That Awkward Moment When You Forget You're A Seamstress

For over a year...

Forget is perhaps too cruel a word. I have told many MANY people that I am a sewist, but with starting a new job, moving to a new city, moving house, moving house again, passing my driving test, getting a car, and learning how to drive again because that new city was LEEDS, it's been hard to find the time to sew.

(Helpful hint: if you're a teacher who's too busy to sew, set up a school sewing club. You get a budget and an hour a week to sew with kids.)

But then, the GREAT BRITISH SEWING BEE was reinstated! And applications opened! And this girl started applying! And fell in love with sewing again! And using exclamation marks too much!

AND! This girl also got gifted a new sewing machine for Christmas! (I drunkenly called it Craig Charles, don't ask).

So it's on, I'm dedicated again, I am a sewist. Last weekend I finished two creations and I wore one to work today. The kids couldn't believe I handmade it, until I showed them my custom made label that I'd put in the back.

So yes, Sew Well Travelled is back, and this time I really mean it (until GBSB rejects me).

How to Make a Circle Skirt | Free Tutorial

Afternoon all! I hope you've all had a lovely week! As promised, here is part two of my circle skirt tutorial. If you have not yet drafted your pattern and want to make this, go here and follow my tutorial. Once you've done this you're more than welcome back into the loving sewing embrace of this tutorial. (That was an odd sentence...) 

What You Will Need

• 3m - 4m of 45" width fabric, or 2m - 3m of 60" width fabric. (I'd go with a medium weight cotton, and steer clear of stretchy fabrics)
• 20cm zip
• A hook and eye (optional, and dependent on your zipper skills)
• Corresponding thread
• 1m of medium to heavy weight fusible interfacing
• Pattern pieces from previous tutorial

Let's just remind ourselves what we ended up with after we made our pattern pieces:

We have piece 1, which needs to be cut on the fold; pieces 2 and 3 which are cut from the same pattern piece, and the waistband which is also cut on the fold.

Layplan and Cutting
1. How you devise your layplan depends on what the width of the fabric is. My sister's circle skirt was 45" width, and so the layplan looked like this. 45" width fabric is more common when it's the pretty patterns you're likely to want to use for a circle skirt, so hopefully this helps!
The waistband got cut from a length of scrap after this. Whether or not this works for you depends on your waist size and the length of the skirt, so you may have to alter things if it's not fitting.

However, the one I made for this tutorial was 60" width and I had 2.5m of it, which actually made life less complicated (and more economical).I folded it in half length ways so that piece one could be cut on the fold, and piece two could be pinned and cut to produce two pieces of fabric. Like so:

Cut all the pieces out (my favourite bit!) and you're ready to sew!

Sewing the Skirt

1. Sew the front skirt to the back skirt pieces at the side seams with a 1.5cm seam allowance. I sewed my skirt and my sister's using French seams, which gives it a nicer finish but it isn't necessary! Leave the centre back seam unstitched at this point.

Press open the seams on each side.

2. Affix the fusible interfacing to your waistband. My mum calls this iron on Vilene. Resist the urge to sing Iron-On Vilene to the tune of 'Come on Eileen'.

Step 3

3. Along the length of your waistband, fold up and press 1cm from the edges, like you're hemming it. Do the same on the other side. Now fold the waistband in half along the width and press, so each hem is meeting.

4. Fold the waistband again gently lengthways and give it a wee press to find the centre. Match the centre of the waistband up with the centre fold of the front skirt, right sides together, and pin from the centre to each end of the waist of the skirt.

Step 4

Step 4

5. Now, stitch the waistband onto the skirt right sides together along the pressed fold line. Take this slowly and steadily, as waistbands are a pain to take out and redo if they're wobbly.

6. Press seam up towards the rest of the waistband (I originally wrote wardrobe, brain fart...).

7. So, this was the first circle skirt I made where I inserted zip before I finished the waistband. I was a bit sceptical but thought it might eliminate some difficulties I've had with zips before, and to my delight it did! It's the best zip insertion for me yet and I am so happy it was on a skirt I was making for someone else!

Place the zip where you want it and then mark where the end of the zip is onto the centre back seam. Once this is done you want to sew the centre back seam from the hem up to this mark using a 1.5cm seam allowance. Once this seam is stitched you can start inserting your zip.

Insert the zip with the top of the zipper tape just going past the fold of the waistband. This way it'll be sewn to the very top of the waistband and you won't actually need the hook and eye. If you find you've done it too low though and there's a gap at the top then just pop a hook and eye on and it won't make a great deal of difference.

Tack your zip first in different coloured thread so that you can easily take these stitches out once the machine stitches are done. 

 My only tip for zips is to tack them first, for all other advice with them go to YouTube or give it a Google, as they rarely go so well for me!

8. Now, with the zip in fold the waistband over so that it meets your first waistband seam and hides it. Pin it in place.

 Now, top stitch the waistband in place, either along the first seam so no stitches are visible or as a neat top stitch about half a centimetre from the bottom of the waistband. I did the latter on this skirt and as it's level all the way along it has a nice effect!

