Crafty Alert!

After a tough couple of months, I am finally back in Blogland! I missed blogging, visiting other blogs, and you, all my crafty blog friends. I will share my latest creations as soon as I can take pictures and upload! Come visit soon and please send me a link to your blog so I can visit with you. Have a crafty weekend!

 

Off-the-shoulder tops

I am still here. Still sewing, creating, just not blogging. A new bug bit me. Actually a few. I was sick for 5 weeks can you believe! Flu and then a very nasty stomach virus. I am finally better now. The other bug is Facebook. After many years I finally joined the social networking craze and found a whole lot of old schoolfriends. Really awesome!

Anyway, I missed my blog. And my sewing friends! So I took some pics and decided not to bore you with the almost 20 (!) peasant style tops I made since my last blogpost. I will instead share the other sewing craze I have been busy with. It was literally a crazy quest. I saw a picture of an awesome top on a romance novel cover. And I wanted to make one. Here is the cover pic.

Isn't this a gorgeous top? I searched the Internet for a pattern. No luck. I did find one very good tutorial here http://girlispoison.blogspot.com/.../tutorial-off-shoulder-crop-top-w-sewing.html. This lady had a really awesome picture tutorial and a free pattern! Go check it out.

Sadly, this pattern did not work for me. I had some issues with my underarms bunching up, no matter which parts I sewed first. If any of you do try this lady's pattern and get it right, please drop me a line and tell me where I went wrong. So I started looking at my own patterns and started modifying them. This is my first attempt...

What I did was to take standard bodice and sleeve pattern pieces from other patterns I have.

All I did then was to fold down the top parts of the two pattern pieces, as shown in the picture above. I also shortened the sleeve length. The armholes must fit perfectly.

I forgot to mention that I used a back bodice pattern piece. Here are the cut out pieces, ready to sew. I added a band for the top that will fit your shoulders. I sewed the sides of the bodice pieces together and also the sleeves. Then I fitted the sleeve pieces inside the bodice piece, right sides together, and sewed that together.

This is what it looks like all sewn together. All that needs to be done now is sewing the neckband on - not a strong point of mine - and the hems. Pretty simple, hey?

Here it is on! Getting closer to my quest for the perfect off-the-shoulder top. Close enough that I tried another one...

This one a bit longer to wear with skinny jeans or leggings. Pretty nice. But I was still not happy. I then had a brainwave. I often see sewists use store-bought tops they like as a basis for a pattern to make more of a top that fits well. So I went hunting in my closet...

And found this top. Love it! Fits very well and almost exactly what I am looking for. It will need some modifications, but it's close.

So here is the pattern I drafted from the top. The sleeve was drawn using the same principle as used in the peasant top tutorial I mentioned a while back. You draft the sleeve using the armhole part of the bodice as a basis so you have a perfect fit. Can you see the similarities between the sleeve pattern piece and the bodice piece? The armhole and neck part is exactly the same.

And here is the grand finale! The top I wanted from the start. In my favorite fabric too. I still need to work on making the neckband on my next top a bit tighter, but I am very pleased with the result. Hope it inspires you to make your own off-the-shoulder top too!

I have a few more cut out and ready for sewing on my cutting table. Thank you for all the lovely comments about my peasant tops post in February! Here is the link for the peasant top I used as a basis for my pattern: http://www.thingsofcloth.com/.../Adult-size_Peasant_Blouse_Tutorial.pdf This pattern's bodice is not shaped. I modified mine a lot, so play around until you get the result you want. Happy sewing!

More peasant tops...

If you visit my blog often, you will know that once I find a good clothing pattern, I make hundreds of the same item...At the moment, I am all hung up on the peasant-style tops, using two patterns I made myself using a pattern from the Bernina magazine as a basis for one, and a store-bought top for the other.

Last week, before a severe sinus infection hit me, I made a plain black top and this top. The above top is made from a lovely mint green jersey knit with black polka dots. This pattern has several pieces, sleeves, top front, top back and then lower front and lower back. It is based on a store bought top that I love wearing.

