough to be at work!). Do you find that?

 

 

Wardrobe Architect Week 11: Planning Your Pieces

This week’s Wardrobe Architect is all about planning what to make to achieve the capsule (ish) wardrobe of our dreams. I think I might slightly struggle with this because although I’ve been planning my sewing since October, I still feel I am a little bit all over the place and I definitely get seduced by shiny new patterns all the time!

The original post says: “In the last couple installments, we talked about choosing silhouettes for our new mini wardrobes and defining a color palette.

With those two things in mind, along with all the work we’ve done before on defining our style and prints that we like, it’s time to decide what pieces we need to create a coherent little wardrobe.”

In the original post she suggests you shop your closet to see what you already have that fits with your chosen silhouettes and palettes. I’ve put together a couple of collages of vaguely what I’m aiming for.

Ā I already have (I know it’s boring but I’m just going to list these because I don’t know how best to create collages from things I’ve made):

Dresses (I have others but don’t really wear them!)
Electric blue jersey dress
Navy blue Rushcutter dress
Spotty drapey knit dress (GBSB)
2 Summer Elisalex dresses
Mustard and navy flowers Sallie maxi dress
Jazzy Moneta dress
Navy and white striped Marianne dress

Skirts
Navy blue Simplicity skirt
Black Simplicity skirt
Denim Moss skirt
Silver Delphine skirt
Grey quilted Mabel skirt

Tops
2 blue (turquoise and electric blue) Cocos
2 Archer shirts (blue spotty and flowery)
Blue patterned Melilot shirt
2 Plantain tees (Breton-style and yellow and navy flowers)
A RTW cream tee with kimono sleeves, slightly oversized
A RTW (charity shop find) mustard yellow flowy blouse with a peter pan collar
(These last 2 tops are some of my favourites to wear to I intend to rub them off and copy them at some point so I can have more of the same style in my wardrobe)

Trousers and Jeans
Simplicity trousers
RTW wide legged navy trousers (which I took in last year)
RTW primark grey patterned pleated trousers (which I’ve had for years).
One pair of grey jeans given to me by a friend.
Black and navy skinny trousers which I’ve had for years and are getting a bit worn out

Coats and Jackets
Black Victoria blazer
Refashioned blue Victoria blazer
Freemantle coat
A now quite old duffel coat which has seen better days

Wow, now I’ve written all this down it seems like a lot! It’s hard to believe I still have holes in my wardrobe! I have a lot of basic long-sleeved jersey tops (all from primark shamefully, though I have worn them for probably 10 years now!) which I plan to replace over the course of next Winter, so I won’t include these in my plans below.

  1. White Archer shirt – I don’t actually own a white shirt!
  2. Dark blue Ginger jeans
  3. Black Ginger jeans
  4. Dark blue Morgan jeans
  5. Light blue (and thin denim) Morgan jeans
  6. Yellow Albion duffel coat
  7. Mustard yellow or powder blue 60s-style coat from the GBSB book
  8. Navy and white or black and white culottes from Butterick B6178
  9. Black wide-legged trousers (probably from McCalls M6515
  10. Papercut Guise pants from a patterned fabric with either black or navy in

I think 10 things should be enough to be getting on with! Especially on top of my #2017MakeNine. I’m not going to set myself a deadline for sewing all of these pieces, because that will remove all the fun I think – I’m not a quick sewist I have realised – but hopefully once I’ve ticked these and my Make Nine off (and, of course, there is some overlap like the 2 jeans patterns), I should be pretty close to having a working capsule-ish wardrobe! I’m already finding I have more outfits since starting the Wardrobe Architect because of focussing on my colour palette, and once I’ve got the above pieces, I should have loads of ways of putting things together. Yay!

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Vintage Sewing Patterns

So when I was at my Grandma’s at the weekend, it occurred to me that she used to do lots of sewing – there’s a very glamorous shot of her in a 50’s style halter dress (like Marilyn Monroe on The Seven Year Itch) and she made the dress herself…….without a pattern! So I asked he if she had any patterns left from her sewing days and I was in luck! I picked only the ones I though I might be likely to make (so left behind all the 70s and kids’ ones). Because my Grandma was born in 1930, the 50s and 60s seem to be the eras when she was sewing the most clothes – especially the 60s, which is lucky for me as I’ve just become obsessed with Mad Men (I know, only like 6 years behind everyone else!)!

I got this one as The Boyfriend has been saying he wants a night-shirt for a littleĀ  while now – so now I’ve found a pattern, I’ve got no excuse.

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Another one for The Boyfriend – see how selfless I am?! I love the fact that the guy in the jacket is smoking in the picture!

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I love, love, love these 60s blouses – and I love the fact that the brand of pattern is called ‘Housewife Special’!

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The rest are mostly dress patterns….

I’m not sure about this one – but I might just be being put off by the orange!

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I think this one is more 70s as it was a dress my Grandma made for my Mum’s school uniform. You can’t go wrong with a shirt dress!

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Simple shift dresses.

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Simple skirt, top and jacket pattern.

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I really love this one, even if the cover is quite damaged – and you can see it’s been drawn on by a small child at some point!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI think this one might be a my favourite – look at those coats!

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It remains to be seen if I ever get around to making any of these – I would have to grade them all as they seem to be mostly in size 14 (whereas I’m a size 8). Maybe one day, when I’ve sewn a few more modern patterns……