The Butterick Retro B6318

This was another project from the lovely people at Sew Crafty Online the fabric is absolutely beautiful and all my scraps have been carefully saved for future quilting and small projects as I couldn't bare to throw them out!

My Butterick Retro pattern has caused me a few headaches. Mostly in the boobage area! My first issue was my measurement didn't really fit the sizing. So I just made the on the was going to fit my top half with the hope the skirt would be floaty enough to survive.

As you can see even on the mannequin this appeared to be a strange shape but my hope was the waist band would pull it in a bit. Which it did beautifully on a real person, the mannequin doesn't do it justice.

I think if I were to make this again, I would take the top in slightly across the boobs as it doesn't have any dates to give the top any shape. I think they shape would be perfect for a the larger breasted lady though i'm afraid mine were a little lost!

Once the tie is around the middle you really can see the shape it is aiming for which is beautiful, though I think I have learnt to stay away from Kimono tops as they don't fit me properly. I found the tie quite hard to attache and the instructions weren't great but after some perseverance I think I cracked it.

But seriously whilst the fit isn't perfect on this dress it is absolutely beautiful because of the fabric. The flowers are so cheerful and wonderful it brightens up any day in the office! So all in all a successful escapade.

By Hand London Victoria Blazer, with extra sleeve space

My most recent make is quite possibly my favourite yet, and I haven't really stopped wearing it since it was hot of the sewing machine! This A-MAZ-ING fabric is from the lovely people as Sew Crafty Online as part of my design project working with them. It's a lovely fabric as it's quite light but sews easy like cotton, though it's a nightmare to get a matching thread colour!

I changed the fit of the sleeves in this jacket because I was worried they wouldn’t be wide enough for my arms, and then would leave the jacket looking a little odd and the style is so loose and relaxed. This is the first time I have altered the fit of anything I have sewn so with the help of the ‘Curvey sewing collective’ I managed to edit my pattern piece.

I found the pattern sizes on By Hand London’s website and I wrote my measurements in the book like it asks, which is quite a nice touch, so you can remember what sizes you have made. As usual I’m all a strange shape compared to the pattern but the only bit I was worried about was the sleeves so I made it in a straight size 20 (apart from the sleeves)

For the sleeve alternations what I did was trace the piece of pattern as you would normally, then I found the centre point, and cut all the way down the middle leaving about ½” at the top should seam. I then spread the gap out so it increased by 1.5” along the cuff. Then I taped a bit of scrap paper in the gap of the pattern piece making my newly shaped pattern piece. If you pattern has cuffs like mine does down forget the cuff pieces will need to be lengthened 1.5” as well so that there is enough cuff to go around the sleeve.  It is so much easier that it seems and a lot less scary!

I made a toile of the jacket shell just to check the sleeves were going to fit into the arm hole after my alterations. I made this out of left over duvet cover from my Simplicity 8085 so it’s super light and almost lineny. The toile worked great and the sleeve fitted perfectly. Rather than pinning all the way round as you need to pin regularly to get the sleeve to fit in I used the quilters clips as I often do to save me stabbing myself as I was sewing round the circle. Without the lining you do have to have the collar a little bit, I use French seams to attached the lapels and collar on so that the seams were hidden but on the final product it was much easier as the lining removed the need for French seams.

Once I had made my toile I made the real thing! I cut my fabric outside as it was a beautiful day, if a bit windy for fabric but by that point I was outside! The pattern shows you the pockets on both sets of layout pictures, lining and shell, you don’t need both sets of these which it does say in the instructions but I was clearly too excited to get started and didn’t read that bit! Also if you want a contrasting cuff like I did, don’t forget to cut that out in the contrasting colour while you are cutting the lining fabric. I cut one of each because I couldn’t decide which to use!

The instructions are quite basic on this pattern but the’ sew along’ on By Hand London’s website is fantastic and very easy to follow. I got a bit lost when attaching the lapels and collar and the website saved me with the multitude of pictures for me to follow.

The darts are really easy on the pattern too as you don’t end up having to make out the lines etc the darts are cut out and you just match the pieces up and sew it along the edge to create the carts. I like how few pieces it took as well as it only took me an hour and a half to sew everything together (in between stopping for a cuppa!) and then I was out wearing it for my dog walk that evening!

It’s a perfect jacket for this time of year as made in cottons it is quite cool but gives you that extra layer in the cooler evening. I have even road tested it at the day job and it’s a perfect level of just smart enough but made out of some very me fabric! I think I’m going to make one in a light wool fabric for the autumn and maybe lengthen the sleeves but who knows what will entice me to sew by then!

