An April check-in

[nou]

Hi sewers! What have you been up to recently?

Since our last check-in, I’ve made a bra top, a pair of underpants, a cushion cover, a pair of viscose challis trousers, and a mock-up for a new fancy neckline. I’ll put details and at least one photo in a comment.

Comments

[nou]

Details of my makes!

The bra top is a copy of a Molke racerback bralette that I bought a while back and liked aside from the straps being too long for me. I could have just kept buying these and shortening the straps myself, since they’re well-made and ethically-made, but they’re fairly expensive (though they are extremely on sale right now), and if I’m going to spend that much on a thing then I want it not to require altering.

Also, who am I kidding, I just love making patterns. I only needed one mockup to get this right, so I now have a nice racerback bra pattern that fits me. I plan to make a variant that has regular straps too, since although I mostly don’t mind the racerback ones showing, I have a few tops where it looks a bit silly.

The underpants are also a copy of a commercial garment, in this case some Bad Rhino pants that they stopped making. (I would probably have kept buying these for ever if they hadn’t stopped making them.) I’ve been making these for so long that the first pair I made have fallen apart, but I’m still experimenting with different ways of finishing them. I tried foldover elastic on the leg hems last time, which had an interesting nonbinary aesthetic, but I disliked the feel of it, so this time I went back to tubular ribbing.

The cushion cover was made from fabric reclaimed from a pair of trousers that had gone beyond mending — a dark pink with black butterflies on. I used the pillowcase tutorial from Sartor Bohemia that I linked here previously, so there’s a nice little flap that covers the zip.

The viscose challis trousers were the first thing I’ve ever made from viscose challis! It’s a challenging fabric that frays a lot, stretches at the cut edges, and does not at all like staying still to be cut and sewn. I considered French seams, but in the end I just did regular seams and finished the raw edges with zigzagging, and they’ve been fine so far. I sewed these with cotton thread, which for the crotch at least was a mistake, since the bias part of the back crotch stretched a lot when I sat down, and by the end of the day the thread broke. I’ve now re-sewed it with polyester and we shall see what happens.

The fancy neckline is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, since I like fairly simple silhouettes in clothes but I also like interesting details. I’d love to see/hear about any ideas people have for necklines/collars that are interesting but (a) not feminine and (b) not military.

Photo is below (mockup in white poplin — the real thing will probably be purple). This design came entirely out of my own brain and was topologically complicated to implement, so I’m very proud of myself for figuring it out. The ends of the straps are fully enclosed between the fabric and the facing (a facing is a sort of lining). I did a web search to see if anyone else had done anything like this before, but I could only find one commercial version (example) and obviously that didn’t have instructions! I’m happy to post my rough notes on it if anyone wants them, but they are in no sense a tutorial, and they won’t make sense unless you already know how to do a faced neckline with a slit.

[shermarama]

I have done two things recently, only one of which might be a bad idea!

One is get into the beta test for Backstitch (https://backstitch.app/) which is meant to be something like Ravelry but for sewing. (By 'get into the beta test', I mean that at the moment, you have to send a request to get a login and that might take a few days - it seems to basically work okay.) I think this might be useful, because most of my patterns are either self-drafted or kludges of bought ones, and it would be handy to have somewhere to write down the kludges where I'm going to be able to access it next time, before I get halfway through and remember what I haven't done this time either. I suspect making clothes will still mostly involve pulling out everything I've made with that pattern before plus everything in a similar style / shape and working out where on that scale I want to aim for this time, but the notes could still be handy.

The other thing is getting into some fabric de-stash groups on Facebook. This means there's now interesting fabric coming up for sale where I can see it, as one-offs and sometimes bargain prices... So I now have 2.4m of a merino French Terry, with some nylon and elastane content for durability and recovery, at a not even that bargainous price, but which I was never going to be able to get anywhere else. It's a strange colour, somehow both navy blue and charcoal grey, and it dries extremely quickly and should be highly stink-resistant, so that was a good idea, right?

I'm now doing some sewing today, making thick winter leggings out of it. This has involved pulling out both versions of the Jupiter leggings pattern I've made before, though they were both short shorts versions, and comparing sizes and stretch amounts to some bought leggings I have too, but I reckon this'll work? I also cocked up the pattern printing, and glued it all before I'd noticed it was 5% under size, but I needed to make so many length adjustments anyway that I have decided to wing the compensation in the width. It's going to be fine. Honestly.

[nou]

Thank you for the Backstitch pointer! I’ve put myself on the waiting list. Not sure it will solve any actual problems that I have (my main issue is forgetting to do the note-making, rather than not having a good place to put the notes) but it sounds interesting and I definitely want to check it out.

I like the idea of a de-stashing group but am not on Facebook. Maybe I should see if there’s one on Mastodon or something. When I last cleared out my stash, I put the fabrics in a box out the front (all labelled with what they were) and they all went by the end of the day (to different people — I could see them being taken from the front window). But obviously that only works for the getting-rid-of side of things.

Your French terry is clearly a good idea, since you’re already making things from it!

[fred_mouse]

I've done the tiniest bit of hand sewing, on a project I really should put some dedicated time into, and get it done.

[nou]

Even a tiny bit is still progress — nice work!