My hopes for the second series of The Great British Sewing Bee

I can’t believe it’s been nearly a year since the first series of The Great British Sewing Bee. It never hit the dizzy heights of The Great British Bake-off, did it? I’m hoping this year’s series will be better: maybe they were just finding their feet during the first series. These are my hopes for the second series (on tonight!):

1. An obvious one: more Patrick Grant, the dishy Saville Row designer
2. More explanation of the actual sewing. That section ‘5 minutes to show how to make a 3-piece suit’ or whatever it was, was confusing and too fast. Even my sewing teacher said she couldn’t keep up.
3. Give the viewer some understanding about cut and colour in choosing cloth.
4. The Great British Bake-off goes into the history of Eccles Cakes (!) or whatever it is, can they do the same for fashion? Or did they do that and I just went blank.
5. Bring the lovely Claudia Winkleman’s personality out more. I love Claudia – she’s quick, witty and intelligent.She does that faux clutz thing well too. I can’t understand what happens to her on TGBSB. She becomes a simpering bore.

That’s it. Not much to ask for, n’est-ce pas?

My New Year’s Resolutions

So it seems I should get down to my new year’s resolutions. After all, I’ve been back at the gym this week (loving all the newbies struggling through the spin classes) and have just about finished off all the Christmas food…

I started this blog a year ago and definitely haven’t updated it as often as I would have liked so my first resoution was easy. The others I wanted to make sure were fun and achievable. My New Year’s Resolutions are:

1. Blog at least once a week
2. Try at least 5 new crafts
3. Sew 3 of the patterns from Burda magazine

Let me know what your sewing or craft new year’s resolutions below!

A jumper for squally weather

My finished jumper

A few weeks ago, I noticed the weathermen kept predicting ‘squally weather’. Love that word – it means brief periods of wind or rain – and this jumper I made earlier this year is just the right thing to wear during squally weather.

It’s made out of some sort of knitted wool material that I inherited from my grandmother, and to begin with, I couldn’t work out what to make.

My sewing teacher suggested a skirt but I thought that might look a bit old-fashioned and I don’t really wear wool skirts.

My fallback for finding the best patterns is the American designer Cynthia Rowley. I find some of the Burda, Simplicity, New Look etc patterns look old and my aim at least, is to make cool, stylish clothes. It could be the pictures on the front of the envelope packets are just styled badly or are old photographs but it’s hard to envisage what it could look like using a modern material or styled well.

Does anyone out there have any recommendations for where to get current-looking great patterns? Thanks to Tia Dia’s recommendation I have started buying Burda magazine on a monthly basis and have found loads of patterns I’d like to try.

Anyway, back to my jumper. The material has 3 or 4 colours woven into it so I wanted to keep the style simple. The Cynthia Rowley pattern is pretty simple and straight forward. The material meant I didn’t have to use facing as it was thick enough, but I did include the top-stitches around the neckline, sleeves and bottom of the top even though the material means that you can’t see it very well. This must have been one of the easiest sewing projects I’ve done!

Blue dotty top

Wearing my blue dotty top in my mum’s garden

Lauren Laverne’s style column on Sunday in The Observer about polka dots being fashionable was interesting as she used the same hackneyed ‘joining the dots’ title I made with my blog post about making my blue dotty top, which I’ve just finished.

This is one of my favourite sewing makes. After getting over the trickiness of lining up the dots so they were straight, it was fairly easy to finish and I only struggled a bit inserting the sleeves.

I’ve only worn the top with jeans so far but I reckon it would look good with a black leather skirt. The wool material is warm and I would have preferred to make it with long sleeves but unfortunately I didn’t have enough material – one of the hazards of upcycling and using inherited material. The necklace is one of those fake pearl ones, which I hope complements the black in the top.

Move over Miss Marple

My wool cape

Finally the weather is the right temperature for me to wear my cape. Timing is everything as it’s made out of green wool that my grandmother bought years ago and I could have done with a bit more to make it longer. In the mid-winter it’s way too cold to wear a short cape.

Unfortunately the window of opportunity when I can get away with wearing the cape is short. What exactly are you supposed to wear under a cape? A coat negates the need for a cape, and only one of my cardigans is thick enough. I’m sure Miss Marple never had this problem. Yesterday I wore it over a fitted blue suit jacket and that worked well.

I’m chuffed with the cape though. To get over the Miss Marple vibe I chose a vivid orange dotty lining. I found the lining in MacCulloch and Wallis – it’s still there if you like it. The purple with light blue dots is cool.

Carrying on with the theme of using things my family has collected, the buttons are vintage too, and collected by my uncle who was a train spotter. They have LNER on them, which stands for London and North East Railway. Who knew buttons could be so much fun? I bought some ceramic buttons yesterday in the gift shop at the Museum of London, when I visitted the Cheapside Hoard exhibition.

LNER buttons

Making the button holes using the sewing machine was one of the hardest parts of sewing the cape. Getting them evenly spaced and zig-zagged correctly wasn’t easy and I didn’t realise until too late that I’ve made them so that the cape does up the men’s way!

The other issue was that the lining peaks out from behind the wool. I can only think that I should have ironed the lining more and pulled it tighter. The lining certainly doesn’t lie as flat as it could. Has anyone got any tips to prevent this sort of thing in future?

I made this cape a couple of years ago. Unsurprisingly, it took me nearly all winter to make so I didn’t get to wear it that much that year. At least capes still appear to be in fashion…

Joining up the dots

Making sure the dots match up

In my material stash, I’m lucky to have lots of old – sorry, vintage – materials I’ve inherited from my grandmother.

