Pockets – Hopefully Creative

Little Black Dress

First iteration in 2012, repeated in 2021 and finished even quicker than back in the day!

Black dresses are supposed to be a staple and since the one I had doesn’t really fit anymore, I finally set out to make one. The fabric is some black, slightly stretchy scuba fabric that does not fray. There was about 1.5 very crookedly cut meters of it. This dress only just managed to get squeezed from the yardage I had. There was so little that I actually had to cut the pockets (because a dress without pockets is just a horror-tube) from a different fabric. The pattern I chose was Simplicity 2473, first debuted in 2012. I cannot for the life of me remember what happened to that iteration, but I’m certain it no longer resides in my closet.

Since the fabric was quite thick, I chose to use a slightly different construction method than the original pattern instructed. This to eliminate some bulk along the waistline. The front was sewn together first (so bodice, waistband and skirt) and nearly all seams pressed open, then the back was sewn together (bodice, waistband and skirt) and seams pressed open. Front and back where then attached along the side seams, with a hand sized section left open for the pocket. Special attention was paid to make the waistband match up along the sides. This also means that there is no waistband lining, but the fabric is thick enough that it doesn’t matter.

The instructions for the short cap sleeve were just about completely ignored, as the pattern called for a lining and I didn’t think that was necessary. I just folded over the hem, sewed it down and hoped that the stretch in the fabric would allow it to lay well. I then inserted them in the sleeve cap, which worked remarkably well. After that came the collar. The collar by itself was very thick, so if you compare it to the 2012 version, this one is a lot smaller. That is because it stands up by itself a lot more. This time I chose a size 10, which fits my 2021 body a lot better than it did my 2012 body.

The zipper was inserted next. In a recent haul of a Czech crafting supplied webshop, I discovered ‘continuous zippers’. This means that you get a very long zipper without a pull. You can cut them to size required and then install the pull yourself. You can buy those in multiple sizes, colours and types. I saw one in rainbow and decided I needed to have it. There was no project in mind when I bought it, however, after starting this dress, I thought it would liven up this fairly dark project suitably. During that haul, I also got some superfine pins for no real reason. Turns out that I was psychic again and this scuba fabric only wanted to play with those superfine pins and really resisted everything else.

The last bit were the pockets. I chose to do a historical pear-type pocket that was pieced from some remains of the scuba and some secret sweatpants fabric. These are easy to install after the fact and can hold a lot of stuff. A secret key loop was attached in the right pocket for my carabiner. They are further attached by the waistband with some afterthought strips of fabric. Last but not least, it was hemmed. The most awesome part of this project is the fact that it’s finished and did not languish in the project-box-of-shame for any time. I started it yesterday and finished it today. It also feels very nice and warm to wear and I hope to make some use out of it with some tights or very long socks.

Plaid Pants Again

When you make pants and then wait weeks to actually complete them.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine celebrated her birthday in Rotterdam. Rotterdam has a large market on Saturday which also has a few fabric stalls, so I convinced another friend to come with me to the market to look at some fabrics. I fell in love with a sneaky sweatpants fabric with a black, white and gray plaid on it. The fabric feels very similar to the striped one I used for these pants, so it had to come home with me.

Determined not to let the fabric languish in the hoard for too long, I set out to make my new pants pretty swiftly. Since the plaid is unbalanced, it would never be possible to make symmetrical pants, but I did decide to do my best to plaid match the horizontal where possible. I settled on a pattern that had arrived recently in the Simplicity Naaimode magazine (nr. 45), model 30 also known as Simplicity S8956, which was fairly wide legged, with a pleat and pockets in the front and a shaped waistband. All the pieces were cut out and sewn together. The only changes I made were to add an extra belt loop for my keys and to cuff them as they were seriously long.

So that meant that this thing was finished right? Nope, wrong. The front pockets that come with the pattern are really not very big, and while I was debating the entire time whether to add back pockets, I decided not to put them in at the time I worked on it. So when I’d finished the pants as per the project on the 27th of September, they then lay in my ‘to work on’ pile until last Sunday, waiting for back pockets. I chose to do single welt pockets for the first time and used a different kind of fabric for the pocket back to hopefully alleviate some of the denseness that welt pockets can create. I probably should have made them a little bit wider, but they did turn out well and function as pockets! Will even fit my phone, so job’s finally done.

