A Mistake!

This is it: Robe Sureau complete.  But I won’t be showing any photos of me wearing it because it looked awful.

I did make a toile but thought it looked silly on me because old sheets aren’t always very flattering.  Unfortunately, it just does look ridiculous on me.

I did everything I could to save it – added bias trims, tried various buttons – but I think the basic shape is just wrong for me.

I didn’t want to discard it completely, so I removed the top, changed the zip and added a waistband.

Me Mades: Purple wool teeshirt,newly refashioned skirt, shoes.

Linking to Visible Monday. Why not go & take a look?

More Quilting & a bit of Me Made May

I’ve been hand quilting a waistcoat for the Weald & Downland Museum & thought you might like to see it.  Baasically, it’s a 17th century bodywarmer.  The top is a fine pale green wool, there’s carded sheeps wool in the centre and a linen backing. It’s quilted with linen thread which has to be waxed.

This is the waistcoat quilted & ready to be made up.

It took me about 15 hours to quilt.  The thick linen backing means that it’s hard to get up any speed.

I decided to show a couple of Me Made May outfits because I particularly like them.

I think it might be the setting like best rather than the outfit.

This is a refashioned (altered & dyed) skirt and a top made from another skirt.

This is my favourite top.  I made it from a Liberty Print skirt I found in a charity shop. Those are my me made shoes too.  I’ve worn them most days this month. The trousers are Olsen from a charity shop.

Some days I’ve only got one visible me made but I always wear my me made knickers, so that’s two. (In answer to Curtise).

I’ve got a dress in progress at the moment so I will have something new to wear this month. Hooray!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

In My Wardrobe

Me-Made-May’13 is almost here and I have made a pledge to wear at least two of my “me-mades” or refashioned items everyday. It will be the 4th time I’ve joined in one of these challenges organised by Zoe. In preparation, I’ve been looking at what I’ve actually got…

These are my refashions and made by me clothes.  A few things are in the laundry pile.  There is also a couple of rescued jumpers I dyed, a drawer full of me-made knickers, some scarves, a few bags and a couple of longsleeved teeshirts.

Oh, and of course these…

My much loved shoes made on a course at Green Shoes last year.

And this is the heap of clothes I took out of the wardrobe to show off the me-mades. This time there might be more me-mades than bought things. Well, maybe.

It’s been my aim for years to try out making every type of garment.  My bra making didn’t work and my knitting is appalling – likely to grow as soon as washed.

I knitted this much loved fairisle jumper, but it grew big enough to fit a large man: and I couldn’t find one who wanted to wear a turquoise and mustard jumper.

So when I tried knitting socks, it only ended well because my lovely friend eventually took them away and did them for me.  I do mend them though.

And jeans: I don’t make them but I wear them.  I know lots of you wouldn’t wear them and I can see why, but I do for part of almost every day.  I walk the dog, dig the allotment, muck out and ride in them.  I do try to add a homemade or refashioned top to go with them.

I used to buy new jeans but the manager of one of the local charity shops told me that most jeans end up going for rags because unless more or less perfect, they were very hard to sell. Since then I’ve been hunting out second hand and shortening them where necessary. I don’t need perfection.

So that’s my me-made wardrobe.  I won’t be doing outfit posts unless I’ve something new to show, but I’ll put a link to Flickr where you will be able to see my clothes and those of lots of others who’ll be joining in the challenge.

And here’s my pledge  “I, Norma, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May’13. I endeavour to wear at least 2 me-made or refashioned items each day for the duration of May 2013.”

PS. Thank you for your lovely comments on my refashioned blouse. I really appreciate them.

Refashioning a Shirt

Remember this?

It’s a shirt I bought in a charity shop because the linen was good quality. My aim was to turn it into something I could wear day to day.

Front view

Back view – I particularly like the back

I hung it on a door so that I could gradually work out what to do with it. It was a bit of a puzzle.

Below are the stages I went through to do it.  Obviously, the shirt might not be to your taste but the principles apply to remaking any large boxy shirt into something wearable.

