Wardrobe / Stash

Last week I wrote about making a wardrobe from my stash. My stash is not very large (I think) and most fabrics I've bought the last two years, untill this summer.
I will not make a complete swap-board with patterns and line drawings to go with the fabrics, this takes just too much time, plus there are some gaps still in my plans. I'll just write about the projects as time goes by.

These are the fabrics I have in my stash for tops that can be combined with at least two of the fabrics for the bottoms.



These are the fabrics for pants or skirts:


As you can see the bottoms are all rather plain. Just basic stuff really. In general I prefer that, so that I can easily make combinations.

To show I do not only do brown/grey and blue, another picture of more colorful fabrics for some other (non related) garments.
The green for example is meant for a favorite winter combination: black pants and black top, with a colourful jacket to go with that.

Marfy 1101 - sleeve slit construction

My first Marfy patterns is finished. I'm reasonably happy with the result of this pattern. The blouse is not quite my style, but I have a better idea of the size, and now I'm more confident to use a Marfy pattern, that's the happy me. A full review is on PatternReview.

As this is a simple blouse, I had no problems with the lack of instructions, and for most sewing issues I think there are enough books or other information (Internet, PatternReview) to be found to solve construction problems. So I'll use Marfy patterns more.


A little info on how I made the sleeve slit.






1. Fuse a little fusible interfacing to the end of the slit, then cut the slit


2. With right sides together stitch a length of bias cut fabric to the slit, folding the sleeve as in the picture, and take care not to stitch the fold. I find it helpfull to make the bias strip a bit wider at this first step.


3. Press the bias strip towards the slit, cut it to a smaller strip (twice the finished width) fold and pin to the slit.


4. Topstitch the slit, this is now finished.


Here a picture of finished sleeve slit with cuff.

Wardrobe fabrics 1

This is the first set of fabrics that will be part of my wardrobe plan. My wardrobe plan consists of 6 tops and 6 bottoms. The tops will match with 2 or 3 of the bottoms. Besides the brown/grey there will be a lot of blue.
There's no specific timing for this project, at this moment it is unsure how much sewing time I'll have next weeks, work is taking more time after a quiet summer season.

The striped fabric is the one I decided to use for my Marfy blouse.
On the left are 3 fabrics for bottoms.
1. A skirt with godets fromt the grey/brown fabric on top (Knip Mode pattern or Ottobre). This is a fabric of unknow quality (bought together with the stripes in a sale).
2. Another skirt, probably Butterick B4859, view B, fabric from Gorgeous Fabrics
3. Dark brown pants, fabric bought in a store here. I think I will use the pattern for my white linen pants from Burda, made earlier this year, but omitting the welt band.

2.

Next: a Marfy blouse

Earlier I mentioned that I plan to make a Marfy wintercoat. As winter is still a few months away here and because I never made a Marfy pattern before, I thought it would be good to try another one first. In the autumn/winter issue from last year a few blouses are included, and tonight I traced no. 1101.




It's a rather simple blouse pattern. I found one review from Liana on PR for this and I can't decide whether I should do a FBA or not. I traced 46 (Italian sizes make you feel big) and measuring the width and length of the pattern pieces makes me confident that it will fit and at least not be too small. Perhaps I'll leave it like this for a first try.

As to the complexity of the pattern tracing: all the information you get is that the pattern is on side A of the pattern sheet in a red color. No info on how many pieces you should trace, no numbering of pattern pieces, no small drawing how the pieces look like and which marks you have to copy. Nor any description. And do NOT think that it is the only pattern drawn on side A in red, there is another pattern in red too, and of course some lines were confusing. And this is a simple blouse!
But of course this is only one of the included patterns, most patterns (like my coat pattern) come already cut, so no tracing at all.

Now to decide which of my fabrics to use. It will be one of my "wardrobe" fabrics. Will post more on that plan later.

Two shirts finished

Here are the pictures for the two shirts I made. These are really easy projects, I made them in a few hours in between all other things that have to be done after a three weeks absence. Doing the garden for example.
But I had to sew something again after those weeks of abstinence.

Now to decide on the next project. So many things on my list that it's hard to choose. It will be a top, as I'm trying to loose a bit of weight, which will (hopefully) have a little effect on my hip size.

Fabric trouble

I'm working on two knit tops, and have had a lot of problems with my fabrics.

The first one is Jalie 2562, a polo shirt that I made earlier this year.
A little change is the lengthened placket on which 3 buttons will be placed and I lengthened the sleeve from 3/4 to full length.
For effect the placket and collar are white, the buttons are black.

I bought the fabric earlier this year from a local shop. When I wanted to cut the fabric there were two holes in the fabric! Took me a lot of time to cut accurately and at the same time avoiding those holes.













The other top is a gathered neck tee from Ottobre, which was reviewed so positively by Sew4Fun. This is a fun tee, and so easy to make. Pictures tomorrow, as the seams still have to be made.
But also here fabric trouble: after pre-washing the fabric (I always do that) it had shrunk more than 10%, which meant that there was not enough fabric for the long sleeves I wanted :-(
3/4 sleeves it will be then.

Often I buy more fabric then needed, but not this time. Lesson learned: always buy a little more then needed, certainly with knit fabrics.

Back home

Last night we arrived back home again. It is a good feeling, though it is two days earlier than planned because of the very bad and cold weather we had last week. Nonetheless we had a good holiday.
Unfortunately I did not see any fabric stores in France, so no new additions to my stash. When I thought of this while we were there, I realised I never saw fabric stores in France, though we've spent a lot of holidays in that country. And I did not see any sewing magazines, except for Burda. So no new inspiration from there.

I'm inspired though by the results of the wardrobe contest on PR, that were presented just before I left on holiday. I looked at my stash of fabrics and concluded that I could make a wardrobe from about 12 fabrics I already have. And that is what I'm planning to do, make a wardrobe from these fabrics.

Also I will take a critical look at my existing wardrobe, as there is a feeling of missing a few important basics (black trousers for example, one of my favorites must be thrown away because it's old which you can see too clearly, another is clearly out of fashion).

So a lot of things to be done on the sewing side of life, and I want to read on PR and blogs what others have been doing these past weeks.