Tag Archives: Scrap busting

Patchwork Denim Whale Jacket

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Long time no update! But I have a few old makes to share and lots of plans for new makes so hopefully I’ll be around a bit more this year than last year!

A while ago, at the beginning of the pandemic when I was furloughed, I sewed a bunch of pairs of jeans (have a look at my archive page for deets). This means I ended up with lots of denim scraps. I decided I wanted to make a patchwork denim jacket from these scraps. I was mostly inspired by Raph on the Sewing Bee when they did the reduce, reuse, recycle week and he made a patchwork denim dress with a whale on it.

The jacket went through a couple of iterations – at one point I was going to try to make a picture from the denim, but my skills are not good enough for ‘painting’ with fabric! But then like a lot of the world I watched the first series (and there has since been a second) of Young Royals on Netflix and became a little obsessed with this jacket that Edvin wore a good few times. And it was like destiny! I did buy a pair of white jeans from a charity shop to help break up the blues.

I decided to use the Friday Pattern Company’s Ilford Jacket pattern (which I made once before for my brother in law) and I made the chunks of patchwork according to the size of each pattern piece, so I didn’t waste as much fabric by making one massive sheet of patchwork! The below is the back. I cut random pieces and just tried to assemble them in a way which meant no 2 pieces of the same colour were next to each other. I did have 2 quite dark blue denims but they look a tiny bit different.

I actually finished this jacket at the end of 2021 and never got around to photographing it. Oops. Anyhoo. This is how it turned out. And I LOVE IT!

I did the patch pockets and chose fabrics based on what would contrast in each section they belonged in.

I did both sleeve plackets in white, but the cuffs in different colours, again based on which colour would contrast best on each sleeve. I did the basic construction and then cut out the cuffs and pockets. I also underlined the whole things because there were SO MANY SEAMS on the inside!

At this point you may be thinking ‘where is the whale I was promised?’. Weeellll…..

I didn’t necessarily intend to copy the whale from Raph’s dress but I’ve always loved whales, ever since I did a project on them since I was in the Brownies! I especially love blue whales. Because they’re the biggest! So my whale is based on a blue whale. Seems fitting colour-wise too!

As you can hopefully tell, I also cut the collar in 2 different colours and added seam allowance so that it would be super contrasty and I actually really like it as a design feature.

This was a stash only make, which seemed in keeping with the idea to use up my scraps. The buttons were in my stash – I feel like I took them off a rtw garment at some point but I don’t now remember when or from what. The fabric I used for the underlining was the leftover fabric I used to line my By Hand London Victoria coat hack.

I have worn this jacket a good few times (when it’s not quite as freezing as it is this week in Britain, brr!). I even got a compliment when I went to the Shakespeare Birthplace museum in Stratford Upon Avon – one of the tour guides told me she loved my style and my jacket specifically. I love getting random compliments from people – I want to try to do that more myself, because who doesn’t want to be told something nice?!

I don’t know if you can really see (I forgot to take a close up photo, sorry) but the whale has a little eye. I used a tiny bit of the black denim and zig-zag stitched all around the edge. It might be my favourite detail. And now I’m just going to spam you with loads of photos. Sorry not sorry.

Some Homemade Presents

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I know it’s February and maybe a little late to be sharing some homemade Christmas presents, but I actually sent these off in January so it’s not that late really!

My uni friends and I usually get together for a second Christmas (Christmas 2) in January or February of each year – though sadly for obviously plague-related reasons we haven’t been able to this year. I think it’s over 10 years we’ve been doing Christmas 2 but hopefully we’ll be able to get together next year.

Anyway to start with we all bought little presents for each other – there are 8 adults and 2 children usually in attendance so the presents got a bit much and we switched to secret santa. We thought about still doing that this year and did a secret santa charity donation instead of actual presents (where you donate to the charity the person you picked has chosen) but we girls in the group decided to exchange little things anyway to cheer each other up – but with the budget of free!

So enter trying to thing of things to make from stuff already in my stash – which is vastly depleted because of sewing all the things last year!

I decided to make them each some reusable make-up pads as I love mine so much! I used 2 different jerseys for the back to make them specific to the person.

I then crocheted a bag to keep them in – which doubles up as a bag you can wash them in so they don’t clog up your washing machine!

And then I made us each (I made one for myself too while I was making them) a sleep mask as I find it much easier to get to sleep, if I’m having trouble drifting off, if I’m wearing a sleep mask.

I also included some books from my collection for each of my friends to make the gift a bit more substantial – I’ve felt a desire to get rid of lots of stuff since being in lockdown for so much of the year. Maybe you just look around your house more when you’re in it for so much?! I found myself looking at my bookcases going ‘why do I still have that’ so I had a massive clear out and passed things I thought they would like to my friends – win win!

 

 

Reusable Make Up Pads (finally)

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I’ve been meaning to make some reusable make up pads for aaaaages and kept procrastinating for some reason.

I started off my measuring one of my last disposable cotton wool pads to get a rough size, and decided to round up to 6cm for ease of measuring – instead of going for, like, 5.8cm!

I had been keeping this leftover sweat-shirting (from my CocoWawa crafts chestnut sweatshirt) specifically for making these pads because it’s fleece-lined and I figured that would be nice and soft on my face. I’ve read some other people’s posts about making these and it seemed like softness was key.

