Upcycling plans

Man I miss sewing. I am on lockdown at the moment until the end of May when I have a major uni deadline. I’m trying to squeeze in a little bit of sewing whenever I can, but it’s not easy.

I’ve also had a bit of a wardrobe meltdown, because for some reason all of my favourite jeans (that is two pairs out of the three RTW pairs I own) decided to die a sudden death of the ass-ripping kind. When you’ve pledged to make all your own clothes, have no time to sew and pretty much live in jeans, that is a bit problematic.

Luckily, this all coincided with my mum doing a major clear-out of old clothes she can no longer wear. After a visit I left with a whole suitcase full of lovely clothes including two pairs of jeans. Thank god.

In addition she gave me two of her favourite dresses. Hence this blog post….

Linden x 2

First some distressing news. I have been using my seam ripper wrong THIS WHOLE TIME. It’s been a tough morning, but I think I’m ready to move past it now.

The weather in Denmark is glorious at the moment, which has made me want to make clothes in happy, sunny and colourful… erm… colours. And as part of my sewing plan this year, I have been working on some more basic garments. Enter: more Lindens.

Looking ahead

Too much happened last year for me to sum it up in one blog post (quittingmyjobandmovingtoanothercountrytostudy sort of stuff). Instead, I’m looking ahead.

Come January, I will have gone a whole year without buying any RTW clothes. I took the seamless pledge in August in order to make it official, so I have no intention of stopping now. I’m p.r.e.t.t.y darn pleased with myself, as I never thought I’d be able to do it. But if I’m honest, my wardrobe has suffered. Despite making 35 pieces of clothing last year, there are still a lot of gaps.

I’ve realised that when you’re making all your own clothes, you need a plan (I know, I’m late to the party). My strategy has so far been ‘ooh that’s a pretty dress pattern’ or ‘ooh that’s a pretty flowery fabric’ and not thought much about wearability. Therefore, my wardrobe is suffering of a lack of nice everyday casual clothes. I now have a plan to fix this…

Indie = special

 I’m clearly on to something here: Since starting writing this blog post yesterday, ‘Sewing Indie Month’ has kicked off! 

The other day I realised that out of all the pieces of clothing I’ve made since I started sewing, about 95% of the patterns have come from indie pattern designers. I’ve got I don’t know how many patterns from Burdastyle, Simplicity etc bookmarked on my computer, but I’ve never gotten round to making them. And I’ll tell you why.

Sewing: Time and money

The problem with becoming obsessed with sewing, it that it takes tiiiime. I’ve recently had a few nights where I’ve been at it until 1am, only noticing the time when I’ve ripped up the same seam 5 times and my boyfriend starts suggesting  that ‘it might be time to go to bed….’.

It’s also pretty darn expensive. I’ll write another time about all the stuff I have…. erm… ‘had’ to to buy for my newfound hobby. I’m dreading adding up the numbers, but I think it would be interesting to see how much the essentials , and also how much all the ‘nice to have’ extras cost.

Earlier this week, I posted a photo of my Madeleine skirt on Facebook and got a few comments from friends along the lines of ‘can you make one for me’? I would absolutely love to make clothes for people – and to charge for it. But my potential customers would have to consider the following:

Fabric shopping

That’s it. No more fabric this month. It’s either that or live off porridge…

Shopping clothes used to be my monthly guilty spend, but now that’s been replaced with buying fabric and haberdashery instead. I actually think being fabricoholic (yeah that word doesn’t really work…) is worse – you just have way more options than you have on the highstreet.

Today all my money went to Dalston Mill Fabrics and The Shop on Cheshire Street. It was my first time visiting both after reading about them on yes i like that. I was slightly overwhelmed by Dalston Mill Fabrics. It’s the kind of place where you need a LOT of time to look through the floor to ceiling high stacks, and a reasonable budget. I wanted to buy some wool fabric for my Madeleine skirt, but thanks to £17/m I quickly changed my mind and bought some really lovely cotton twill instead (£7.70/m).

I also got some knit fabric and lace for my Coco. I bought the pattern yesterday and am hoping to have time to get it done for the big Coco Party! I think it will have to be a top for me. A Coco dress would look near indecent on someone my height…

My favourite purchases of the day, however, is without a doubt from The Shop. I found some beautiful patterned silk (1.45 x 0.92 m) for just £6.50 which I think I will use to make the front piece of a top.

Silk fabric from The Shop on Cheshire street

Merde..

Ever find the perfect pattern only to realise it’s in French?

République Du Chiffon has published this amazing free (!) pattern (which as fas as I can understand, is the result of a competition and collaboration with Made by 6). I am dying to try this out using some quite heavy fabric spotted on Walthamstow market. Am playing around with some ideas for colours, but I might stick to the black and white colour blocking RDC has used.

Now all I need to do is dig deep to remember any of my high school French. And work very closely with Google translate… 

 

Photos from République du Chiffon