Hemming

Hemming a circle skirt is notoriously difficult as the whole hem is on a curve and tricky to make the same length all the way around. In order to do this correctly I have tried many things, I've put it on Matilda the mannequin and measured and pinned meticulously for hours all the way around; my mum and I have fashioned together a sewing plumb line out of a box of staples and a scrap of fabric (doesn't work); I've laid down on the floor and looked right up the skirt with a spirit level. Finally, the most simple technique worked. I make life difficult for myself.

Get out your ironing board and rotate the skirt around, measuring the desired length from the waistband to the hem all the way round, plus 1cm for the hem. Work round, marking as you go, then go round again folding, pressing and pinning the hem in place, making tiny snips into the hemming allowance to reduce the bulk.

THEN! GET A HEMMING FOOT! This was the first time I'd ever used mine and it made a beautifully level hem that didn't gather or anything. Seriously, I was blown away! Keep to a 1-1.5cm hem, as too thick a hem will affect the way it hangs.

And with that, you're done! I add in this little label to the things I make for other people, until I get Sew Well Travelled ones made that is.

If you use this tutorial to make your own circle skirt please send me pictures on my social media profiles, which are linked at the top of the blog. OR, if you really don't want to make your own, visit my Etsy shop where you can commission me to make one for you (for a very good deal, taking into account the cost of fabric and the time it takes!)

Let me know how you get on, and until next time lovelies!

Kat xx

How To Draft Your Own Circle Skirt | Free Tutorial

Evening all! 

So this year I have taught myself how to draft my own patterns in a way that makes sense to me, which is pretty amazing! So as this was requested by a fellow seamstress I thought I'd do a tutorial on how I draft and make my circle skirts. This is part 1, where I will focus on drafting the pattern pieces using your own measurements. Part 2 will come later this week and will be all about making the actual skirt! So let's jump right in...

What You Will Need:
Pattern drafting paper (or A3 paper and a good glue stick)
A ruler (I had to edit this post as I actually forgot to include this!)
A set square or a protractor
A calculator (unless you're excellent at dividing by decimals in your head)
A large table or area of hard floor
Patience and flexibility
About 1 hour

Optional extras include a cat who doesn't like your attention being on anything but him.

STEP 1. Measure
You need to take your waist measurement and the desired length of the skirt. I take the waist measurement snugly so I can just fit 2 fingers between the tape measure and the waist. This way it will hug the body when worn and accentuate your waist. To take the length of the skirt, measure from the point of your waist down to where you want it to stop. For the one I was making it was 67cm, which stops at my friend's knee. But obviously, everyone is different!

STEP 2. Draft

1. So I don't use pattern paper or anything for circle skirts, since the pieces are so large it would cost a fortune. Instead I always have a pad of A3 paper on hand and stick about 9 sheets together like so:

People laugh at me when I ask where my "good" glue stick has gone. Some glue sticks are just better than others. 

2. Once all the pieces are stuck together you need to draw a right angle in the corner, it doesn't matter which one!

I knew taking Standard Grade Graphic Communication would come in handy one day!

3. You now have to do some maths magic, and don't get too excited when I tell you that you get to use pi. Divide your waist measurement by pi (or 3.14 if you don't have a pi button) and then by 2. This will give you the radius of the circle which will form the waist of the skirt. I usually round it to 1 decimal place, but I don't think it would cause too much difficulty if you rounded it to the nearest whole number.

4. Draw from the point of the right angle straight lines which are the length of your radius. (This was a really difficult instruction to phrase... see photo below)

Label the right angle A, the vertical line B and the horizontal line C

Like you're drawing a triangle basically but don't join the points to make it one. 

5. You then need to take your radius and mark a series of points from your right angle between the space B to C. This will form a curve.

Join the dots (YAY!) and you have your waist for your skirt (DOUBLE YAY!).

6. Now draw a straight line from points B and C - this line should match your skirt length with about 2cm added for seam allowance. Label your new points D and E. 

You should now have a corner called A; waist labelled BC; a straight line BD and another CE.

7. Repeat the join the dots interval measurement trick that we did with the waistline to create a curved hem for the skirt. 

8. Now add a 1.5cm seam allowance to line CE. You can do it from point A to E if you want but we don't actually need to talk about A anymore. A can go.

9. Add a fold line to line BD like this one here:

10. Cut out and copy this exact pattern onto another piece of pattern paper, but with adding the 1.5cm seam allowance to BOTH lines (CE and BD) this time. 
If it helps you keep track, the first pattern piece we made (with the fold line) can be labelled front skirt and piece 1; and the second pattern piece can be labelled back skirts and pieces 2 and 3. Pieces 2 and 3 are cut by cutting 2 pieces of fabric but not on the fold, as we need that centre back seam for the zip.

STEP 3: Make the waistband:
Take your original waist measurement and add 8cm to this. This is because of stuff to do with pi which I don't fully understand but intend to work out! Draw a rectangle which is this measurement divided by 2 (in my case 87cm + 8cm = 95cm/2 = 47.5cm ) by 12cm. You can change the 12cm around if you want a wider or narrower waistband, I just think 12cm is a nice width). Add a fold line to one of the shorter sides to the rectangle so that you can cut this on the fold.


