Category Archives: Clothing makes

New & vintage linen top…

I found this printed linen square (I think it’s a 60’/70’s napkin) at ‘Hilly Fields Midsummer Fayre’ (Brockley, London) a couple of years ago.

I wanted to use it, but keep it in one piece – so decided to make a feature of it on a square top. Pink wouldn’t normally be my first choice of colour, but, not having access to fabric shops in lockdown, means using up what I have. I tacked then machine stitched the print square on to the pink linen following the inner circles of the design, so the top wouldn’t ‘bag’ when it was worn.

The front of the top was now a bit heavy! To balance it, I stitched a linen square to the back piece of the top and made an embroidered design using a detail from the front print. Luckily I have a little collection of embroidery threads – I used a chain stitch.

New old shorts…

Today I needed to get my legs out in the sun! So I altered a pair of very old saggy long shorts to make a pair of short, shorts (for garden wear!). I handed sewed the hem, with the new Gutermann “Denim” thread, using backstitch to give nice chunky stitches.

New skirt for me…

Made myself a skirt using very very nice Merchant & Mills ‘Indigo Spot’ Indian cotton, with cotton tape from myfabrics.com. Particularly fond of the gingham pockets made from vintage bits of Oilily fabric.

I never thought I’d ever get so keen on wearing elasticated waistbands – but it’s great for working, when I have a lot of bending over do, like when Idrafting patterns or cutting fabric/patterns.

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Made a new dress…

I’ve been working on this dress for some time… partly because I was was doing a workshop at Number 57 for this particular pattern, I was making it in stages so they could see the progress – but I didn’t manage to finish it with them because I decided it needed different sleeves.  But I finished it today “Hurrah”!

I used the ‘Dress Shirt’ Merchant & Mills pattern, but it needed pockets so I drafted a pocket pattern and added those into the side seams. Once I had the main body of the dress done, I realised it needed cap sleeves (to balance the dark yoke); so spent time drafting those properly and making a calico one to make sure it worked!

I’ve made four of these dresses myself, and helped four people make theirs in workshops at Number 57. One comment I would make about this Merchant & Mills pattern is that it has a lot of ease in the sleeves, which works ok with loose weave fabrics like linen, but with fine or close weave fabrics fabrics I’ve found I have to pull in the extra fabric into a little section of gathers across the sleeve head on the shoulder.

The lovely Indian block printed fabric was bought from The Cloth Shop – Ladbrooke Grove back in February.

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Dinosaur love!

Just added “Apatosaurus’ to the Folksy shop.

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A hand sewn and embroidered dinosaur appliqué,the 17 piece appliqué is made of cotton jersey fabric, with embroidered eye and toe nails. This dinosaur is one from a set of 3 I did a while ago; another one from the set, the ‘Spinosaurus’, was bought by Mini Boden for the Winter 2013 range – they used all my original colours which is always nice.

Dinosaurs are really popular with children especially boys, so when I decided to design some dinosaur logos I had to do some serious research. I studied lots of fossil skeletons as well as artist impressions. When I was growing up this dinosaur was referred to as a ‘Brontosaurus’ now its called an ‘Apatosaurus’. No one knows what colour dinosaurs were, artists impressions usually make them grey or green, I wanted to use some colour so I looked at brightly coloured snakes to get some ideas.

I’m not sure how the ‘college style’ lettering came about, it just worked! This is rather a time consuming applique but fun. I’m very fond of Apatosaurus and I’ll do the third dinosaur in the set, Triceratops soon; after that I feel quite inspired to some more dinosaur design work.

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Smiles

Very jolly ‘Smilies’ repeat logo t-shirt added to the Folksy shop last night.

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The nine appliqués are made from the same cotton jersey fabric as the t-shirt and hand stitched with yellow and brown embroidery thread. This is one design from a set of ‘repeat logo’ designs I did nearly 3 years ago. I sold another from the set, ‘orange goldfish’, to Mini Boden it was used in the Winter 2012 range. Quite pleased with the freehand drawing on the photo too!

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Here are a few photos of the making process. I had to back each circle with fusible cotton interfacing so that the dark embroidery thread didn’t show through as it carried underneath. You can just make out the lines of the air-erasable pen I used to mark details, the lines disappear in a couple of hours. I discovered these pens when I was on a short embroidery course (St Martins School of Art) a few years ago – such a brilliant solution to lots of making problems!

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