Waffle Patterns Kaede Utility Apron

Out of the blue just before my Italian holiday, I was contacted by Yuki of Waffle Patterns. She was testing a new pattern. She must have read my mind because the latest pattern was a utility apron/belt. That’s a bit out of the ordinary, you may think but, for the longest time, I had been […]

Sorbet season, take two – McCalls 8090

Once again I was hovering on the edge of a trend, the Tiered Dress trend to be specific. It takes a while for me to get my head around whether I like a trend enough to get on the bandwagon. I dabbled a bit last year with my Blouse to dress hack to see if […]

Mustard and white striped trousers

Ever since I bought this piece of yellow and white striped linen a picture of a pair of light, swishy trousers floated into my head and once I got my hands on the finalised @PatternlabLdn trouser block, I was determined to use that to create the summer pants of my dreams. I’ve been dabbling with […]

barefaceselfie

Pattern Marriages – jumpsuit hack … again

Jumpsuit Fever is still in full flow, even though the brilliant Sew Together For Summer challenge and summer itself is now over. It was so much fun seeing all the entries from all over the world and I was inspired to enter five jumpsuits in the challenge. I had actually made six but one was […]

Breaking it a little bit: Kaste butterfly sleeve dress

True to my word I am making more from the Breaking the Pattern book because I’m still feeling the vibe. The latest one I decided to tackle was the Kaste dress. This dress is so pretty and at first, it was one of those which I thought, “It’s really too pretty, it’s definitely not me.” […]

The T-shirt maxi Mark II

Hello, it’s me! Long-ish time no blog. I know it’s still winter and I’m still feeling that post-Christmas, pre-spring slow-jo that I get every year. I realised I hadn’t shared a lovely make from last summer, and the blog was festering in drafts, so here it finally its. A couple of summers ago, I drafted […]

2018 Make Nine Premier Division

It’s a little less than a year since I started sharing my sewing on social media so I’m still finding all the challenges and “traditions” of this community. I always want to join in and when my other love – travel – has allowed, I have taken part sporadically, in a couple of photo challenges […]

Blast from the Past: One of my DKNYs takes life

During 2017 I kept saying to myself I have to address my patterns stash as well as the mountain of fabric I have accumulated. I settled on a pattern the which I’ve had for many years and never made up. I actually cut this out months earlier on a trip to my sister’s but my busy […]

Self drafted T-shirt goes long – taking it to the Maxi.

In March I was getting my sewjo back with a vengeance and sewed my first self-drafted item for a while. I made a simple T-shirt based on an old RTW favourite and used some dramatic fabric to give it life. I’m going to use the same technique and extend that self-made pattern into a maxi […]

The Accidental Winner: why it pays to dig out those sewing UFOs.

Now meet my “Afterthought” dress, the late to the party dress, the slow-slow-slow game-winner. It’s months since I made her but only now got around to wearing and writing about it! I’m currently in a phase of craving instant gratification I see a new fabric or pattern and I want to sew it now, but […]