All in all a very good pattern with lots of help and support around on the internet so don’t get put off by the intermediate skill rating! If you fancy checking out my Timelapse video of me making this have a look on my instagram @roodles_runique

Girls party dress, more scrap busting!

This is another free pattern from The Cottage Mama. You get the pattern when you sign up to her newsletter, and all the details are here.

I used the alternative bodice construction which has really good instructions the pattern download.

I used leftover fabric from my walkaway dress and the floral from the quilt I made. Luckily the two pinks matched perfectly.
The bit I struggled with for this dress was getting even gathers on the skirt. I tried I few times putting a long stitch and pulling the thread but each time the thread snapped.

In the end I used a method I found on pintrest. I cut a length of dental floss the width of the dress top. I then did a wide zig zag over the top of the floss. I tied one end of the floss to the skirt and pulled it through. It was so much easier this way!! One to remember indeed.

The end result is beautiful and perfectly twirly for the little girl to wear!

Kimono style jacket

This was the first thing I had made for myself properly. I used a rough pattern that was in Simply Sewing.
I bought 2m of jersey floral fabric off ebay as usual and set to work.

I folded the two meters in half right sides together and sewed 1" seams either side leaving 15cm for arm holes. I apologise for my mixture of metric and imperial my brain works in cm by my sewing machine works in inches!
I then cut all the way up the middle and across the top in a T shape. The top of the T was  20cm but it could have been much smaller.

I then put it on an felt like I was wearing a dressing gown, so I trimmed the bottoms about 30cm on each side to make it the length it is on the picture.

Ta daa! easiest and quickest make ever!

The wedding gift.. the final touches!

I then just had to bias bind the edges! I went with blue on Grandmas recommendation (check out the first post about the quilt about having boys under it!). I bought 9 meters of this extra wide binding as I though wide gave me more error space and a meter for mess up!

I sewed the back edge all the way done about 1/4" from the edge of the quilt making sure the rest of the binding was pointing towards the rest of the quilt. You can sort of see at the bottom of this picture how it is sticking out at the bottom, this is because I then brought the binding over my first stitch and clipped it on the front. This way you can only see one set of top stitched (in theory).

These clips were a god send, free with Simply Sewing mag! It saved it faffing around with pins and I could just slide the clip down! I then sewed all the way down and folder the corners over keeping the binding all one piece.


I made this panel for the back of the quilt with same ribbon from our wedding and some bits I bought which I thought gave it a great gift tag!





There we have it one finished quilt! Which she loved by the way :) Boy am I glad of that!!

The beginning of the masterpiece wedding gift... The block

It's at this point I thought I rally ought to get on with making the wedding gift for my cousin I had planned... with 8 weeks to go...!

My cousin has recently bought a little cottage with her soon to be husband and they were renovating it ready to move in after they were married. She loves all things 'country kitchen' and vintage etc so I thought the perfect thoughtful gift from me would be something hand made, so I thought I'd make her a quilt!

I didn't really think this through, but hey I was going to try my hardest to finish it! I didn't know what size bed she was going to have either but I would be damned if I was going to try anything bigger than a double for my FIRST quilt, so I decided not to ask...!

I sourced my fabric, 4 different colours of the same rose fabric, 4 solids in similar colours and 4 other random ones I liked the look of. I bought a meter of each and I have plenty spare! I took my Grandma with me to buy some of the fabric and as I was picking out lovely pastels (the theme of the wedding!) she said to me 'You do know there will be a boy under this blanket Rudy you'll need some manly colours...!' Cheers for that image Grandma.. Queue blues being added! Most of my Fabric is from a facebook seller or ebay, though some is from Bobb in and Sew near where I live and some from Boyes again in Goole.

I found this blocks idea on Pintrest and it is now that I look back on it and see how the colour run through in lines, I didn't see that before! So mine really was a rough copy of this in rather large form.

I cut 9 15cm squares of each of the fabrics I was going to use as squares, and 9 of each double size squares 15cm wide and 30cm tall. This was the most boring bit!! I then decided that my squares would look a bit like this..

So I set about sewing all the squares together, trying to put similar colours at opposites. Then I sewed a pair of squares to a long panel giving me 4 corners of a square. I pinned two bottom sets together on the shortest sides and sewed down then in a straight line (please bare in mind you will have extra on the long panel as there inst an additional seam). I did the same with the top the sewed all the way down the middle. Be careful at this point with you seams, it may be useful to iron them to where you want them to stay though I have aversion to the iron so do as little of that as possible!

Ta daa one square.. only 8 more to go...! As you can see it didn't quite stick to my plan but random is good sometimes :)