Cut off the collar.  I wanted the shirt to have a Nehru collar so I used the collar stand.  It would fray left like this so I needed to bind it.  I chose linen left over from making a dress.

Make and add bias binding.

Cut to length & hem

Remove old & add new buttons. Make extra buttonholes. The shirt just had too few buttons to hold together properly.

Shape the back with tucks & cover with a tab made from left over fabric. Add buttons.

Make tabs to shape the front. Tabs are at the waist for both back & front.

Decide on sleeve length. Cut, finish raw edge and bind sleeve.

And that’s it!

I should have had flowers in my hair

My new shirt and it’s a stash bust. Hooray! I’d bought some fabric, but I was having a coffee and the Scott Mackenzie song “San Francisco”  kept coming into my head. So I went back to buy it.  I’ve loved that song since I was a child.

I’m not usually a flowered dress person, certainly not little flowers like this fabric so it sat in a drawer for quite a long time.

I should have had flowers in my hair

This shirt was the answer.  I used Simplicity 3684.  I made the same style a year or two ago from the good bits of an old duvet cover but sadly it’s worn out now. I think the Nehru collar gives it the look of a late 60s or maybe early 70s shirt and that’s a look I like.

The pattern has lots of frilly bits attached but I don’t suit frills so this is plain. The buttons were rescued from another blouse. They fitted the theme.

And I sang “San Francisco” whilst I made it.

Remember this?

It’s now this – a few inches shorter. You can see my knees.

This is the necklace I’m wearing in the last photo. Can you believe that my other half found this in the garden?  It was in a bush.  I wonder what happenned?   It’s a bit more purple than this in reality so those of you who know me will appreciate that I was certain to like it, but I doubt it was left as a present for me.

Strange!

Toronto Skyline Quilt

A holiday souvenir

I’m inspired by Loulou’s blog to show this quilt I made a few years ago of the Toronto skyline. It’s one of my favourites – I don’t keep them all, the dog gets to sleep on them after a while.

For a look at Loulou’s wonderful photos of Toronto look here.

I made it using scraps left from other projects, charity shop clothes and my own old clothes.  For example, the binding is cotton velvet taken from the legs of very old evening trousers and I’ve used the rest of the orange wool tweed to make a skirt recently.  The columns are strip-pieced on to the wadding and backing using a sewing machine.

I started the process with these photos.

Toronto from the CNN Tower.  Taken about 1990 – sorry I can’t get the photo to show up well – this was taken pre digital cameras and had to be copied to get it here.

It was a hazy day and I tried to capture that in the quilt by using mainly muted colours.  I used the orange tweed to try to represent the golden bank building that was so obvious from the tower.

I made the collage to help me move my ideas along from the photos to the the final quilt. It helped me get the shapes into my head.  After that, I auditioned fabrics and shuffled them around until I was happy with the look.

I’ve shortened the dress in my previous post and I’ll be showing the change soon along with the “Flower Power” shirt I’ve just finished. Thanks for all the helpful comments about the dress.

Happy Monday everyone.

The Englishwoman’s Wardrobe

This book is one of my latest charity shop finds. It was published in 1986 and was apparently in a series of books looking at the Englishwoman’s kitchen, garde and bedroom.  I haven’t seen the others but this one is fascinating.  25 women let the photographer look at their wardrobes and they talk about how they choose their clothes, their likes and dislikes, whose dress sense they admire etc.  Of course it isn’t free from the usual range of advice – how to avoid “mutton dressed as lamb”, older women shouldn’t have too much flesh on show etc, etc.

It’s a bit like blogs today – full of individual styles and opinions.

Stripes never come out well on my blog photos but this is a rather large shirt made of lovely linen.  It’s going to be a new top very soon.

Another recent charity shop find.  This dress is made of lovely fabric but it’s an odd length for me.  I think if I take six inches off the length it will be good for summer.  I’ll need a bit of sun before wearing: my legs are so white after this long winter. Or maybe I should follow the advice in my new book and not show so much flesh now I’m middle aged.

What do you think?