Cake Patterns - Carmine Jacket

A few months ago I was chatting to one of the ladies at our Fabric Hoarders sewing Sunday, and she was lamenting the fact that she had all sorts of lovely garment fabrics and patterns, but was not getting around to using them.
She mentioned a particular pattern, the Cake Carmine, was one she had fabric earmarked for.

I offered that I also had that pattern sitting unused in my stash, and that we could make it together one Sunday.
We agreed this was a great idea, and set our March meetup (today) as the day we would do it.

As this was my first try of the pattern, and Cake has an unusual size selection method, I opted to make this up in a fabric I wasn't in love with from deep stash - a purple polar fleece. (No, I don't know why I have purple polar fleece either!!)

This is one of those patterns where the pattern pieces look a little odd, and it is not necessarily clear how it will all work until you get to the end.
We started out by cutting our pieces in our designated size, and then sewed each step together until our big ta-da! moment when we had completed garments.

This was fairly straightforward to put together so long as you trusted the instructions, though we felt it would have benefited from a couple more notches on the large circular piece that forms the front bodice and collar.

We both were really pleased with how our jackets came out, and my friend was pleased for the confidence boost of making them together.


Verdict: will make again in better fabric.

Jalie 2565 - Singlet Top

In my sew-cation I gave myself over the Christmas break, I wanted to try finding a good singlet top pattern. As this is an item of clothing I wear most days, my current RTW ones are getting a bit tatty looking.

I have a good selection of Jalie patterns, and found a couple of options that were either similar to what I had, or were a style I was interested in trying. I decided Jalie 2565 was first up.

I had some merino/cotton left over from my Muse Tahi shrug, that was juuust enough to get the main pieces out of. I used some black cotton/elastane for the bands.

It went together quickly with no dramas, and fit as I wanted to. It is a good length, and fits closely without hugging every single cuddly lump and bump.

The only issue, which was a case of fabric choice rather than the pattern, was that the fabric I used for the bands had a lot more recovery than the main fabric, so tends to pull the neckline up a little higher than shown in the pattern photo.

Verdict: I do intend to make more of these, but will use the same fabric for both body and bands, so they are not fighting each other.