So I’m now 3/4 of the way through my Learn To Use My Overlocker project. Its looping on the back and the front now, I’ve had to rethread it so many times its becoming much less of a horror and I’ve virtually stopped making stupid mistakes now (the 2 hours trying to work out what was wrong cuz I was using different sized bobbins was a classic).
This particular project was one for someone else. I’ve been dying to have a go at my Mum’s old hoody,skirt,t-shirt and trousers jersey pattern ever since she gave it me years ago… this 70’s simplicity one. I love the 70’s styling and although the t-shirt and trousers weren’t massively my thing, I thought the hoody and skirt patterns could be my ideal patterns for making that sort of thing.
However since Mum gave me the pattern about 10 years ago, I’ve put on considerable amounts of weight, and the pattern is a size 12, so I thought I’d better experiment on someone else and I’d look for a bigger pattern (I believe it goes up to size 16 though I’ve never seen one that size) if it worked.
So it was Liz’s birthday yesterday, and she is an oldskool (ie small) size 12 so I thought I’d use her as a victim. (manic evil laugh!)
The hoody was easy enough to sew. Apart from basic overlocker mistakes which weren’t the patterns fault and one annoying bit of hand sewing, which was, it came together extremely well.
I knew there was a potential problem because I’d used light weight t-shirt jersey (thank-you very much lewisham market stall) which is probably not ideal, but for a mock up will do nicely.
Massive apologies to Liz for mugging her for these photos btw! Obviously her outfit doesn’t go with the hoody much at all, but I think its worked ok. I have taken it back to take an inch each side out of the chest and armpit area, and it needs a couple of hooks and eyes on the waistband (I have no idea why the zip doesn’t go down to the bottom) but it has the makings of a reasonably useful pattern about it.
The hood however is hilarious……
Its properly into 1970’s hippy Gandalf territory! It works fine when down though. And when I told my Mum about it she was all like ‘Oh yeah, the hood was purely decorative’ about when she made it in the 70’s. I’m not sure that a heavierweight fabric would have helped even.
Anyway, I am going to do the alterations, give it back to Liz and see if she wants a better version for xmas or birthday next year or something, after she’s had time to see if she can be arsed to wear it a bit. 🙂
So enough bad pictures of Liz….onto bad pictures of ME!
The second post I ever posted on this blog was back almost 2 years ago now, long before I’d decided what I intended to do with it, I’d just kind of lurched off livejournal without any real plan apart from no one really uses lj anymore so I needed to be somewhere else. I also had no idea how to take photos (or at least Jon didn’t) or how to write a post properly.
Unfortunately therefore, this bluddy post became the most popular one on my blog in terms of getting hits in search engines and has stayed that way, which is a right shame as I know what I’m doing now (sort of)
Anyway, so I made what I fondly imagined was an attempt at ripping off a Hellbunny dress . I was still very much a sewing novice at that point and made a couple of basic mistakes, the skirt isn’t as wide as it could have been as I cut a piece upside down and the black cotton I bought to contrast the skullprint with was cheap quality (though overpriced) and has faded a lot quicker than it should have done. So I’ve been kind of ignoring the dress for two years.
However I wore it out to a friends gig a couple of months back and everyone liked it and the weather has been really hot recently so everything and anything remotely resembling a sun dress has been worn loads, and then my Mum sent me this white shrug which goes with it perfectly, and I’ve kinda reevaluated the dress and worn with appropriate accessories (ie not the way I ‘styled’ it the first time I blogged about it) I’ve really come round to liking it!
So yeah, I think thats much better! 🙂 The pattern was Simplicity 2886 in case anyone is interested!
I’m away next week, so won’t be posting! 🙂
euphoricstimuli 