Sunday, April 29, 2012

I'm signing up to Me-Made-May 2012

I've just pledged - 'I, Gillian sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May '12. I endeavor to wear four home sewn or refashioned items each week for the duration of May 2012' . Tomorrow it will be the green and black checked jacket I refashioned on the weekend. I have taken some construction photos, but got distracted by two hours of trying to get my over-locker to work! Eventually re threaded it with four different colours and went back to factory settings. Finally rechecked my seam width and put it back to what I noted it was before I tried my rolled hem - and it started working again. Then both the needles broke. So I decided to leave it for another day. Put a heavier duty needle in and its working great now. Don't have the heart to change the threads back to the same colour just now so will only overlock the insides. I saw this great tutorial last night on how to add a kick pleat to a straight skirt, so am going to try it out on some winter material I bought on sale last year. www.afashionablestitch.com

Saturday, April 28, 2012

The 'it's only taken me 6 months to complete' top

I have been trying to get rid of those annoying things in life - the little niggles. So I set aside two days,and finally finished this top for my friend. This is what happens when you say, "I'll make you a top as a thank you"
and then agree to copy a top - without having actually seen the top in question. So first I had to learn to copy a garment via a night school course. Then figure out the sewing order, how to sew raglan sleeves, shirring elastic and rolled hems. Okay, if you look closely you can see I didn't actually roll the hems, I just overlocked them and sewed them on my normal sewing machine. I just wanted to get it done at this point as we were now at the end of summer... I quite liked the end result and it will be flattering, but it was a bugger to sew. Also finished off a couple of baby outfits for friends that are pregnant now just in case I get busy when it comes time to celebrating the new arrivals.