Garnet Finlayson

I've been sewing for Mark again for our 15th Wedding Anniversary back in 2016 and it has taken me quite a while to get some photos of this garment even though it is worn quite a lot.

Some of the choices from Traditional and Modern Anniversary Gifts suggested Glass, Watches, Ruby, Alexandrite and Rhodite Garnet.

I then remembered I had been given some Sweater Knit from Knitwit by Alison's mother about 10 years ago that I had earmarked for a smarter sweatshirt style that Mark had been wearing for years that were starting to show their age.

So I headed to Thread Theory and purchased the Finlayson Sweater PDF as I planned to sew this during our Sewing Weekend in Brisbane as Mark was going to be away for our wedding anniversary. However his plans changed so I suddenly had to get this made.

Working from his much loved sweater I cut a large and added 7.5cm in length as I wasn't going to add the bands.

From my bag stash fabric I found some black twill that I used for the back neck facing.

and used my Duckbill scissors to trim the bulk from the collar which I also understitched.

This pattern went together very well and when I had the sleeves in I decided to compare it to his much loved sweater and realised it was going to be too large in the sleeves and also thought I'd take some extra width from the side seams as well.

The solid line is my stitching line and the dashed is the cutting line.

The final steps were to add some black twill tape to the neckline and to do the hems on my Coverstitch.

Mark has said that it is a different neckline but he seems to be quite comfortable with it as it got a lot of wear during Winter.

This is the only photo I have got of the back view, which shows how much fullness there is in the body,

mucking around with Roscoe

so I will compare this to the Medium to see how much difference there is for the next version.

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2017 Stash Out: 21.9 m
2017 Stash In:  14.6 m

Shorts for the man

Every now and then I plan to make a garment for Mark and seeing I had already made him two Strathcona Henely t-shirts and had purchased the Jutland Pants from Thread Theory, I thought a new pair of shorts was in order.

Mark does own a pair of red shorts so I didn't feel that purchasing this burnt orange would be too much except my sewing buddies keep telling me it is my colour.

I then had some fun finding some manly cotton fabric for the pocket bags, waistband lining and bias binding.

My madness is based on the fact that Mark has a 30" waist and last year I found it extremely difficult to find pants/trousers in this size and as he prefers not to wear a belt it looks like I could have a new job.

So I cut out a size 30" and then couldn't make up my mind if I was going to do patch pockets or welt pockets.

Welt pockets won, but it has been a long time since I have done these and I'm glad his RTW shorts have the bar tacks at the end of the pockets as this has helped cover my overcutting.

Even though I wasn't completely happy with the welt pockets I decided to still make these as I wasn't sure that the pattern 30" waist would be equal to Mark's real waist.

All seams are flat felled and I have used bias strips for around the edge of the fly.

Again my sewing machine didn't like the buttonhole so I have again used the tutorial I used for my Jeans.

I found this button in my button jar and think it works perfectly for these shorts.

Mark found the waist to be very comfortable but did comment that these are a slim fit in the legs.  So next time I will add a some extra width in the front leg and see how that goes.

This is at the end of the day.

Now the fabric for these shorts were counted in the 2015 totals, but I attended the Sydney Spoolettes Fabric Destash event last Sunday and donated the green/black mesh knit that you can see at the top left hand of the picture below.  This was purchased during our trip to the USA back in 2011 and now I can only see the black in it so I am very happy it has found a new home.

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2016 Stash Out: 2.9 m
2016 Stash In: 15 m

Skiing Henley

The planets have finally aligned and I have been home when Mark has put on his Anniversary gift from September last year.

The modern gift guide for our 14th anniversary suggested Ivory or gold jewellery and seeing he doesn't wear any jewellery I put my thinking cap on regarding Ivory.  Luckily I remembered that I had some Ivory Bamboo Interlock purchased in 2009 from The Bamboo Fabric Store in my stash which would work perfectly for another Strathcona Henley, maybe the t-shirt with short sleeves this time.

My next quandary was how to make it not so plain and then remembered Mark had a purchased t-shirt from Japan back in 2005 which was looking very sad, but had a tone-on-tone embroidered skier on it.

Now how to do this as I don't have an embroidery machine, but this is where talking to your sewing buddies is great, Alison volunteered to do this for me.

So I headed over to Great Designs and purchased a skier design for Alison to use on her machine.  It took Alison a few test runs with different threads to get the skier to look like I had imagined, and we ended up using Mettler No 703.

