Orange Circles

This is another version of my TNT blouse, Vogue 8572 (OOP) in a wonderful orange self patterned linen that I purchased in the USA last year.

For this version I chose to do French Seams and use Hong Kong finishes on the zip seam as well as the armholes so this has taken this blouse up a notch or two.

There is not much else to tell you, so here are the photos:

Note the colour of the zip pull.

The zip itself is very different in colour to the zip pull, but the zip pull is what you see!

This wasn't planned to be in my SWAP, however it will go with my everyday collection and can be counted as the "one garment may be sewn before the official sewing start date" so my first SWAP piece is completed.

******************

Thank you for all the comments on the Hot Patterns Riviera Summer Breeze Tie Front Top, you have convinced me to have another go at this pattern and I will let you know the results, it may still find a new home.

******************

Wishing you all a wonderful New Year and all the very best for a fantastic and sewful 2013.

Christmas sewing

This is what I have been up to since my last post, well sort of, I also have an orange linen top nearly finished that I cut out on 1 December, but more about that one later.

Again this year, I left it to the last minute to produce Christmas gifts, even though I knew very early in the year that this is what I would be making.

First up was the Spice of Life bag for my very good friend with the fabric purchased whilst we were at the ASG Convention in Adelaide.  This is the 3rd time I have made this bag, so it was pretty straight forward.

Then it was time again to sew for the nieces and nephews and late last year I found this great tutorial for Circle Zip Earbud Pouch by Erin Erickson after seeing a whole lot of them on various blogs thinking they would be perfect for this Christmas.  My friends can tell you that at every craft show I attend this year the search was on for themed fat quarters and the effort was very much appreciated by the recipients.

Lastly was a necklace for my Sister as she already knew that she was getting the bag so using some 10mm Black Rutifated Quartz and 8mm black beads I made this for her.

I also found via Pinterest this great tutorial for making a Necklace Display by Bea Graansma.

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and I plan on being back before the New Year!

Riveria Summer Breeze and Giveaway

I have finally managed to try out one of the HotPatterns patterns that I won earlier this year and as predicted it is HP 1137 Riviera Summer Breeze Sleeveless Tops, the Tie-Front version from this pattern.

Not knowing what type of block Hot Patterns uses, I decided to make this one up with none of my normal adjustments and had it ready to sew at our fitting weekend with Angie.

I traced off a Size 8 as per my measurements on the envelope and found this steely blue wool/cotton blend knit in my stash that I purchased from an unnameable Brunswick distributor when the Aussie Pattern Review girls met up in Melbourne in 2010.

I found the instructions to be minimal, and even though I am Burda magazine sewer, the HotPatterns instructions seemed to be even less, e.g.

• there are two notches for the placement of the long tie, however for the short tie there is only one notch and of course I used the lower notch as the top placement when from what I worked out later it should have been the bottom placement,
  
• when it came to gathering the front piece there is no mention of what notches you match up or  how much it gathers up to, there is a diagram, but it did do my head in getting there.

I basted this together and tried it on and the only change we made was to reduce the short belt end of the oval dart by 3.5cm (1 1/2").

I found this pattern very long and took 12cm (5 7/8") off the length.

On reflection I probably chose the wrong size because I used a knit (which is also a suggested fabric) as the neck is very large and the side seams are too low and I have the bra showing.  It is a very loose style and the tie belt is the only way you can get any shape into it.

This top will be donated as I am not comfortable in it and even if I went down a size this will not change the amount of fabric that is in the front of the top, there is just too much of it for my liking.

Now if any of you would like to have this pattern, please let me know in the comments and I will let you know who the lucky person is.  Please be aware that I have cut off the instructions from the main sheet, but besides this the pattern is still intact as I traced of my pattern.

Zipper Workshop

Back in October, Maria, Alison and I headed to Canberra for the day to attend a Zipper Workshop by Nicole Mallelieu at Addicted to Fabric.

Our requirement list had us purchase fabric, lining and zips for the Large Tote and Satchel.

After checking out the Nicole Malleliue Design - Made by You flicker group I fell in love with the all the different flaps that people had added to their Totes, so I headed off to Ikea and found this wonderful print and then managed to get a reasonable match in some quilting cotton for the remainder of the Tote and the lining.

The workshop consisted of 4 types of zippers which Nicole said we would probably only get 2 completed, maybe 3 but were given notes for all 4, which were:

• Super Simple Zipper
• Exposed Zipper Pocket
• Lapped Zipper Pocket
• Zipped Gusset

I decided to do the Exposed Zipper Pocket first in the Tote lining,

and then proceeded to work on the Zipped Gusset for the top of the Tote.

Over the last month (I'm not sure where the time has gone) I have:

• fused the Tote first with Medium-Heavy Iron-on Interfacing and then put a layer of  H640 Fusible Wadding Medium over the top using my Elna Press in both instances;
• Put the Lapped Zipper Pocket on the back of the Tote so the zip doesn't rub against my clothing;

• Added a zipper patched pocket to the opposite side of the Tote lining;

• Added a phone pocket on the end wall of the lining.

and now have a bag that looks like this:

and this:

I'm not sure if you can see the black pins on the strap on the right hand side of the Tote above but this is where the bag is up to.

It was whilst I was trying to decide on the strap length, that I realised that no matter what length I made the strap the actual size of the Tote was not something I would ever use, it wears me which is not how I want my bags to be.

Now it is fortunate that when my darling Mum and Sister visited yesterday the Tote wasn't quite finished but my Sister did like it "quite a lot" so maybe this Tote has a new home already, I am waiting for the call back!