Coordinating Safiya Trousers & New Look 6217 top

It's a measure of how my style has changed in the last couple of years that I bought the fabric featured in today's post to make a swishy summer dress, and instead it has become a coordinating set of Tilly & The Buttons Safiya trousers and a New Look 6217 top.

A couple of years ago, my wardrobe was mainly full of dresses, with a few skirts and tops for a little bit of variation. While I do still love dresses and skirts, particularly if they have a good twirl factor, gradually more trousers, jumpsuits and shorts have been infiltrating their way into my garments of choice. It has to be said, this is in no small part due to me moving to a coastal town and getting fed up of battling against the wind to prevent skirt-related wardrobe malfunctions on breezy days!

Anyway, the reason for this shift isn't really important, but it doesn't show any sign of stopping yet. Having bought this fabric for a dress, the more I thought about it I just couldn't shake the feeling that it would get more wear if I turned it into a coordinating top and trouser set, a kind of fake jumpsuit - all of the ease that a jumpsuit brings of having a ready-made outfit with the added benefit of not having to get almost completely undressed whenever you need the loo, and of being able to combine the two pieces with other garments as well.

I debated various pattern combinations for a while - the Winslow culottes and M7131 were both strong contenders for the bottoms, and I considered the new Helen's Closet Reynolds and the Sew Over It Silk Cami for the top - but in the end I decided on the Tilly & The Buttons Safiya trousers and the New Look 6217 top.

The Safiya trousers are one of the patterns from the book Make It Simple. I blogged about making the dungaree version of Safiya last year, and also made a pair of Safiya trousers but apparently they never made it to my blog. They're definitely on my Instagram though. Anyway, I knew it was a nice, simple pattern to sew and that the trousers fit me well and are comfortable to wear.

The New Look 6217 top is one of my most used patterns - although the pattern itself is one of the commercial patterns that features a collection of separates and I've only actually made the top (view B) and not any of the other three garment options. I've definitely got my money's worth out of the top though and by now I've lost count of the versions that I've made for both me and other people since I first made it back in 2016 (enjoy the old photos there!). It's a great simple top for showing off a pretty print, and works particularly well with viscose fabrics.

The fabric that started this little experiment is a light blue leopard print viscose (still a bit in stock as I write this!) that I got from Like Sew Amazing. I'm not much of a fan of traditional leopard print fabrics because the colours just don't suit me, but in these shades of blue and off white it's definitely something I can get on board with! The fabric is that lovely kind of viscose that has great drape, but isn't horrifically slippery to work with. 

So what's the verdict on the finished set? I think the Safiya trousers and New Look 6217 top work well together and pull off the fake jumpsuit look I was going for. There is a small part of me that's slightly concerned that they might look a bit like pyjamas, but the majority of me feels great in them and doesn't particularly care about that! So much so, that I've already got another coordinating set underway - albeit with different patterns and very different fabric. Stay tuned for more soon!

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?

New Look 6217 x 3

Things have been a bit quiet around my little blog recently, initially because I was busy making things for other people (which don't always make it to the blog), and then because life itself got busy. I've got a couple of projects finished and waiting to be photographed now though, so there should be some more regular updates coming up. Starting with three versions of the same pattern - New Look 6217.

I'll be the first to admit that I would have completely overlooked this pattern if it hadn't been for the version that Handmade Jane made. I've seen a few versions cropping up online since then, so I suspect I wasn't the only one who she inspired to buy this pattern.

Personally, I was only really interested in view B - a woven t-shirt/top with grown on short sleeves. It's very similar to an old RTW top of mine that I'd been debating copying, but I knew it would have taken me a while to get round to doing that so I thought I'd take the easy option and get the pattern. Especially when New Look patterns went on a 50% off sale so it was less than £3!

The first version I made was the one above, using a fun seaside print viscose from The Textile Centre on ebay - they don't seem to have it in stock any more but they have lots of other lovely viscose prints.

I made a size 14, and the only alteration I made was to cut the back on the fold instead of as 2 separate pieces. This does eliminate the keyhole opening at the back neckline but, while they look pretty, I often find them a bit annoying, so that's fine for me. I have no problems getting the top over my head without the neckline opening - and if I can do that, then I suspect most people will be able to because I have quite a big head!

The top is a quick project - particularly when you eliminate the back seam, which leaves you with just one front and one back piece. The neckline is simply finished with bias binding (for all the versions I've sewn so far, I've made my own binding from the offcuts of the fabric), and there are no darts or anything even, so it's a really simple but effective piece.

My second version was using a star print viscose from Regency Rags, which again now seems to be out of stock. I think this version is slightly less successful than my first one, and that's entirely due to the fabric. It was definitely sold as a viscose, but is much crisper and has less drape than other viscoses that I've used before. This top really benefits from a fabric with a good drape, and this second version just doesn't hang quite as nicely as the first. It's still perfectly wearable though, and indeed has already been worn a couple of times since I finished it a few weeks ago.

Having seen my versions of the top, my Mum decided that she'd like one of her own - particularly when we went to Sewn the other week and she spotted this gorgeous Cloud 9 double gauze.

(As a side note, if you're in or near Bristol, I'd definitely recommend paying Sewn a visit - they're relatively newly opened and have a growing range of beautiful dressmaking fabrics, and a good selection of indie & vintage patterns, and haberdashery. And Marie who runs it is lovely, which just makes fabric shopping even better!).

Mum tried one of my tops on, and luckily it fit her nicely so making a version for her was no trouble at all. I haven't worked with double gauze before - I think mainly because I'd never felt any in the flesh and couldn't imagine quite what it would be like from online descriptions - but this definitely won't be the last time I use it. It did fray a little, but other than that it was no problem to sew and it feels so soft. I'll admit that I was slightly reluctant to hand this over to my Mum!

So there we go - three versions so far, and I'm sure there'll be more to come in the future. I think New Look 6217 has already proved to be a worthwhile investment for me!