Little French Jacket (Two years in the making!)

Around two years ago, I got the idea to make a Little French Jacket. I had seen a lot of these gorgeous jackets across the blogosphere, and decided that I had to have one too! Although I made the pattern in May 2014, and had hoped to have it finished for Winter 2014, it didn't take that long until it went from a WIP, to a UFO. When that first winter came and went, I think I lost my sewjo on this one, and let it languish. To be honest, the main reason that I decided to get it done ready for this winter, was because I found some black leather in my store room that I'd forgotten about, and now I'm really keen to make a leather jacket. I'll use the pattern from this jacket as my starting point, but to do that, I really needed to have a finished jacket and be able to wear it for a while to assess what changes I need on to the fit before I even begin.

Embroidered Cotton Culottes

Inspiration for new projects comes from many places, and for me, that is often from other bloggers. I didn't know that I wanted to make myself culottes until I saw Sue's culottes that she made in January. Until I read about her culottes, I had not realised that a pattern for culottes was made from a skirt block. I dutifully researched in my patternmaking book, and started work on my own pattern shortly after. I even bought fabric specifically to make these culottes, and actually used it instead of stashing
it.

Sewing for men: underwear

What's more ridiculous? The fact that men's underwear costs $15 per pair, or spending an entire day working out the perfect pattern to make undies for your husband?

A few months ago I offered to make undies for my husband, and in return he would tolerate the fact that I was going to blog about them and show the whole world the undies that I was making for him (as long as he didn't have to model them). I briefly toyed with the idea of making my own pattern from his favourite undies, but then saw a special on the Thread Theory Comox trunks pattern, so decided to buy the pattern and go from there.

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.

Scrapbusting in style: Stashbusting Sewalong February 2016

The theme for February at the Stashbusting Sewalong is sewing with scraps. I figured I should at least manage to sew something out of scraps this month. Along came this blog post from Sue. She made some gorgeous therapeutic neck pillows. The free pattern is available here. What a great way to use up scraps!

Stripe Knit Dress

Following on from how much I loved my first wrap top, half circle skirt knit dress aka Quik Knit Dress (maybe I should come up with a catchy name for my pattern?), I made another one, with a few much needed improvements. I was thinking of making the next one with a plain blue knit that's been in the stash for a few years, but The Husband thought it would look a bit boring all in one colour, so when I took the kids  to the recent sale at the Fabric Store (mentioned in this post), I came home with this striped knit.

Stashbusting Pledge 2016

With February well underway already, it seems rather late in the year to be talking about my stashbusting goals for the year. 2015 is done and dusted, and I just scraped by to meet my goal of not adding extra metres of fabric into my fabric stash. But my stash is not getting any smaller. So that means I am in again for the Stashbusting Sewalong 2016.