Sewing Plans |

Well it’s been a while! I didn’t mean to take a break from the blog but I felt quite down through most of February and just wasn’t in the mood to blog. I did finish my coat, though, which is pretty amazing! I was in the mood to sew but not to write about sewing. Weird. But I’m back and I have most of March already planned with posts for things I made in January! I’m a little backed up!

My only make for February was my coat – but I knew that would be the case, and I actually really enjoyed taking my time over a bigger project and learning some new skills to boot.

This is just a sneak peek – I thought it would be a good idea to take advantage of the apocalyptic snow we had last week to take some nice Wintery photos……maybe it would have been a better idea to have waiting until it had actually STOPPED snowing!? I do have better photos for my forthcoming post about my adventures in coat-making, I promise!

Now onto my plans for March. As I mentioned in my post about my plans for the year, I’m going to try to join in with a couple of months of the Sew My Style challenge and March is one of the months I’m going to join in with as it’s the Closet Case Patterns Kalle Shirt/Shirtdress and this was on my to-make list anyway.

I’ve got this lovely cotton/linen blend (I think) from the Great British Sewing Bee Live. My only questions is: which version do I make? I’m tempted by the cropped version, but with the proper collar. Or I could make the dress version – I don’t actually have any shirt dresses, though I do have a lot of other dresses so it feels like I’m more in need of separates at the moment.

My other main plan for March is to finally make some Closet Case Patterns Carolyn Pyjamas, which have been on my to-make list for months and months. The pattern is one of my Make Nine so I really need to tackle it this month! I have this slightly ruined liberty fabric, which I bought years and years ago on Goldhawk Road. I carefully pre-washed it……with some other fabrics, one of which was pink and stained everything else. The other fabrics weren’t quite as stained as this one, though, so I thought this would be the perfect practice fabric for the pyjamas because there is 3 metres, it’s still nice quality, and the discolouration won’t matter for pyjamas.

Then when I’ve made the practice version, I’m going to finally cut into this gorgeous boat-y liberty fabric my friend gave me ages ago! I have red and white striped piping already, too, as I want to pipe this pair. I think both versions will be long-sleeved and trousers as our flat is really quite cold and even in the heat wave we had last year, I didn’t really sleep in my Grainline Lakeside Pyjamas which I made the previous year as it didn’t feel super warm indoors, even when it was 34 degrees outside! (For reference I currently have a blanket and a hot water bottle on my lap and it’s not as cold as it was on Thursday/Friday last week!).

I think this should be enough to keep me occupied throughout March. What are your plans for the next month or two please?

So it was my sister’s birthday at the beginning of this week (and mine, we’re twins!) and after seeing the apron I made for my friend, she requested one of her own. She said she likes rainbow colours so I drew a few versions I could made from things already in my stash and decided a full-on rainbow might be a bit too much (though in retrospect I slightly wish I’d done it), so I just went for the warm end of the colours as they are the ones she likes and wears most.

There isn’t much to say about the construction -it’s super simple, and I’d already made it. The only thing I will say is don’t melt the fabric of the lining as you give it a final iron before slip stitching the lining to the ‘skirt’ part. D’oh!

I had my iron on the cotton setting and didn’t even think of checking it. It turns out this orange polycotton must be a lot more poly than it is cotton! It was super annoying to make such a stupid mistake, but it was easily fixed with a new lining piece.

And here’s the whole thing in all its glory:

Sorry if this isn’t that interesting, since I’ve already made it and its only an apron, but there will me lots more sewing posts coming as I’ve just had a week off work and although I didn’t get as much sewing as I hoped, I have many plans. I’ve bought 3 new patterns – Christine Haynes’s Emery Dress (for the sewalong), Megan Nielsen’s Banksia Top (of which I’ve already made one and am about to cut out 2 more!) and By Hand London’s Victoria Blazer, which I’ve been umming and ahing about for ages, then I saw the coat version Victoria posted on their blog the other day and decided to spend my birthday money on it. I have most of my stash allocated to a pattern, so hopefully there will be many things sewn in the coming weeks. Then I need to move onto bottoms I think….