Sewing, is this counted!

Yesterday at the Rhodes Fashion Sewers ASG Group we had a workshop by the talented Monica Poole, the creator of  Moonshine Design, where there are patterns for bags, quilts and fashion.

We all stared worked with the one pattern, The Spice of Life pattern and the 12 bags were all very different, traditional quilted cotton, faux fur, and Gail's woven upholstery carpet bag which is very impressive.

The main fabric and lining is a Vera Bradley quilting cotton that I bought off Etsy a while back and the brown is duck cloth that Alison had left over from her daughter's laptop bag, friends are wonderful.

The batting suggested for this bag is Matilda's Own Bag Batting which a lot of the girls found very hard to find.  I ordered mine from Under The Mulberry Tree and it arrived very promptly and well packed.

I also needed some Template plastic which another friend suggested I purchase the very thin cutting boards that are readily available at the $2 shops, I got a pack of 3 for $3 and they are just a bit thicker than the template plastic but much more cost effective.

The zip for the internal pocket was from my stash and Monica had the Ghee's tubular bag frame available on the day for sale.

I made the small bag, the dimensions are 20 x 30 cm (8 x 12").

For the workshop we had to have all the bits cut out ready to start at 10.00am.

By 3.30pm most of us had completed bags.

And here she is:

I divided the pocket in two,for my iPhone and a pen.

 

 

I'm very pleased with my new bag, yes I know there is a tuck of fabric above the pocket from when I topstitched the top down, and that the zippered pocket is not quite as nice as I would like, but this is my first handbag and I'm thrilled with how it looks.

One of the girls did ask me if it would go with anything in my wardrobe!!

Minoru update

I made a muslin of the Minoru a while ago and wasn't happy with the way the sleeves hung.  This is my first raglan sleeve pattern that I have every worked with, so I really didn't know where to start.


Last weekend some of my sewing buddies and I spent some quality time with Angie Zimmerman at her studio in Ingleburn with all of us working on fitting patterns and the first thing I worked on was the Minoru jacket.

It turns out that I need more length over the shoulder, so we:

• Drew a line across the sleeve at the shoulder point and another one down the length of the sleeve.
• Split the sleeve lengthwise from shoulder point to the seam line at the cuff.
• From the centre line cut the shoulder line across to the seam line 
• Added 1cm (5/8") to the width at the shoulder line
• Spread the shoulder line by 2.5cm (1")
• I also shortened the sleeve length by 5cm (2") 
• The extra amount at the top of the sleeve from these adjustments, we left some of it to be included in the gathers, but did fold back 1.5cm (5/8") on each edge of the sleeve, you can see it at the top of the photo below.

Here is the the top half of the sleeve pattern, hopefully you can work out what I have done.

Now the adjusted Minoru.

I am much happier now with the way the sleeves hang and the fabric is now cut out and I'm ready to start sewing.

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My apologies everyone, I forgot to say that my 6th Garment for the SWAP was the 2nd pair of Jalie Jeans.

SWAP Item No. 6

The navy jeans are finished.

I finally found out how to do a buttonhole on my Janome 5200 without using the buttonhole foot, it was so easy.

The next challenge was the rivets, but then Marg from Pattern Review posted about this Prym Tool and luckily one of my very good sewing buddies was in Europe and was able to find me a set, a very happy dance as this little bit of plastic makes putting the rivets in so easy. To make it even better I have found that the 624 rivets and burrs I purchased from M.Recht in Melbourne a few years ago.

The only changes this time to the white jeans I posted here is the two items above.

So here they are:

Front

 

Back view and pocket design

 

Rivets and coin pocket

Now to work on the Minoru jacket.

Vogue 7937 navy linen skirt

is finished.

Even though I have made this skirt a number of times before, although not blogged about, I have been trying to get the skirt to sit at my waist with no luck, it keeps sitting on my hips which isn't what I wanted.

Saran Wrap to my rescue!  Even though I have Isabel (my body double) my hip shape has been elusive when fitting my skirts. So I placed the Right Front lower half of my Saran Wrap on my pattern and look at the difference, no wonder my skirts kept sliding down to my hips.

I pinned this amount out for this skirt to make sure I hadn't gone too far, and it worked, my skirt sat on my waist all day long, so my pattern will be adjusted permanently by this amount.

Here is the finished skirt:

Front view

See the Back Vent

Back view

A few extra details for this skirt:

• Topstitched both sides of the front and back panels with Gutterman 310 Topstitch thread,
• Finished the back vents with Hong Kong finishes.
• Added black lace to the lining.
• Added 15mm bias tape to the hem edge (now the skirt is on my waist I need to add some length to the pattern).
• Fused a 4cm wide strip of Textureweft (pinked along the top edge) along the hem fold line to give the hem some body and a great base for doing Herringbone stitch for the hem.

This is my 5th garment for the SWAP and the 6th is giving me some challenges with the buttonhole, but soon ...

I've got a new cutting table

and it all started with an A0 Self Healing Mat that I requested for Xmas.

Once DH collected the mat, he informed me that he would make me a cutting table to go with it, something that we can dismantle like the rest of the room for when we have guests.

The top of the table is made from  the same timber as my sewing table and we purchased the Vika Kay adjustable legs from Ikea.The table is attached to the slats on the bed with sliding blots that lock in place, and DH has even drilled a couple of more positions just in case I want to lower the table or even have the table top on a slant (not sure if I would, but you never know).

The table has had quite a bit of use since it was installed, a pair of navy jeans and a navy linen skirt have been cut out and both items are very close to being revealed.

See the large blue bag to the right, that is my scrap bag, I really need to find a way to use these bits or just bite the bullet and throw/give them away.  The brown bag is for fabric that has to be washed, it doesn't go in the stash until it is washed.

Now to do some hems!