Thoughts on repetition

Where do you stand on the issue of repetition in sewing? Do you have certain tried-and-tested patterns that you use over and over again, or do you prefer to try new things whenever possible? Anyone who read my last blog post, in which I shared a shirt that was my third version of Butterick 6563 and the fifth garment that I'd made using a particularly lovely Liberty print, would easily guess that I tend towards the first category.

There's nothing that would demonstrate that better in terms of my sewing than my collection of Christine Haynes Emery dresses.

This week I got a new wardrobe, and I decided that it would be fun (small things amuse me!) to initially just hang my Emery dresses in it to see quite how many I had. I thought it was 12 - turns out I'd underestimated myself and the grand total currently stands at 15!

Now, I definitely like to make multiple versions of successful patterns, but this is by far the biggest collection of one single pattern in my wardrobe. While part of the reason that I've made so many is because it was one of the first dresses that I ever made for myself back in 2013, therefore I've had more time to make multiple versions of Emery than of newer patterns, a large part of it is that it's a simple silhouette so when you're wearing it the focus more on the fabric rather than the dress itself. At least that's what I'm telling myself anyway!

Thinking about the patterns that I've made the most, they generally fall into this category. Other frequently used patterns in my wardrobe include the Sew Over It Susie blouse, although most of mine are my scoop neck hack (side note: finding that blog post to link to has uncovered a neglected 16th use of the Emery pattern in the form of a skirt), New Look 6217 (there have been more made since I wrote that post) and the Jennifer Lauren Gable top/dress.

Having a good simple silhouette to showcase a beautiful fabric is definitely welcome to someone like me who tends to be drawn to colourful and vibrant prints.

All this isn't to say that I don't like trying new patterns - I definitely do! My first pair of trousers are sitting waiting to be photographed and will hopefully be appearing here soon. At the moment I've got a toile cut out of what promises to be a super pretty new dress. I'm also thinking of joining in with #sewtogetherforsummer and sewing a jumpsuit or dungarees, which would definitely be out of my comfort zone. So I do enjoy learning new techniques and challenging myself to try different things.

However, there's a big part of me that primarily sews to relax. That part of me enjoys knowing that I already have pattern pieces cut out and adjusted to fit me. That I can just cut into my fabric and then get sewing, safe in the knowledge that I'll have already figured out any possible challenges of the construction process on my first (or second, third, or maybe even fourteenth!) previous version of the pattern.

Emery dresses modelled as they were finished, in roughly chronological order. Plus my changing hair over the years!

So while I'm not entirely in one camp or the other, I tend to like the comfort of the familiar with touches of sparkly newness thrown in every now and then to liven things up. How about you?

Jaeger Handknits Turin Cardigan (and a bonus Emery dress)

As has become fairly standard for me, I've just finished knitting what was meant to be a winter cardigan right in time for a rise in temperatures which means it'll probably mostly sit in a drawer until autumn. I'm not the only one that does that am I?! You'd have thought that I might have got better at estimating how long a project will take me more accurately by now, but apparently not!

Anyway, the pattern I used is the Turin cardigan by Martin Storey which is part of a Jaeger Handknits pattern booklet that I found a while ago in a charity shop. There are 20 patterns in the book and, while some are definitely a bit dated, there are a number of others that I'd like to knit at some point so it was well worth whatever I paid for it (I can't remember how much that was, but it may even have been as little as 49p given the shop I got it from!).

The Turin is a relatively short cardigan - slightly longer than cropped, but shorter than most others still - which is a good length for me. It features stripes of a pretty lace pattern, which is also intended to have a bead in the middle of each lace diamond but I didn't like the idea of beads (I know what I'm like - I'd get them caught on everything!) so I left them out.

The sleeves are also meant to use the same lace pattern but, as I mentioned in my post about my previous cardigan, I'm not much of a fan of lace sleeves so I just knit these in plain stocking stitch.

The pattern was simple and easy to follow, and uses my preferred construction method of knitting the individual pieces and then seaming them. The lace pattern is worked over 10 rows and needed a bit of concentration to start off with, but it gradually worked its way into my memory so I could relax into the knitting a bit more.