Scrap Nelly

Using leftovers to make a one-pocket sweater.

So I told you a little about Nelly in a previous post (here), but never showed you what I used the original Nelly for. Nelly is reason that I discovered Pattydoo patterns. I found the assymmetry in the sweater so much fun, that I wanted to have it. I apparently bought it in December 2019, printed it, stuck it together and then forgot about it. When rummaging around the sewing room the other week, I found the box of leftover bits of sweater fabric that I still had. This included a small bit of Flamingo and a bit of gray from this sweater. These two fabrics together were precisely enough to make the body and sleeves of the sweater. The neck was about half as tall as it was supposed to be, due to the fact that I didn’t have more fabric.

Now, you might notice that there are a few differences between my sweater and the original. For one, I use only two fabric while there are three in the pattern – I didn’t have a third coordinating fabric, so problem solved by taping two pattern pieces together. Its also a mirror image of the original, that’s because I put the pieces (single layer) on the back of my gray fabric. I was EXTREMELY lucky that I figured out that I had them on the front of the flamingoes before cutting the fabric, and could turn them around. This project would have been a disaster otherwise. The cuffs are also a little shorter, made from some gray jersey in the hoard, mainly because it was already a little large so I didn’t need more length. And lastly, it’s more fitted through the armholes, since I took in the armhole and a bit of the side and sleeve by 3 cm at the widest point. It just looked too baggy. I think it should’ve cut a size smaller.

However, I am happy with it. Fabrics from my stash, nearly using it all up so it’s effectively a nearly free second project, especially as I’m planning on using the pattern more than once. It has the option to make a sweater with a kangaroo pocket or a hood too. I have found that the one pocket is not deep enough for my phone if I bend over, so that might be something to fix in another version.

Pocket Coatigan

Recently, I discovered that some of my all time favourite yarns was brought back into production. The Tweed yarn by Zeeman had returned! I’ve used it in the past for classics such as the leaves sweater, the striped sweater, the eighties revival sweater and the eyelet sweater. Once I brought back a bunch of yarn in three different colours, I discovered that the yardage per 100 grams was less than the original. I also determined that the red yarn I bought was exactly the same the eyelet sweater…

Once I’d discovered this, I still set out knitting a red top. The first try was using a pattern called Gardner by Amanda Keep Williams. While I did like the idea of this sweater, I got about halfway when I decided that I didn’t like it nearly enough. I don’t tend to wear cropped anything, so it was a bad choice to start with. So I frogged the whole thing and set out on search for another pattern. I ended up with the pocket coatigan by Originally Lovely, a free pattern available on their site.

According to my Ravelry notes, I set out knitting the coatigan on the 25th of January. That means it’s taken me a little over a month to finish. Quite decent if I say so myself. The knitting is straightforward. I made a few small changes along the way. There were a few extra decreases in the sides to attempt some shaping (not sure if that helped at all), and somehow my stitch count at the neck edge was off. I’m unsure how it’s possible to knit the size S with the stitch counts they give, because they don’t add up according to my math, but perhaps I’m wrong. So I winged the neckline a little.

I haven’t worn it out yet, nor have I done any blocking (not that I’m planning on doing that anyway), so I’m unsure how this will hold up. The sleeves are a little long, but that’s because this yarn tends to shrink on me lengthwise, which means that practically none of my Tweed sweaters have arms that are over bracelet length. It does have pockets, which admittedly were the main attraction for me. Now I just need to see if I will voluntary pick a sweater from my cupboard that doesn’t closes, if not, I may still add some form of closure to make it more wearable. But yay! I finished a thing!

Ochre Obsession

So, I went on holiday and tried on a sweater. It was ochre, from Primark and I loved the colour. The fit however, terrible. The sleeve height was so high, that it felt really constricting. The colour was good, I liked the neckline (even if my friend hated it, he said there was too much fabric) and it had pockets, always a win.

This was the start of my ochre obsession. I really, really, really wanted an ochre sweater now. Since my local fabric shops do not have something like this fabric, I started scouring the internet. I found some fabric that looked nice and even bought some more fabrics because the hoard is never full enough.

