Muse Patterns - Tahi Shrug

When Kat released her Tahi pattern late last year, I was quite keen on the shrug. As expected it was a quick sew, and a bit of a remnant buster.

I used a small piece of merino/cotton that is navy and white striped, and went for the 3/4 length sleeve option.

This has been worn much more often than I expected.

It works great over sleeveless tops, and because the stripes are very narrow and not overly obvious, it blends well with a multitude of colours and patterns in my wardrobe.

Cashmerette - Appleton Wrap Dress

I'm a bit of a sucker for a wrap dress, so when Jenny of Cashmerette released her first pattern, I was smitten.

I liked that the Appleton offered different cup sizes, and that it was a nice basic no frills wrap dress.

After reading various sewalong posts on Jenny's blog, I picked a size and dived in. I went with a size 14 E/F.
As usual, I did a full butt adjustment and sized up the back skirt for some comfort room.

My fabric was not as stretchy as recommended, but still gave reasonable and wearable result. I will however use a fabric with the correct stretch next time.

This is fairly close to the true colours

Good bust coverage

Full length mirror selfie

While I'm happy enough with this, I will be sizing up the front skirt also next time, as the overlap on the skirt is not sufficient enough for me to feel comfortable.

Kitchy Coo - Barrie Boycut Briefs

I much prefer wearing me-made undies to any shop bought ones, and have predominantly done so for a good year or two now.

The Kwik Sew pattern I had been using previously was fine, but I was interested when I saw the Kitchy Coo Boycut Brief which had no elastic.

It offers two rise options - either a low or mid rise, and what they term 'full coverage without frumpiness'.  I went for the mid-rise and would agree with this statement.

As with all my forays into undie making, I made a test pair which I wore a few times to see how I liked the fit. These were  really comfy without the elastic and fit well in the size that matched my measurements.

I promptly made several more pairs, and these are my go-to undies of choice.These are a great scrap buster, and also good for using up 'what was I thinking?!' knits. (Yes, I'm talking the VERY bright yellow)

Mostly cotton/lycra with some merino and ITY too.

I have found I prefer to sew my undies on the sewing machine with a narrow zigzag rather than my overlocker, as it gives much flatter seams, so no irritating bumpy bits.

While I'm NOT going to model these, here is one of my more recent pairs hot off the machine.

My Superman undies, because sometimes you just want to feel super!

I bought some of these along to sew at a sewing retreat late last year, and got several of the other participants interested in trying them too. These are now a Wellington Fabric Hoarders pattern favourite.

Hot Patterns - 1152 Origami Knit Top

When this pattern was first released, I was a bit underwhelmed.  It looked interesting, but not really something that would fit in my wardrobe.

However, having seen a few iterations pop up in the Hot Patterns facebook group, I was intrigued.

As I had a few days off over Christmas, I decided to give it a go.

I used a wonderfully drapey rayon knit, and some ribbon I had in my trims box and away I went.

This really does live up to it's fast and fabulous title, being cut and sewn in under an hour.

Swimming Bags and some Applique

A fun project that I took I while to get photos for was the boy's Swimming bags.

These are one of those projects I had good intentions of making for a Christmas or birthday present at some point, but actually only got made right before they needed them for school swimming lessons.

No particular pattern was used - I just measured off a draw string bag I had that looked to be about the size I wanted, and fudged it from there.

Both bags have a waterproof lining, so they don't get everything else in their school bags wet.

The main fabric shell is french seamed, with the loops for the ties to go through caught in the side seams.
In one of them, I appear to have sewn the main fabric and lining as one, and in the other the lining is loose and just caught in the stitching channel at the top that the draw strings go through.

Both function fine, and I haven't noticed any difference in waterproof-ness.

I appliqued their names on the front.

For this I printed out their names in REALLY LARGE font, and  then traced this on to some interfacing. I ironed the interfacing to the wrong side of the main fabric, and pinned a piece of contrast fabric to the right side of the fabric.
I sewed around their names from the wrong side, and then satin stitched over the first line of stitching from the right side.
Final step was cutting away the extra fabric from around the letters to reveal the names.