I also used some striped jersey scraps for the backs. It was necessarily deliberate that both fabrics I used for the back were stripey but it’s a happy accident as I think they look cute!

I decided to go for squares instead of circles because a) it would be less wasteful of fabric and b) it would be easier for overlocking as I don’t think I’m that dexterous to feed tiny circles through my overlocker.

I spent an evening in front of the TV tying off all of the overlocker ends and now they look all neat and nice! I did get a little carried away and made, like 60! But my thought process was the more I make, the less often I have to wash them. I think I need to make a bag to wash them inside but obviously it has to be loosely woven to allow them to actually get washed – but I don’t fancy having them floating un-tethered around the washing machine. Any suggestions?

I had this jar lying around (which I was using for porridge oats but I don’t really eat porridge any more) and it’s the perfect size for all of the pads. I have used them for a week or so since finishing them and I have to say I prefer them to the disposable versions. They’re actually softer than cotton wool, and my face feels just as cleansed. I haven’t been wearing much make-up recently (and don’t generally wear loads) but I did have eye-liner and mascara on one day and there was no problem removing it all.

I’m sooo glad I finally got around to making these – I felt bad every time I threw one of the cotton wool ones in the bin! What are your favourite sustainable things (homemade or not) which have reduced your impact on the planet?

 

 

Scrap Busting Pouf

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In September New Craft House ran an Instagram challenge called Sew Yourself Sustainable and I joined in with some of the days (I’m terrible at joining in for a whole month for these kinds of challenges) and I pledged that I would make a Pouf out of some scraps and I actually did it! ZOMG!

These are the fabrics I used, piled on top of one of 2 bin bags full of scraps I’d been hoarding for ages! The blue and gold check was from this skirt refashion into a top which I never really wore because I shrank it in the wash (much sad). The gold denim was leftover from my first mustard cleo, the navy twill was left over from this skirt I made years and years ago, and the blue and black fabric on the right is from my coat.

The pattern is this free one from Closet Case Patterns. I cut out all my top pieces, and the side pieces – there wasn’t quite enough of some of the fabrics to make the sides completely match with the top, but both top and sides follow a pattern rather than being random. As instructed in the pattern, I overlocked all the edges of the pieces before I started sewing them together.

I failed to really take any more progress pictures, but I left off the optional piping and the bottom is completely made of the navy twill as I had the most of that left. I also put a zip from my stash in the bottom so I could stuff the pouf and then zip it closed. I didn’t (yet) make the bag for inside the pouf to hold all the scraps as I wasn’t sure I would need it to be washable, and so far it’s okay, but I could always make a bag some time in the future.

Yay! It has made a real difference to mine and my partner’s comfort while sitting on our sofa – as you can see our tv snug is quite small and we only have a 2 seater sofa so there’s not really anywhere to stretch out……until now!

Be warned, by the way (as I think Closet Case have mentioned) this takes A LOT of scraps to fill up. I had 2 full bin bags full of various scraps and I used all of them! And I think it could even hold more, as the scraps have settled and compressed a little.

These photos weren’t staged at all! 😆

I do love this and it really took an afternoon to cut out (and decide which fabrics were going where) and to sew it! I would definitely recommend doing this if you’ve got tonnes of scraps lying around. I feel like this could also double as a spare seat (almost) if we ever have more than the 2 of us watching tv!

I’m so pleased the New Craft House challenge finally prompted me to make this project – I always put of things like this and I don’t know why. They’re always much quicker than I think and the pay off is totally worth it!

 

Colour Blocked Linden Sweatshirt

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I made this Linden a month or two ago, so it seemed more weather appropriate then than it does now – today has been the warmest day of the year so far by miles! Autumn/Winter feels like it’s been going on for at least 3 years now so it was nice to finally not need 4 layers of clothing!

This make actually fits into the series Shauni is running on her blog, The Magnificent Thread, called sewing leftovers, which is pretty self-explanatory. I’m sure we all have those projects where we have half a metre or a metre of fabric left – I have a whole box full of such leftovers and I do go through phases of getting enthusiastic about using them up but this might be one of the first times I actually followed through and made the thing!

The fabric of the body is from my first Linden and my first Mabel skirt (neither of which I really wear). I think it was a really long ‘remnant’ from my old London haunt, Rolls and Rems on Seven Sisters Road. The sleeves are some black ponte I had left over from my Moneta party dress. This didn’t have enough stretch for the cuffs and hem band so they are made from some other mystery black jersey I had in my stash, which I used to make a not-very-successful Hemlock tee. So this was definitely a good buster of my left overs! Though I probably could have done without the cuffs as the sleeves are a little long!

Although I didn’t have a huge amount of the patterned fabric left, I did manage to match the pattern on the side seams. #winning.

I find with these kinds of basics I don’t have a huge amount to say about them. I sewed it completely on my overlocker, which was a first for me – usually I sew on my machine first and then neaten the seam allowances on the overlocker afterwards, but I thought I was pretty safe with this as I’d made it before and the construction is pretty straightforward.

This might actually be a good transitional garment for cooler Spring days as the fabrics aren’t that thick, so it’s not really warm enough for Winter, and it’ll be too hot on really hot days but those in-betweeny ones might make this perfect!

Are you struggling to dress as much as I am now it’s finally warmed up?