slight detour on my woodland walk

Well whilst my overlocker was threaded up with dark brown I took a slight detour away from the SWAP to sew a new cover for the cat's footstool (the only item of furniture she scratches) and try some new pants patterns with slightly less wide legs than my TNT. Neither of the pants came out any better than my TNT pattern although both are wearable and co-ordinate with the SWAP. So on relfection I think the teal green pants will be the wide leg pants pattern again.

SWAP Part 2

SWAPPING_AHEAD: I have only sewn 2 garments from my SWAP plan and I am already dreaming ahead to SWAP Part 2. This will have all the things that would not fit in part 1 like a print skirt to match the print blouse I plan to make in part 1, a long denim jacket, a chocolate brown linen shirt jacket, a brown velour gored skirt, navy pinstripe pants.

I've been re-reading the plans for the original Stitches SWAP, parts 1 to 4, and Its interesting to see that the 1 jacket : 4 bottoms : 6 tops ratio drops down as they make more pieces and ends up more like 1 jacket: 2 bottoms : 2 tops by the time the whole 4 part collection is complete.
Part 1: 1 jacket, 4 bottoms, 6 tops,
Part 2: 1 jacket, 4 bottoms, 4 tops,
Part 3: 2 jackets, 3 bottoms, 2 tops,
Part 4: 3 jackets, 3 bottoms, 2 tops
giving an overall total of 7 jackets, 14 bottoms and 14 tops

to redress the balance a little in my official SWAP I think I shall sew one of my collared blouses so it can also be a soft jacket so I'll have 2 jackets, 4 bottoms, 5 tops.
I really like Simplicity 4198 for something like this.

Garment 2 - Brown Pants modelled

Here I am wearing the RTW top with the brown linen look pants. I wore this to church today and 3 people said how lovely I looked, nice outfit etc which was very nice :-)

The pants are hemmed so they can be worn with flat shoes, but still look OK with small heels (kitten heel ankle boots) as they come across the foot at the front.

I don't want to get too carried away with brown, so I shall change the overlocker thread to dark green and sew the wrap over blouse in the leaf print and the pants and skirt in dark teal next I think. We are fairly quiet over Christmas so I hope to get quite a lot of sewing done before going back to work 2nd Jan 2007.

Garment No 2 completed - New Look 6054 brown pants

The New Look 6054 wide leg pants are now completed. Made up in a linen look cotton mix they do seem to crumple with wear (so maybe do contain linen too?) but should be very comfortable.
I followed the pattern instructions except I machine stitched the deep hem rather than handsewing. This matches the stitched down facing at the waist and the fabric has enough weight to take it quite well I think.


I plan to wear these tomorrow (Christmas Eve) with my RTW top from Wallis in browns and blues. As the clothes do tend to look a little better when I wear them than on the hanger I will try to get a photo of me wearing them.

Lets hope they turn out to be a very useful item given the pain I caused myself. When I had done pressing the pants I bent over to unplug the iron from the extension lead on the floor. At this point my foot caught the iron cable pulling the hot iron down on my back at the point where my RTW jeans and tee don't quite meet at the back. OUCH!

2nd item - brown pants

Yesterday I started the second SWAP garment, brown pants in my TNT wide leg pants pattern. The fabric is cotton/linen mix I think and appears to be ultra wide sheeting, although quite heavy weight. When going through my stash for the SWAP I discovered I had bought this fabric, twice in the brown colourway (from two different stores) and also in the plum.
The fabric on the left is the partly assembled jacket for the SWAP and the fabric on the right is the fabric for the pants in progress.

The pattern I am using for these is new look 6054, a TNT which is ready altered for my larger than usual rear. These are very comfortbale pants and flattering on my size 16+ pear shaped body.

Wore the first garment today

I wore my reversible skirt today (no I can't wait until the SWAP is all finished) and two things occurred to me 1- its still WAAAAAAAY too long and 2- I don't like the just serged hem it has currently, so will need to think up some sort of more finished hem treatment that looks good from both sides. I have some fringing I made from the selvedges so I am thinking of turning up a hem which just looks like a stitched hem from the dark side, but has the fringe or other trim coming out of the hem the other side I dunno I will try some samples first. Another option would be a shaped piece applied to the hem in the same way I did for the elastic casing. Any ideas?
I'd like to keep the dark side fairly plain and classic, but I am OK with something more 'interesting' happening on the other side.

1st garment

I started sewing the first garment on Wednesday 13th December.
Using Butterick 3972, the view on the right shown in tan almost ankle length, I am sewing this in a light weight denim which is dark indigo blue one side and medium brown the other. I'm using flat fell sewms rather than the construction methods in the instructions as I want this to be my reversible garment for the competition and I have shortened it very slightly. Once shortened (at waist and hem) I was astonished to find that it could be cut from a piece of 150 cm fabric just over a metre (1.1m) which makes it a great candidate for using up large scraps).
Another view uses several contrasting fabrics in similar colour ways, so again a great way of using similar weight/content fabric scraps.

I think I will do a simple serged hem (testing on scraps first to see which side looks less obvious, and then cut the very top of the skirt again to make a casing which can be semaed at he waist to keep the colours right on both sides (we've been on a day today trip to see family before Christmas but hope to finish this Monday evening, and I'll then post a photo.

Here's the finished skirt, showing both sides , the colour is slightly off from the flash, but hopefully you can see it is brown one side and dark indigo blue the other.

Timmel's SWAP (Sewing With A Plan) 2007 competition

I have been a big fan of the SWAP (Sewing with a plan) concept for a while now, but decided to take the plunge and enter the official Timmel SWAP this year.
As I am in the UK and Timmel's is in Canada I ordered independant patterns rather than fabric.
My SWAP is in toning colours of teal and chocolate with a splash of turquoise, ivory and burnt orange.
The competition began on 1st December and so far I have started sewing one garment - a skirt to be my reversible item (this year's twist).

Here's my plan for the 2007 SWAP as it was written down on 3rd December 2006. I'll leave it up and see how closely I followed it when we get to the end of sewing time in March!

Teal weave wool jacket - oop Burda 3064 (a UFO started 4/5 years ago)
Brown/indigo denim reversible skirt - Butterick 3972
Teal side zip pants - New Look 6054
Brown side zip pants - New Look 6054
Teal gored skirt - Loes Hinse pattern from Timmel
Burnt orange blouse - oop New Look 6315
Wrap blouse in teal/brown print - Butterick 4659
Princess seam blouse in ivory or teal stripes - Butterick 4659
Knit tops in - teal burnout velvet, teal/brown print, turquoise using one or more of Jalie crossover top from Timmel, Simplicity 4076, Butterick 3344