I’d already found the pattern I wanted to use, a shortened version of Lekala #4742 – Tunic with Hood. Once my fabric arrived, I was slightly disappointed. It wasn’t stretchy as I’d assumed it would be and one of the cut ends frayed a little. However, I really liked the colour, so I got to work quickly. Shortened the bottom by 12 cm, and followed the instructions apart from using grommets instead of sewing buttonholes. After it was all sewn together, it felt a little tight in the armpit, so I decided to add a little diamond piece of fabric to increase the range of motion.

The hood is ENORMOUS, I think it will fit two heads – I’m guessing something may have gone wrong with Lekala’s sizing there. However, I still like it quite a bit. Because of the size and the position, I’m not sure the hood is super functional as a hood, but I still like the look of it on the front. The fabric is super warm, so I might need to wait for a little to be able to wear it comfortably.

I may want to make something like this again, but some things would need to change. I would want to use a more stretchy fabric such that I could take the side seams in a little and reduce the swayback action going on. The size of the hood would need to be reduced by at least 5cm in height, if not more. I may want to add bands to the sleeves and bottom although I quite like this sleek look too. Now to wait for winter to wear my ochre dream.

Improvements Needed

Remember all those sporting skorts of which only one had pockets? This is no longer the case. I put pockets on the three remaining skirts such that I will actually choose them. I also took in the elastic on of them such that it fit slightly better. I’m quite happy with this improvement. You might even be able to see the single pocket that was added to these skorts.

The second improvement was to the riding jacket. As I mentioned before, it shrunk in the wash and the sleeves needed to be let out and lengthened. Finally finished this today. I’m not sure why it took me so long to get done. It was not too hard to finish it.

Lets hope that these improvements will help to get more wear out of these items.

Plaid Pants – Blue

So somewhere in 2017, I bought a length of black-blue-red plaid to make another set of plaid pants. I reworked my original pattern a little bit – slimming and straightening the legs a little and copying all the pattern pieces onto tracing paper since the original is still the boob-height pattern of the Helena Culottes. Now I have all pattern pieces that fit together well. Apart from one thing, but we’ll get to that.

Cutting out the pieces taking care to pattern match, where possible and sewing it together all went pretty well. I used the blue origami cats for pockets/waistband/zipper guard (I thought it was funny to have more cats behind the zip). The only problem was the waistband. I clearly did not use a well-fitting waistband so I had to make numerous adaptations. This is the one major aspect that I need to improve for the next version (there will probably be a next version).

I had worn it with hooks & eyes and the too wide waistband, but that was not a true success. So I shortened it a little, and replaced the hooks & eyes with a jeans type button – lesson 2: shorter shank next time. I also took more chunks out of the waistband to get it to fit better. Now it works really quite well, I finished it right before Christmas and I enjoy wearing it.

These new plaid pants also allow me to wear my red sweaters with them. My other plaid pants are green, and I don’t want to look like Christmas in July, so that was not an option. This was a large part of the reason for picking up the fabric. Also just because it is plain and I seem to have a fond liking for plaid. I still have a length of red plaid in the stash, but I was planning on making a jacket out of that.. We’ll see whether that ever happens.

Graduation Dress 2017

Blue seems to be a recurring colour in my summer graduation dresses, see the evidence from 2014, 2015, and 2016. Again in 2017, I found myself attracted to blue yet again. This time I picked two blues with the intention of making something with a circle skirt. However, the idea lost its appeal and I started looking around my pattern magazines for something new. Turned out that I liked another pattern from a Simplicity magazine. It could also be done two-toned, so that worked out great.

This was the pattern, in Simplicity Naaimode 16, pattern 6-10. It came in sizes 38, 40 and 42. Since I generally don’t fit in size 38, I redraw the 38 pattern to get a size 36. I made up the pattern, pretty much as drafted. At the start the only thing I changed was to also add piping along the side-back seam and the back skirt seam. I also had to pull up the shoulder seams as it was too long. That resulted in the one on the left:

The proportions of the top were just off. It was too high and there was not enough darker blue. So I recut fronts and put those on while attaching it lower on the front by about 4 cm or so. This was much better as showcased on the right.