I finally started feeling human again last night and decided to draft my own cap sleeve top pattern. This is after I searched through my own (one million!) patterns and then went online and bought more patterns from http://www.sewingpatterns.com. Needless to say, the patterns I bought were not what I was looking for! But they are very nice...

Once again, I used bits and pieces of other patterns and the rest I did by hand. Think this will work. As soon as I have time, I plan to try this pattern out.

Hope you all have a great week!

Been busy!

Busy shopping on the internet! I placed 4 seperate orders online for stretch knit fabric in the last month. This after I returned from the US with lots of nice fabric..tsk tsk. Bad. Anyway, the first parcel arrived on Saturday from an Etsy shop called Cotton Blossom farm.

I ordered 4 yards of this lovely fabric from the new knit range by Patty Young for Michael Miller. It is stunning! The whole weekend I have been thinking what I want to make with it. This made me go through my patterns and then search the Internet for new inspiration.

Are you familiar with the Interweave Stitch magazine? Just love it! Rather expensive at $15, but worth it. It only launched in 2009 and is published 4 times a year, but has great ideas and free patterns in. The new Winter/Spring 2010 issue is out now and on it's way to me! Did you also know that Interweave publish some of the patterns in this magazine FREE on their website? If you go here http://www.quiltingdaily.com/blogs/stitchissues/archive/2010/12/16/stitch-winter-spring-2011.aspx you will see what is in this latest issue and you can access the 62 free projects and full size patterns.

The free patterns in the latest issue include several cute skirts, a Kimono Wrap Top and my favorite, the easy-fit babydoll dress, picture above. Nice isn't it? The sewing instructions are only available in the magazine, but if you can sew, you can make it without instructions. I also found some great free patterns on http://www.burdastyle.com.

I had a very busy weekend starting with a romantic dinner with DH on Friday night (no kids!), my first horseriding lesson on Saturday at local stables (really awesome!) and ending today with lunch at a country restaurant about an hour out of Joburg next to the Vaal river. Here my cousin and I are posing next to the river, which is flowing strongly after all the rain we had recently.

Lots of ideas, new patterns, new fabric (some still coming), and things lying on the cutting table in my sewing room. Wish I had more time! Hope you all have an awesome week!

2011 so far...

(Love this sign, from Hobby Lobby.)

Hard to believe it is already February! A (very) late Happy New Year to all my blog friends! Life has been hectic the last 2 months. A lovely holiday at a Game Farm in Limpopo Province where we spent Xmas, followed by New Year at home and on 6 January 2011 off to a very cold, and snowy, Chicago.

As always, the shopping was fabulous in Chicago. I braved the snow and wind with my only-used-once-before duck down coat, gloves and the most adorable earmuffs, my friend Juanita and I did a marathon shopping expedition for 12 hours straight!

We visited old favorites such as Knitche, Hobby Lobby and Jo-Ann's. Here are some stretch knit fabrics I bought from Jo-Ann and Hobby Lobby.

I have already made a few things with these fabrics and will share pics soon. I also bought some stunning yarn. I bought so much that I had to fill a seperate bag, send some home with Fedex and stash some in a colleagues bag! I found some awesome super bulky yarn, the burnt orange felting yarn I have always wanted and some super Red Heart Super Savers at only $2,79 for over 300m!

I found this stunning cerise pink cover for my Kindle on Amazon.com.

What makes this cover awesome is the built-in light. Now I can read in bed every night!

At Barnes & Noble I found Amy's new book (and had hot chocolate at the Starbucks inside). Some stunning bag designs a la Amy inside, just waiting to be tried. More about the shopping I did in Chicago in my next blog post.

I have a few store-bought tops in my closet based on this pattern. Despite searching the Internet for weeks, I am unable to find this pattern. So I made my own. I used pieces of other patterns and improvised, tested, until I had a winner. This is the first top from my own pattern that meets my full approval. Fits like a dream.

