Seasonal Sew Wardrobe: Destination

The Sew Alongs and Sewing Contests Facebook group hosts regular Seasonal Sew Wardrobe challenges, and a new challenge started mid August, on the theme of  "Destinations."

I have been looking ahead recently, and realised that there is a gap in my wardrobe for dressy sort of clothes that could also be worn in an office environment.

Mother Daughter tops

When my daughter found out that I was making matching mother and son shirts, her first question was, where was hers? I could have predicted this response, and thankfully, I had an answer to her question.

Mother Son T-Shirt Refashions

I've had a couple of souvenir T-Shirts from my honeymoon sitting in the refashion pile for quite some time. Although they're 12 years old, they haven't been used, so they were still in great condition.

My son has been asking for a new sleeveless sports top for a while, and when I came across these again, I thought it was a perfect match. I took an existing top of his, and traced it out to make the pattern. Before cutting it out, I graded the pattern up a few sizes for him, hoping that it will last for a while.

Me Made May 2016 Roundup

Me Made May 2016 is an annual institution amongst home sewists, with Zoe of So Zo What Do You Know at the helm. This was my second year participating, but my pledge was the same as last year, to wear at least two me made items each day for the month of May.

Each day I wore a me made bra, and sometimes me made undies as well. That left a minimum of one me made item to wear each day. Links to all me-mades except underwear are in the round up below.

Knit tops: Stashbusting Sewalong March 2016

The March theme for the Stahsbusting Sewalong is sewing with knits. I've managed to get two knit tops made up this month, but ran out of time for blogging, so here's a quick write up on both of them together.

Stashbusting 2015: A Year in Review

So, another year has come to an end for the Stashbusting Sewalong.  To recap, my pledge for this year's Sewalong was

"I, Andrea, of Obsessive Creativeness, pledge to end the year with no more fabric in my personal stash than I started with"

So, I was aiming for a breakeven position with my stash. I made myself a little spreadsheet to track incoming and outgoing, and printed out some pages so I could just grab my folder and write everything down as it happened, without needing to wait until I had the computer on.

This year for stashbusting, we had guest hosts for each month, and I hosted May with the theme of lingerie. I tried my hardest to sew at least one item each month that was on theme, but for most months that had school holidays I wasn't always able to do this.

My totals for the year were

Fabric intake ........ 56.2 m
Outgoings ............ 58.49 m

Reverse applique flower and leaf top

It's been a while since my last foray into an Alabama Chanin style project, a dress that I finished back in April. It was about time that I made something else in this style. I actually started planning this top shortly after finishing up my dress, and have had the pattern lying around my studio for a number of months now, just waiting for me to have the time (and attention span) to make it up.

White Linen Bamboo Shoot Top

It was only after finishing my broderie anglaise top that I realised that I actually made something n theme for the Stashbusting Sewalong this month. As is this top. The theme is "Outerwear / Seasonal Change", so both tops qualify as new tops for summer! This is actually my second attempt at making the bamboo shoot top from Pattern Magic. I tried to make one once before, using white cotton poplin, but thought I could do the front in one piece, extending to the hip. It turns out that I couldn't.

I'm kind of glad that I left trying it out again, as not only do I now I have a better starting point with the block that I've been working on to fit me better, but I discovered that I have enough white linen in the stash which will made up much better than the cotton poplin would have.

Broderie Anglaise button up top

This is a top that I've been planning on making for a few years. You may remember the fabric from one of my earlier bras - my second one, in fact. I did hesitate to cut into it at the time, just in case I didn't have enough left to make my shirt from it. Thankfully though, I did have just enough. All that's left now is scraps!

I decided rather than just make a few changes to my block pattern to come up with a pattern for this shirt, that I would spend a bit of time fitting my block to my shape, to save time later when make more tops, or dresses!

Stashbusting Sewalong: June theme "Stretch fabrics" - Long sleeve shirt

I don't really know if I have enough to say about this top to warrant it's own blog post, but I didn't have any photos ready when I posted about my Moto Jacket, so here is my new long sleeve rib knit top.

 

I'm participating in Me Made May 2015!

For the first time, this year I thought I would participate in Me Made May.

I'm going to keep it pretty low key, I hope to try and take a photo of my outfits every day, but am already expecting that they will all be blurry, so I'll save them all up to show you at the end of May.

My pledge is as follows:

I, Andrea of www.obsessivecreativeness.blogspot.com.au, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May '15. I endeavour to wear at least two me-made garments each day for the duration of May 2015.

I have hesitated to participate in previous year, mainly because the weather in Sydney is so changeable during May. I have a stack more me-made clothes in my summer wardrobe than I do for winter, and it is usually getting quite chilly in May Last year, however, our summer weather decided to extend right up to the end of May, making me wonder why I hadn't signed up for Me-Made May.

So this year I decided to take the plunge. I have a few more winter clothes ready to go, and of course, I know I have a sufficient supply of bras to wear every day. I'm in! Who else is joining me?

Tank tops with a twist

Bra making hasn't been using up much of my stash lately. I took a tiny break from them to use up a bit more fabric, and re-stock the wardrobe with some essential tops for summer.

Inspired by a pin: Ruffle front T-shirt

I've had in the back of my mind for a while now a shirt tutorial that I pinned (via my sister) for a ruffle front shirt. When I was documenting my stash last year I also mentally allocated a piece of white knit fabric to the project. I finally managed to make my shirt last month, and I'm making the most of our dwindling warm weather (goodbye summer, I'll miss you, but not the extremes of hot weather you bring), to wear it as much as possible before I have to start layering up so you won't even know what shirt I have on!