Indigo Rays

I’ve made up one of the planned garment pieces from the indigo dyeing day.

Two lengths of cotton/linen blend fabric, twice the length of the fabric width, seamed to make a huge square. Fold in half and manipulate into rough “sunray” pleats. This bit was harder than I expected but I managed it.

Tie off tightly at intervals with string you might like to have turn blue for later use. The wider bulgy bit was deliberate, to provide a darker circle for the hem.

Wet it, pop into the dye batch for a while, then pull out, untie and hang to develop and dry. Then wash, rinse etc until it stops shedding colour.

Some months later, I’ve made a dress from it. Cut as big a circle as I could, cut the bodice etc from the corners. Cut a smaller circle from the centre of the big circle to match the bodice waist measurement.

My bodice has side bust darts, and I’ve used my trick of attaching ties from what would be the under bust dart position. This forms a casual and adjustable tuck when tied. In this case I’ve used buttons and hand sewn loops to attach them. I’m not fond of battling long ties in my laundry.

A close up of the waist tie attachment:

The bodice slit closure, featuring some rather manky machining that turned out to be caused by a bad needle. I changed that and the rest was much neater. See the edge stitching is much better.

The loops and buttons are sewn with the perle cotton used to tie the cloth for dyeing. Lovely matching blue string.

Pockets!

On me

Baggy Batik

A friend needed shirts and there were some pieces that appealed to his colourful tastes in my ridiculously large fabric stash. Hence….

Shirt #1
A crazy orange based batik piece that I think I bought in Malaysia? on a work trip if my memory serves.

I used some purple cotton (a stash gift from someone or other) to fill in the needed extra acreage.

Shirt #2
A really beautiful and interesting piece I bought in Sydney on a previous trip to the Fabric Cave.

This one has a self straight grain tape facing and extra sleeve fabric from a lovely bit of creamy cotton twill I had meant to make a work shirt from… um… about 15 years ago.

Shirt/Poncho #3
These were all supposed to be from stash, but having said I’d make them, I fell over this piece in “The Sewing Basket” (the Fabric Cave by another name in their new location) on my recent Sydney trip. I knew my friend would absolutely love it, so there was no question. It got bought and duly made up.

This piece had no spare fabric at all, so I used a coordinating green piece from stash (actually yet another stash gift) for the facings.

The side edges are just sewn up, with an opening left for the arms. I’ve added a reinforcing patch to prevent the seam ripping.

Here is the last “shirt” on me, which isn’t the point, but I tried it on to make sure my (rather large) head fitted through the neckline. I found the shape unexpectedly fun.

Shoe strings

I’ve always liked shoe string straps, but as a woman with a not small bust, they are not feasible if one prefers to cover the required underwear. As a pinafore though! Woo hoo. I can have shoe string straps!

I loved this version of a slip pinafore as soon as i saw it. It’s a promo from The Fabric Store. So relaxed and fun. I grabbed the image but then couldn’t find it when I went to make a version, so I was working from memory. After I’d made this frock, I found the picture! I will probably have another go with the much deeper armhole and back that this has.

Here is my version, reclining on the couch.

And a close up to show the print. It’s a rayon twill, from a friend’s (possibly the friend’s mother) rejected stash.

With my figure, to achieve even a relaxed look without it being a tent… one has to use significant pattern shaping. This is the bodice pattern. Two darts each side and enough length in the front to achieve a horizontal waist seam. I do not wish my bust away, but I sure wish it was easier to pattern for. I have an incompatible liking for simple garment shapes.

On me. It’s only fitted as much as is possible to be a pull on garment. I’m not actually quite as blocky in the figure as this image suggests. Sigh.

Thrifty customised stash hat

Making the thing I wanted from stuff already in the house.

I knew when I made the tartan pinafore that it wasn’t in my current usual colours. As a result, I didn’t have quite the warm hat I wanted to wear with it. This possum merino beret is really lovely to wear. So light, yet warm. I had lots of the yarn left, but of course it was the wrong colour. So I took the greener of the two teals and overdyed it as close to black as I could manage (food colour again). The creamy colour on the right is the original yarn.

My aim was a cream and near-black striped beanie with a single red stripe. So I still needed the red. I thought I didn’t have enough of the cream possum/merino to steal some for the red, so I overdyed some apricot merino/cashmere yarn out of stash.

This is the combination I ended up with. None of the colours quite match, but they are pretty good when separated appropriately in the wearing.

Having fun with ways to arrange a very floppy beanie to have it’s picture taken. I really like the single red stripe.

Wish I’d thought to look up how to make jogless stripes at the beginning. You can see where I made the change! That was a technique worth learning.

A picture of it on. I think I like it. In a reversal from some recent posts, this outfit was donned only briefly for the picture. Too warm to wear for long today.

Finished!

Celebrate with me if you will. The Liberty lattice quilt is finally done. Finished. Complete.

From the concept and set up back in December 2016. Nearly a year of patchworking, then a summer laid aside while it waited for cooler weather. Then the quiltening, which I had to talk myself into. It’s the patchworking that brings me joy. The quilting just had to be done despite me not loving the process. The centre needed a tiny bit of quilting, so it got a little flower for interest, fun and the ceremony of the last stitches in such a long project.

The pre binding experiment worked well enough. I found I needed to run a line of quilting right next to it to catch all the layers together before trimming off the excess batting and backing. I think I did stretch the edge of the top slightly in applying the binding in the first place, which is not ideal but the finished piece is tolerably flat.

On the bed! The black squares and the black bed frame work so well together. Yet the overall effect is light, bright and neat. I’m so pleased.