The Last Sewing of 2017 & Plans for 2018

Happy New Year! I hope that 2018 is off to a good start for you, and that you had a lovely festive period before that if you were celebrating. Before Christmas becomes too much of a distant memory, I thought I'd pop by to share some of the presents that I sewed for my family, and also talk about some of my crafty plans for the next 12 months.

First up we have a couple of dresses for my little niece. I used patterns from Puperita for both of these. The one on the left is the Duckie dress, but without the front pocket and shortened so that it's more of a long top/tunic length for wearing with leggings. On the right is a pinafore dress, which is reversible (the other side is some aqua blue needlecord). I shortened this dress as well - it's still pretty much knee length on my niece (who's 1 and average height), but I cut it at the 3 month length instead of 12 months so you might want to check the length if you're using this pattern - it would have been really long if I'd used the 12 month length. Other than that, these patterns were both really nice to sew and I'm sure I'll be using them again in the future.

For my nephew, I made a pair of pyjamas. He loves vehicles of any kind, so this jersey from Fabrics Galore went down well with him! The pattern I used is New Look 6237. I've made both the trousers/shorts and t-shirt separately for my nephew before so I was familiar with the pattern and could stitch it up fairly quickly - always good when there are lots of presents to make!

Continuing on the pyjama theme, I made a pair of pyjama trousers for my sister-in-law using some spotty jersey from Maud's Fabric Finds. I used Simplicity 2116, the same pattern as when I made a whole stack of pyjama trousers last Christmas. These trousers came in handy for my sister-in-law to change into after we got drenched in pouring rain on a Christmas afternoon walk!

For my sister, I whipped up a New Look 6217 top. This one really looks a lot better when worn than when on the hanger, but I didn't get a chance to get a photo of my sister modelling it. If you want to get an idea of what it looks like on, I made three different versions of this back in 2016 - the blog post is here. The viscose I used this time was from Sew Over It, but it doesn't seem to be in stock anymore unfortunately.

Lastly, I made a Tilly & the Buttons Françoise dress for my mum. Helpfully, my mum is a similar size to me so she she could try on my stripey Françoise dress, which meant that I didn't have to worry that it wouldn't fit. The fabric for this one is a dogtooth ponte roma from Sew Essential - it's really nice quality and perfect for this pattern. I really love the Françoise made in ponte roma; it means that the dress is super comfy, but it can also look quite smart at the same time.

Now that we've got last year's sewing out of the way, let's talk a little bit about some of my plans for 2018 - here's my #2018makenine list:

1. Closet Case Carolyn Pyjamas - these were on my Make Nine list last year, but I didn't quite get time to make them. Hopefully I'll be able to put that right this year!

2. Finish my scrappy hexagon quilt - another project carried over from 2017! I made good progress last year, so hopefully I will actually be able to finish it this year.

3. Vogue 8577 - another one that's been in my stash for a while and needs to be used!

4. Cloth Habit Watson Bra - I've got a bra making kit waiting to be used and plenty of knit scraps, so there's no excuse not to give this a try.

5. Butterick 6446 - I've got a wedding to go to later in the year, and I think a maxi version of this could be fun to make for that.

6. Knickers! This is the free Megan Nielsen Acacia pattern. See previous comment about knit scraps!

7. Lovely cardigan by Kim Hargreaves - way more cables than I've knit in one project before, so this could be a challenge.

8. Wainthropp cardigan by Andi Satterlund - I struggled with the only other cardigan I've knit seamlessly because it seemed to make my wrists hurt, but I love pretty much all of Andi Satterlund's designs and I've altered how I knit in the past year (I used to knit in a particularly awkward self-developed manner!) so I'm going to give it another try and hope it goes better this time.

9. Colourwork yoke sweater from Simply Crochet magazine issue 66 - I've never done any crochet colourwork before so this might be a bit ambitious, but you don't know if you don't try!

So there we go! I may have bitten off more than I can chew (with number 9 in particular), but at the moment I'm excited to give them all a go. Have you got any exciting plans for 2018?

Christmas presents

Hello hello! I hope you're all having a happy festive season. Before this nice little in-between period that we're now in turns into 2017, I thought I'd share the Christmas presents that I made this year.

First up is this bag that I made for my Mum. The pattern is the Maker's Tote by Noodlehead which, as the name suggests, is designed to be a project tote bag for makers and creatives. There's plenty of space in the main compartment of the bag, and lots of pockets for keeping bits and pieces safe. Because of all those pockets, this was easily this year's most time-consuming present, but I think it was definitely worth the effort.

The instructions are very detailed and easy to follow so it wasn't a difficult project (I found that the only tricky part was applying the binding around the bottom edges, and even that wasn't as problematic as I'd suspected it might be), it just took a bit of time to sew all the various sections.

The outer fabric is Painterly Wash Art Gallery denim, and the inside pocket fabric is Tulip in Turquoise from the Cloud 9 Vignette collection. The rest of the fabric is a combination of various remnants from my stash.

Over the years I've learned that it's better to keep things simple when making presents, so all of my other projects were much quicker. First up is a dress for my niece who was born a couple of months ago. It's a baby pinafore pattern from Puperita - a sweet, simple dress that I sewed up in a couple of hours. The outer fabric is a soft denim repurposed from a skirt, and the inside is left over from my latest Susie blouse. I did make it slightly more complicated by deciding to embroider the yoke with little daisies, but that was a nice relaxing project to work on in front of the TV so it was fine.

Her Christmas present was actually the second version of the pattern I've made for her - I made the red version above for her when she was born. I really like the fact that the dress is reversible, so I could make this red version with Christmas fabric on one side and plain babycord on the reverse so that she'll be able to wear it outside of the Christmas season too.

Next up was an apron/smock for my nephew, which I think will definitely come in useful because he likes 'helping' my sister with cooking and baking but has a tendency to end up covered in half of the ingredients. This is a very simple pattern from the book Sew a Metre. The main fabric is the same denim as my niece's dress, with added red binding and a scrap of fabric from my stash for the 'J'.

Last, but by no means least, I made a five pairs of pyjama trousers for my Dad, siblings and siblings-in-law. I intended to take a photo of them all modelling them, but that got a bit overlooked in the excitement of present opening, so all I have is this picture of the stack of them waiting to be wrapped - sorry about that!

I can show you this photo of my brother sporting another pair of pyjama trousers that I made him earlier this year, using the same pattern (in this spectacular beetle print jersey). There are many basic pyjama patterns, but this particular one is Simplicity 2116. Unsurprisingly, given that pyjama trousers are one of the simplest things to sew, this was a nice easy project. By the end of the fifth pair I was definitely ready to sew something else, but I'd happily use this pattern for pyjamas again the future.

So there we go, that's what's kept me busy for the past few weeks! Did you make any presents? I really enjoyed it, but it's also great to be back sewing for me again now!