What a week

The sewing week with my friends was everything I expected it to be and much more! As one of us said after we returned home: still glowing. We filled the space with chatting, laughing, cooking, pattern tracing, sewing and a bit of knitting too. Add some walks, visit to an English seaside town and a meeting in real life with someone I know through Instagram. It’s been wonderful!

What did I make? Not the coat I wrote about in my previous post. It felt like an uncertain project and In the end I preferred to work with patterns I was sure about. I made a suit (pair of trousers and a jacket) and worked on a pair of jeans. 

All from patterns I used before. Not completely finished but very close. I forgot to bring shoulder pads for the jacket so got stuck in the last phase. The jeans still need the waistband and hemming. Some backlog with work to do now, hope to have them finished next weekend.  

Let me share a few photos from my sewing week.  A couple of my friends made the Debut skirt pattern that I published last month (they were my testers, thank you again!) and we all wore the skirt for photos😃. It was so very special to see them together and in all those different fabrics.

Preparing

October again, for me that means that I will travel to the UK for a sewing week with my friends. I'm so excited, as this is the first time since 2019 that we can do this (for the obvious reason that the pandemic prevented us from doing this in 2020 and 2021). We have been doing this since 2012 and I really missed it.

Next week we will be in Kent again. At the moment I'm deciding what to take and make during the week. One thing I want to do is make a coat. Not a very complicated one, using fabric that's been in my stash for a while now. I want to prepare cutting and marking before leaving. 

The pattern I have in mind is a relatively short one, from a magazine called Fashion Style, which originally is German and I have a Dutch copy. 

I've never used this magazine before and after tracing the pattern yesterday I am not very enthousiastic about it. First I think that the line drawing doesn't match the actual pattern. In the line drawing it looks like a "swing" coat, with more room at the bottom. The pattern pieces are very straight though. Most photos show the coat worn open, which makes it unclear to see how it's meant to look.

I don't care much for instructions, but I think that the pattern pieces should be clearly shown and indicate what lines are included. The only instruction for the front and back is that you have to "glue them together". Because I'm a pretty advanced dressmaker and have worked with magazine patterns a lot, I can make out that they mean that the front and back are on the sheet in 2 parts. 

Even more important is that there are more lines on the pattern sheet for the pattern pieces than shown in the magazine. Those lines are not mentioned anywhere either but they are very important. If you don't use the correct lines for the fabric and for the lining, you will have a lot of difficulties or mess up completely. Won't write the details down here, as they are not relevant when you're not making this pattern. Needless to say that I don't recommend this magazine. 

In the end I checked the pattern thoroughly, added a bit to the side seam, hoping to get a bit more of the "swing" look. Next time I should draft my own pattern 😉