Washed Denim Jumpsuit

If you’ve been around for a while you might remember #sewtogtherforsummer2019 when our assignment was to make a jumpsuit. I went a bit mad that year and created a total of five jumpsuits but was still eclipsed by the awesome Jen Legg’s 11! One of my suits was a self-drafted boilersuit style which I made […]

Black Skinny Jeans from PatternLab Block

My latest jeans project uses the Pattern Lab system to hopefully get a good fit on these trousers. I’m using PatternLab.Ldn skinny jeans block with some black stretch denim from the stash. Here’s my Affinity Designer sketch for these classic-looking jeans. The denim is a lovely deep inky black and I decided to use white […]

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 […]

Quick wins to reach across the world.

I had the very great honour last week to be featured in not one but two places in the Sewisphere.  As a long time follower of Sew over 50, I was delighted to be invited to join their list of featured sewers and serve as a guest editor for the day, over on their IG account. […]

Jumpsuit fever

Well didn’t we all go crazy for jumpsuits! Sewtogetherforsummer19 has really started something this year. More than 700 jumpsuits and I added 5 to that total. I’ve shared one, the Cherry jumpsuit from Mood Sewciety but that just whetted my appetite. Always one to ramp up the challenge level, I really wanted to do a […]

Sewtogetherforsummer my SMYLY time.

This time last year I was bursting with joy over the brilliant challenge started by @sewsarahsmith, @rocco.sienna and @sewing_in_spain. so this year I had to enter again and it just so happened that the challenge garment was on my #2018makenine list. The Diane von Furstenberg Wrap dress is the inspiration and I wanted to draft my […]

Sleevetober? A twist in the tale.

I didn’t have time to enter #sleevefest as I was travelling, nevertheless, I am bringing it with a sleeve AND and twist front on my latest make. This dress is my favourite RTW dress and I’ve worn it nearly to death. I have been trying to figure out the twist front for years without success! […]

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 […]

Evergreen: an adventure in colour and creating

A little while ago  I blogged about drafting a dress from a photo I had seen in the Vogue Pattern book. I’ll show you here how I turned that pattern into a real-life dress. The original was a shift style dress in denim and I had intended to make a close copy in the traditional fabric […]

Making it work – upsizing commercial sewing patterns.

I don’t know if it was overconfidence, wishful thinking or both but I seem to have a number of patterns that are not the right size for me. Some of these date from my earlier sewing days when I would buy patterns fully believing I was going to make that item next week. These patterns don’t […]

Through my eyes; I made a pattern from a photograph in Vogue

I have lovingly kept this Book of Vogue patterns for years and drooled and dreamed over it many times. Now I’m sewing again, I’m trying not to add to my pattern stash before I use some of the ones I have already, but it’s difficult when you see something you like and it’s not in […]