What's on my sewing table right now? Crappy pic but this is a skirt I cut from stretch knit fabric in lime green with black polka dots. I bought it this morning from a local fabric shop. I also have several tops cut out and ready to sew.

I joined Facebook a week ago. Very addictive! Have a awesome week!

Weekend sewing

The weather has been pretty gloomy here in Joburg this past weekend. Rain, rain and more rain. Perfect for reading (on my kindle) and sewing, of course. I decided to play around a bit more with sewing some shirred tops. I have been struggling to find the right tension on my sewing machine, but it seems I finally found it!

The pictures are not great because of the gloomy weather. This stretch knit fabric is a lovely bright yellow. I copied a pattern from one of my favorite store-bought tops. Really simple. I have been dying to try making a top with two different colour fabrics for a while, so here is my first attempt in yellow and black.

A close-up picture of the sleeve detail. I used a very fine zig-zag stitch, called an embroidery stitch on my machine, to finish the sleeve and neck edges. I decided to go for contrast detail and did it in yellow on the black fabric. Looks very nice. The original top had cropped sleeves that were shirred, but I made it longer and decided to rather go for a flair sleeve. I quite like it.

You might remember me making this bag a while back? All it needed was for me to sew in the lining. Shocking that I had cut and sewn the lining months ago, I just needed to sew it into the bag! Well, all done now. Love this bag!

My HTC cellphone decided to die on me just 3 months before my contract and free upgrade is due! I did not want to spend a fortune on a phone for just a few months and was delighted to find this cool Vodaphone for only R549! It has all the features I want and a camera too. Not that I ever use the camera on my cellphone...Best of all, it is simple to use and within hours I had my e-mail set-up on it, all my contacts in and my music saved on it.

I am officially on my summer holiday from today! 3 weeks of rest, I hope. So far, not much of a "summer" with all the rain, and not much "holiday" either as I have a few more deadlines to make this week. Lots of Xmas shopping to still do and of course, plenty of time for sewing and crocheting.

I'm back!

I cannot believe I have been absent from blogland for 2 months! It started with a crazy schedule at work to a trip to the UK where I picked up a nasty virus it has taken me weeks to cure. I have however got some exciting stuff to share with you!

Ta-da! A brand-new, handmade cutting table! My FIL is a whiz with making stuff and I asked him to make me a table to specifications for my new sewing room. He added a second shelf below where my overlocker and some other essentials are neatly stored. I had to go buy another large self-healing cutting mat and my long steel ruler is finally being put to good use on top of this table.

Just love it and it works wonderfully for me. No more sitting on the carpet to cut out fabric.

The latest issue (#47 Summer 2010) of the quarterly Bernina Inspiration magazine was just the inspiration I needed to christen my new cutting table.

This purple top is made from jersey stretch fabric and is super-easy to make. Just 2 pattern pieces and some elastic makes for a fast sew. I did not however like the off-the-shoulder look that much, so I played around and modified the pattern a bit.

This is the end-result. Two pattern pieces, front and back, all-in-one. I modified the neck and sleeves and it fits perfectly now. Here are a few tops I have now made with this pattern.

The first one is made from a silk-jersey. Not the easiest fabric to work with, but well worth the extra effort. Love the bright colours! I wanted to try my hand at sewing the neck with elastic thread, using the shirring method, and it was a breeze.

The second is just a standard stretch jersey fabric with lots of stretch in orange and brown. I am wearing this top today for the first time and love it. Also shirred around the neck with elastic thread.

The other reason for my absence is this - my brand-new kindle. I got this for my birthday from my DH recently and have been a frequent visitor on Amazon to purchase books. This is such a fun gadget to own!

I have loads more to share, but will be back soon for that. Right now I have a cup of tea and will be visiting your blogs to say hello and see what you have been up to the last 2 months!