For my next project, I’m using some of this material – a marvelous blue with black dots on it. The pattern I’ve chosen is New Look 6148 which is a top with short or long arms. I’ve chosen pattern D which has a v-shaped yoke. I’ve seen similar great tops in shops like Reiss, but the main reason I chose it was that I haven’t got enough material for the others!

Not only was the material not quite large enough for the pattern, it wasn’t cut straight so we had to make sure all the dots joined up when cutting the material. This took ages.

I couldn’t find any suitable material for the yoke. None of the colours seemed to complement the blue and the material had to be heavy enough to support the blue. I bought some cream but then remembered that I’d kept an old ribbed black poloneck from Gap that would be perfect. More upcycling, yay! This is the second sewing project with an upcycling aspect to it.

More upcycling – cutting out the yoke from an old Gap jumper

The width at the bottom of the poloneck was just about enough for me to cut out the yoke. It was tricky getting a nice sharp point to in the middle of the yoke. I used the sewing machine and did it in two goes so that I wouldn’t have to swivel the needle. My seam allowance swerved all over the place but the point actually turned out okay.

The rest of the pattern should be a doddle!

Who needs to sew when you can connect to wi-fi?

I spotted this headline in a newspaper and it refers to a poll of 2000 adults who were asked about the most essential skills for modern life. Apparently being able to sew along with writing postcards and baking bread aren’t essential for modern life.

But that’s not a great surprise, is it? I sew for enjoyment – I don’t sew because I need to. It’s often cheaper to buy clothes as material can cost quite a lot. It’s certainly a lot less hassle to buy clothes rather than make them. Half the time when I look at the results of my sewing, I think if I’d bought this from Primark I’d take it back for shoddy workmanship.

Sewing for me is about creating something original, and learning a new skill. I’ve also made some great friends at my sewing class. It’s not an essential skill and I love it the more for that.

The survey was carried out by www.kaz-type.com, a touch-typing course. What’s the top essential skill I hear you ask?
Googling apparently.

Upcycled pleated skirt finally finished

Wearing the pleated skirt in my garden

So I finally finished my upcycled pleated skirt. And I’ve worn it too! I started it at sewing class and then asked my mum to help me finish it.

My mum has sewed for over forty years – she even sewed her own wedding dress – and has a good technical sewing knowledge and is a bit of a perfectionist. Unfortunately she simply can’t understand the agonies and mistakes I make.

When I showed her my half-finished skirt, she sighed and asked me pointed questions such as, “Do you enjoy sewing as you’re not really a beginner any more, are you?” She despaired when she saw I’d used the same blue cotton from the skirt to sew the cream lining – it hadn’t occurred to me to use cream, but it is a good point.

She mistakenly assumes the fact I’ve been doing it for four years means I’m no longer a beginner. My technical knowledge is particularly poor, it’s the colours and design process I enjoy the most. I’m hoping the rest will come with time.

Original dress of my mother’s that I upcycled

This skirt is the New Look 6911 design, version D as I thought the pleats would really show off the zebra pattern although now I’m not sure that they didn’t just make me look more hippy. I used the material from my mum’s old dress and was unbelievably chuffed I could even re-use the zip. The material is slightly see-through so it needed a lining and my kind sewing teacher had some mushroom (or is it champagne coloured) satin which she gave me to make a suitable lining.I love the idea of not wasting anything.

The diagonal waistband on the original dress made cutting out a knee-length skirt in my size tricky as there wasn’t quite enough height in the material one side. I slightly fudged it and the amount of hem I pressed and sewed around the bottom isn’t  the same length all the way round, as it normally is.

When hand-sewing the hem, I used navy blue cotton but the blue showed when I had to sew on the cream sections. Does anyone have any tips, or is it something as simple as using long stitches when needed?

Fashion in Mexico

I’ve just got back from Mexico. It was tremendous fun. Amongst exploring ancient ruins, visiting Freida Kahlo’s house, eating fried grasshoppers (coming to a Wahaca restaurant near you soon apparently), trying to avoid being being serenaded by Mariarchi bands and going to the National Death Museum, I found time to look at the materials in the haberdasheries.

Material I bought in Mexico

That was a treat, as you can imagine. Loads of colourful, high octave type of materials. Nothing can be too bright or garish it seemed. I did manage to find some material with a geometric pattern which I reckon I can turn into a charming skirt or dress, I’m not sure yet. Hopefully I’ve bought enough material to make a dress – my Spanish vocabulary doesn’t extend to words like pleats so I had to use some acting skills too, to ask

how much I’d need for a skirt with pleats.

I love scouring material shops whenever I go travelling. Has anyone else made some great things from material you’ve bought somewhere different?

Which sewing magazines are best?

I only ask because I can’t seem to find any that are modern and include things you’d actually want to make or sew. Sew Magazine I bought recently as my mum spotted it had a free dress pattern on the front, but the magazine wasn’t up to much unless you feel compelled to make a Cath Kidston bag for your gardening tools, or patchwork fruit.

I’m a bit suspicious of some of the women who contribute the patterns and ideas to these magazines: I suspect a lot of them have cats and dreamweavers in their homes.

I’ve had a subscription to Cloth magazine for a short while. Cloth magazine is predominantly about upcycling, and using thrifty skills to revamp your wardrobe which I like the sound of. But there was a letter with the latest edition saying Cloth magazine will only be published for one more issue.

At my sewing class, the teacher brought in a current sewing magazine on a monthly basis – can’t remember which one – and we always used to laugh at how 1980s it looked, even down to the models’ blue mascara.

If you’ve got any ideas that you’re willing to share, please please let me know, thanks so much.