The yarn that I used is Stylecraft Special 4-ply in the shade Lipstick. It's definitely not the most luxurious yarn in the world, but it's very budget friendly and I've liked using it for crochet so I wanted to see how it would fare when it came to knitting. On balance, I like it less for knitting but it's OK still. I also wanted to try using an acrylic yarn because I find my wool cardigans very itchy unless I've got long sleeves under them so they don't get worn unless it's really cold. I definitely don't have that problem with this yarn, but I'm not sure I'd use it for a whole garment again. We'll wait and see how it wears until I make a final decision on that though.

The dress that I'm wearing with the cardigan in these photos is the latest in my collection of Emery dresses. It probably doesn't warrant a blog post of its own because at this point I don't really have anything new to say about this pattern, but I thought it still deserved to be documented. The fabric for this one is from the Melody Miller Jubilee collection for Cotton & Steel, and I got it from The Village Haberdashery. Unsurprisingly, I love how it turned out - the combination of a pretty print and a trusted pattern was always going to be a winner for me!

It's a happy coincidence that I happened to finish these two projects at pretty much the same time because they look great together. For once, the slowness of my knitting actually resulted in something good! Next up on my knitting needles will be a short-sleeved cotton cardigan. Let's see if I can finish it before summer's over!

The comfort of the familiar

When the seasons turn, particularly from summer into autumn, my sewing tends to slow down for a while. For some reason, even though I carry on wearing a lot of my cotton dresses all year round and just add extra layers accordingly, it always seems to take my brain a little while to adjust to the fall in temperatures.

It's probably in no small part due to the fact that I'm always over ambitious in my sewing plans and when September arrived, and then quickly rolled into October, there were still a fair few patterns and fabrics on my summer sewing list that I slowly admitted to myself would really be best put on hold until spring.

Realising that and switching to thinking about cosier clothes always takes me a little while though. I don't know why really, because I'm not someone who mourns the end of summer. I do love it while it's here, but I also like the fact that we have different seasons. I'd always rather have sun than a dismal day, but I'm not too bothered about the fact that the sun comes with cooler temperatures at this time of year. After all, as long as you've got the right clothes on then you can cope with the cold. And it's not like it ever gets that cold in southern England anyway.

Over the past couple of years that I've been sewing, my main response to get me through the seasonal shift is to reach for my tried and tested favourite, and it will come to no surprise to anyone who's been reading my blog for more than about 5 minutes that the pattern in question is the Emery dress.

As far a I'm concerned, it's a pattern that's always going to produce winning results. It's also a pattern that, in the right print at least, definitely gets year-round wear in my wardrobe so is a nice transition - not so summery that it won't see the light of day for the next 6 months, but not so autumnal that it's a shock to my (evidently fragile!) system.

Usually just one version of the dress will be enough to help me bridge the gap, but this year I made two.

The first is in a Japanese import cotton that I got from Frumble a few months ago. It's a teal/blue background with a fun small-scale print featuring a whole load of different kitchen items. They only seem to have a remnant of this colourway available now, but they also have it on a natural background if you're interested. The thing I love about prints like this is that they just look like a random pattern from a distance, and it's only when you look up close that you realise my dress is actually covered with scales, mixing bowls, oven gloves and all manner of other paraphernalia.

The second is using the fruit gum blue print from the Cotton and Steel Fruit Dots collection. I picked it up in the sale from The Village Haberdashery, but they don't seem to have it in stock any more. It's one of those excellent prints that feature lots of colours so can be combined with a range of different cardigans and things. I mean, it practically makes it sensible for me to be walking round covered in chewing gum wrappers!

There's not much to say about the making of these dresses that I haven't already said in my posts about my previous Emery dresses (most recently here). The only thing that I've started doing differently is to lengthen the skirt by an inch. The length of the skirt as drafted is absolutely fine on me when I first make dresses, but I've noticed with some of my older dresses that have now been washed infinite times that they gradually shrink just a little bit and start to feel a touch on the short side. Either that or I'm growing, which I doubt because I've been the same height since I was about 12!

So there we go, my mental conversion to sewing for autumn is now complete and I've drawn up a little list of things I'd like to make over the coming months. How do you feel about sewing for different seasons?