The only adjustment I made to the pattern was to lower the front neckline by 2cm.

And to make the t-shirt look more RTW I dug out some white twill tape and stitched it around the back neckline like Mark's RTW t-shirts.

Mark is very pleased with this t-shirt, it has had a lot of wears already.

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2015 Stash Out: 25.55 m
2015 Stash In: 32.8 m

Steel Blue Strathcona Henley

Another year and another wedding anniversary gift for Mark, my husband, and this year the modern gift guide suggested textiles, fur.

I did for a fleeting second think of making Mark a woven shirt, but once I spied this wool knit (that had been in my stash since 2010) and remembering that I had also purchased the Parkland Selection from Thread Theory, the Strathcona Henley was the winner.

Based on Mark's measurements I cut out a medium.

It wasn't until I sat down and started to sew this, that I realised I was doing my first buttonhole placket on a knit! Thankfully the instructions for this were quite good and using a lot of basting I was very pleased with how it turned out.

There was no way I was going to  do the buttonholes, so I again purchased them from Mick at Quick Buttonhole Service at Alexandria.  I couldn't believe my luck in finding the perfect buttons at Spotlight.

The Strathcona Henley is a "modern", "slim-fitting" t-shirt and I chose to make it with long sleeves seeing the fabric was a wool mix. I did have a bit of concern when I had all but the hem done that it was going to be too big, however when I measured it against one of his current t-shirts it was a slightly slimmer fit but the length seemed a bit long.  I did cut off 4.5cm from the length and that left me with a 2cm hem.

It looks like it's a winner, it has had a few outings already!

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2014 Stash Out: 29.35 m
2014 Stash In: 47.25 m

Leather toiletry bag

My darling husband is a mad keen skier and will make any excuse to go and play in all that white stuff.

When he travels he packs as little as possible and as light as he can and this includes his toiletry bag.  This bag has been with him for as long as I have know him and he mentioned earlier this year that he would like a new one, but it had to be the same size!

Now this bag is made from one piece of vinyl with a zip joining the two edges together and measures 33cm x 23cm in total.

I decided to make it a bit special and headed to NSW Leather Co Pty Ltd at Alexandria and purchased a small back leather skin, and then to the Remnant Warehouse where I purchased some black water proof fabric.

Then I had the brain wave about personalising it and found this perfect vintage leather stamp at Thrifty Earth, an Etsy store.  Crissy was the best in getting this to me in time for Christmas.

Now the stamp doesn't have a handle, so another trip to Birdsall Leather & Craft at Botany to purchase a stamp handle.

Next up was to figure out how to use the stamp to get the best impression in the leather and this is where YouTube is so fantastic.  It was at this time I realised I needed some granite, definitely not in our house, but thankfully my neighbour had a small piece that I could use.

I am very happy how the stamp turned out!

The rest of the bag was a very easy sew.

It is wrapped under the Christmas Tree and I will be interested to see what he says, especially after we watched the Great British Sewing Bee Christmas Special and all the talk about how special home made gifts are!

Silk Boxer Shorts

It was our wedding anniversary this weekend and I have always given DH a traditional gift each year, and this year it is linen or silk.

For some reason I left this to last week to organise so this would have to be the quickest project so far for me.

I purchased the silk from The Silk Shop on Monday, pre-washed it on Tuesday, finally found the pattern on Friday night and had it gift wrapped for DH for our wedding anniversary today!

I have again used Jalie 2326 but this time I referred to the great tips from Martyn Smith in Dressmaking with Stitches, Volume 18 No.12 and added 1cm (3/8") to the side seams and an extra 6mm (1/4") to the front in-leg and curved crotch seams which let me do French Seams throughout.

The silk had a shiny and matt side, so I used the matt for the right side.

The only thing I need to do now is add a button to the fly front which of course I didn't have a suitable one in the stash!

My lovely card contained a very generous offer to go fabric shopping!!

Now to get back to the Trench Coat!

Ski boots in Summer

I've had this fabric for a few years (purchased from Quilt Fabric Closeouts) and have always planned on making boxer shorts for DH as this is his sleeping attire when we are in the lodge in Thredbo, so they are wrapped and ready for Xmas.



I have used Jalie 2326 with the centre back seam, however I didn't do the split side seams and made a casing for the elastic (the elastic is held together with a safety pin, until I get him to try them on).



This is my first sewing project for DH so I will be interested to see how his measurements equate to those from the pattern companies.