Vogue 1183 less formal

Vogue 1183 has been in my pattern collection for a long time. It's a lovely dress by Kay Unger. Very nice design lines with waist accent.


The only "problem": it's a more formal style and in my life I have only limited need for formal dresses.
At some point I was inspired to make this dress in denim and use topstitching in another color, as done on jeans. Unfortunately I didn't take notes on size used or changes made, I just have two pictures that I shared with my sewing friends on Whatsapp. I moved the center back zipper to the side and am certain that I took it in on the center back neckline, as I usually do. The waist is interfaced and has two layers of fabric to give it more stability.





It's a dress I loved to wear this summer. I did not line it and it was cool on a hot day. As you can see in the first picture the fabric was not very thick. For me a good combination of fabric and pattern.

Sweater with cables

Hello dear readers, nice to see you here again.

I've restyled my blog a little, not completely there yet but for the moment it's working. In my absence I've been sewing and knitting and will try to catch up a little. Quite a bit of what I did in sewing was basics like t-shirts, summer trousers etc. I'll skip those and in the upcoming posts I'll highlight a few more interesting garments.

This post is about a sweater (jumper in UK English) I knitted. Like the sweater I showed last year it's knitted with the ziggurat technique, developed by Asa Tricosa.
I simply love this way of knitting a sweater. It gives good opportunity to fit while knitting but most important: look at the way the armholes/sleeves are done. The definition of a seamline, but they are knitted (top down)  at the same time as the front and back of the sweater.

 


I incorporated the pattern Piper by Carol Sunday in a ziggurat (with a few minor adaptions). I loved combining this. Doing that is certainly keeping your mind of other worries!

Just checking in

Two and a half months in 2019 and no post here. Just checking in now to say that I did not move to another blog (in case you're wondering because that was one of the options I considered end of last year) but life has thrown me a few lemons that can't be turned into lemonade easily.
Personally I'm fine and hope to be back within the sewing community later in the year. For now I keep it to sewing but not taking photos and blogging about it.

See you later!

How to sew a fly front zipper (including pocket lining)

There are several variations and a lot of tutorials on how to sew a fly front in a pair of jeans/pants. This is my take on it, a combination of how I learned it long ago, instructions for Jalie jeans, a video tutorial by Jennifer Stern (which I can't find now) and just doing it for a long time now.

The steps that I show:

• Are for a pair of womens' jeans/pants, closure with the right side over the left side.
• Use a pocket that is extended to the center front, the steps for the pocket are not shown. 
• Can be used with regular pockets, just follow the instructions except where I mention that
• The pocket extension has 0.5 cm seam allowance at the center front for the left and is cut at the center front without seam allowance for the right side

The steps:
Fold the fly (it usually is a pattern piece that is cut on the fold) and finish the seams. Sew the zipper on top, stitching only the side that's closest to the finished edge. (My zipper is a bit longer than necessary, I'll cut it shorter after attaching the waist band)



Finish the seams of the front pattern pieces. I use a cut-on facing on the right side, the overlapping side on a womens' pair of pants. If you prefer you can use a separate facing, you'll have to sew that on as a separate step.


Pin the pocket/lining in place, the left side has the small amount of seam allowance as described above. (if your pockets are not extended to center front, omit this step)



Sew the center front until the point where the zipper will end.


Fold and press the right side on the center line. Make sure the pocket on the inside is aligned with center front. Topstitch till the crotch.



On the inside it looks like this:



I like to sew in the zipper a little off-center. Fold the left 0.5 cm beyond the center and press. Pin the zipper with the fly in place. Sew on the edge.






Pin center front of the right leg to the center front of the left leg.


On the inside, fold away the fly and pin the zipper to the facing of the right side. Only to the facing!!
Sew the zipper tape to the facing. The zipper is attached, the topstitching in the next steps does not have to be on the zipper tape, only on the facing.



I mark the end of my zipper with chalk, placing a pin to mark first. This way I know where the end of the zipper is. Especially important if you use a metal zipper, which would break your needle if you would hit in while topstitching.

With chalk I mark the topstitching line.

Topstitching on the inside, normal thread so not very visible. Notice the topstitching is only on the facing, not on the zipper tape.

Fold the fly in place and sew a few bar tacks.

Inside after making bar tacks. At the top of the photo you see the chalk marker and the little brush I use to remove the chalk lines.

Jacket and a pair of pants

Accounting for two other garments from Burda magazine: a pair of pants and a jacket.
The jacket is from the June 2018 issue, number 104.

Finished project - coat

Think that I said it already: I have quite a few projects that never have been published on this blog. Sometimes this bothers me, as my blog is also a personal story of my sewing journey. When I see blog posts that I have written, say 8-10 years ago it sometimes strikes me that I have forgotten about a project or see a project that was loved, but worn out in the meantime. I like this keeping track of my projects, so I decided to try to publish more of my projects, even if it's something that it's not very interesting to others.
In this post photos of my coat, of which I published construction photos here and some random photos of a few projects made in the past few months.

Tracing and marking a pair of pants from December Burda

Hmm, could the title be longer? This post is exactly about what the title says. I started making a pair of pants from the Burda december issue and in this post will show you how I use a pattern from the magazine.
A short aside: a comment was made yesterday on my post on the missing cutting layouts that Burda will bring them back in the March issue (see here (text in German), thanks Beate for sharing this information and Burda for listening to their readers!).

This is the pair of pants I'm making, omitting the flap in the waist. It's pattern number 102 from the December 2018 issue and available as pdf from the Burda site: Link to the pattern.

A very easy pattern, 4 pattern pieces and made in a stretch fabric. It's more close fitting/slim fit than I would normally make. I intend to wear it with a longer cardigan,