I hemmed the dress with the lining slightly longer than the shell. I liked the idea of some of the darker blue peeking out.

The side view is to show how the piping ran on. The invisible zip is slightly not invisible enough but it isn’t too bad although I like the matching on both points (skirt and top).

It also looks clean on the inside. I am hoping that the fabric does not fray too much in between the layers. I’ve worn it since graduation and it is comfortable to wear. It will most likely see more wear this summer.

Ceremonial Jumpsuit

Yesterday we opened the Academic Year. This is an event in which new students are welcomed to the community, and teachers show up in black gowns. I try to make a fun thing for the events that we do, but this time I wanted something different. I have been dreaming of a jumpsuit for a while now, and I figured that yesterday’s celebration would be a fine occasion (and necessary kick-in-the-butt) to get my ass in gear and get cutting.

I decided to check out my stash for some fabric. I eventually found some fabric that is very stable, but very stretchy in one direction. It was the only bit that I thought was large enough really, as it turned out, it was also perfect. The pants pattern I used is the free Helena Culottes pattern by Ralph Pink, which by now has seen numerous alterations. I started by cutting out the pants as frugally as I could, using some striped fabric as used before in a shirt as pocket fronts. I also changed the grainline a little, because in the past there have always been weird folds in the back leg. The size of the pocket opening was also decreased, significantly, and a bit of the top was left off.

For the top, I first gathered some inspiration on Pinterest (e.g. this and this and this). It was quickly determined that I should do a v-neck, preferably with some overlap and maybe even sleevesies (church event and all). So searching though my pattern stash, I found a pattern in one of my old Burda magazines with all those characteristics (Burda Style 11-2007, pattern 112). Unfortunately the pattern only came in a size 76 (size 38 for long people), and I’m both smaller than size 38 and short. On the pattern piece you can see three (or four) different line colours to distinguish between the different sizes to create an approximate size 36. I then pinned the overlap together at the center and pulled the points down until they would fit my front and not be overly large. Sewed that all to the waistband that I sewed on to the inside, such that the inside waistband would be clean finished.

I then added the second layer of the waistband and zig-zagged that on. I used a zig-zag stitch, because I found out that the fabric was so stretchy, that I was able to pull it over my butt without having to use closures! This makes it approximately the easiest thing to put on and be ready to go out. It’s easier than most knit dresses, as it has pockets!

The top is a little wide-set, so to not show bra straps (and it being.. 9 o’clock on the night before the event), I found some fur-hooks to hook the straps behind and keep them from view. They do double duty with keeping the top on my shoulders. Although I have to take care when putting bags over my shoulder as that can dig in.

So now for the full length view, in front of my closet. These pictures are unfortunately not the best ever. So I’m hoping that event photographers managed to get me once with some better light and stuff. I got a number of compliments (and people being surprised that I made it) which makes me very happy. It was worn to work today and it’s perfectly fine to do an entire day of office work in too.

Conclusion, I really, really like it and will enjoy wearing it in the future!

Jeans!

At some point in the past, I found some actual jeans fabric in a second-hand store and brought it home. A couple of weeks ago, I figured it was time to turn the fabric into actual pants. I washed the fabric beforehand, to get rid of some of the residual ink. However, I did get somewhat smurf-like hands throughout the project. It’s definitely destined for some similar colour laundry.

The pattern was a bootcut pants pattern, from the Burda Easy Fashion Spring/Summer 2009 edition, model number 3. I made a number of changes, including different pockets, more of a yoke, a higher waistband and some on the fly things. The back isn’t perfect, but the front is fairly nice and this thing does not sag after a wear. There are definite improvements possible, but it doesn’t seem to be worse than my store-bought jeans. Prepare for pictures…

Front Back

There is a quite severe yoke, and angled pockets as other ones would not have fit.

Yoke Pocket

The front also has pockets which I closed up a little after sewing to create more storage space. I also added a plaid as the pocket lining.

Pocket Pocket

It closes with a hook and bar type closure and again has the plaid as the lining.

Close Inside

This experiment was successful enough to try something similar again. I would like to create some pants that are a little tighter around the legs and flare out later. We’ll see if it happens!