And once you've done all of that, you should be left with all the pieces you need to make your very own circle skirt which *should* fit you perfectly!

Be sure to check my blog later in the week on part 2 of this tutorial, which is when we will make the actual skirt using these pattern pieces! Til then, happy drafting!

Lots of love,

Katharine

The 1950s Pattern Challenge

Sometimes there just isn't the perfect pattern for what you have in mind, that's what myself and my beautiful sister found anyway. As mentioned in my previous post, she had come home with an idea in mind of the shirt and skirt ensemble that she wanted and challenged me to create it for her. As you will have seen in my last post, pattern drafting/hacking was completely new to me and I sat staring at the 'pattern drafting paper' (I'm too stingy for the real stuff, so use greaseproof instead) for probably several hours in total. I created my own instructions and I pinned and tucked on a mannequin for quite some time before I even got up the guts to cut the fabric out.

My intention had been to hack Simplicity 6107 and just add a collar. Unfortunately, and I'm not sure why, this didn't quite work. So instead, I only used the position of the darts from the commercial pattern and the rest was drafted by myself. I'm not sure, but I think that's how pattern blocks are used? Maybe I should get a block or something. Maybe I should find out what that actually is...

When all this was finally done I worked out my own layplan, took a deep breath, and started cutting out the fabric. The collar is the isosceles triangle on the fold, which was made by measuring from the centre back to where the button stand started. In future I would taper the collar more as it met the buttons, as this part caused me issues in the final fit. Due to intense paranoia, I put it all on the mannequin again before tackling sleeves or anything. I quite liked how it looked like this and decided to make my own sleeveless and collarless version in the same fabric once it was done!

I was happy, added the sleeves, tackled with the collar which was faced with heavyweight interfacing. I folded over a seam for it and kind of slotted it onto the neckline. Once the sleeves were added, my sister came home for a fitting and we decided to shorten them. I then drafted another heavily interfaced cuff to add to the sleeves, so that she could roll them up and still have the right side of the fabric showing. Like so...

Cuff down

Cuff 'rolled' up

All that was left after that was to add the adorable buttons and attach hooks and eyes to avoid the neckline being a bit sexier than intended. And this is it finished!

Teamed with the circle skirt I made first for the whole outfit the whole finish is simply stunning. The yellow of the skirt really draws out the shirt fabric and we have coordinating buttons on the shirt for the finish. I also made her a matching wired headband in the skirt fabric and we used the prettiest daisy button ever to be made to finish it.

"Look nonchalant"

The smile on her face made the stress worth it

Heather has ordered a petticoat online to add some oomph and flounce and other exciting words to the spin of her skirt.

Nearly two years ago I started sewing again, and in January 2015 I sat down and shouted at my first commercial dressmaking pattern in confusion and panic. I never thought back then that I'd still be dressmaking, never mind drafting and fitting a whole outfit to someone else. When it was finished and she put it on I was not only beaming with pride but also nearly tearful. This was the result of a lot of hard work and is proof of how far my skills have come. Dressmaker fo' life.

And if you read that little cheesy paragraph... here's your reward, because it's wrong to make a circle skirt and not do this...

I've also had a request on reddit to digitise and publish the pattern that I made for this shirt, so expect that on Etsy soon! (which, in teacher language, means October half term now...)

Til next time loves,

Katharine xxx

Half Term

Well hello there my fine wee corner of the internet, I'm back!

This year I have really had to prioritise things, which has meant that I have had to ignore my wonderful wee sewing club here at Sew Well Travelled, and for that I truly apologise. It is currently May half term and my school has two weeks off! Which means I am going to endeavour to do SOME sort of sewing/craft as well as plan the hell out of my LAST TWO WEEKS ON PLACEMENT!!!! That's right guys, I am officially on the home stretch, I made it through the stress that is the PGCE year and have many grey hairs to show for it.

The last few months have been very tough going, I am currently job hunting for September as well as working hard to maintain my grades to get a good pass at the end of all of this. On top of this, in April we bid a tearful goodbye to our wonderful 20 year old cat, Toyah (pictured below).

She was something else was our Toyah but she became severely ill and it was cruel to keep her for our own sakes when she was no longer enjoying life. My mum and I made a resolution to live cat-less for the first time in our lives and we lasted a week. Toyah was such a big part of our family that no one could ever replace her, but our new feline friend has softened the blow. 

His name is Murphy and he is the survivor of what seems like a severe cruelty case, as a result he has a gammy leg, no teeth on the left of his mouth and is extremely needy. Quite a lot for a four year old to deal with! He likes to help me plan my lessons by walking all over the keyboard when he's not getting enough attention.

Aside from my cat news that really is all that's been going on in my life aside from teaching. My current class are amazing characters and I am going to miss them a stupid amount when I leave at the end of June. I still don't have a job but I remain hopeful and tenacious with the process, yet right now I really am looking forward to relaxing a little this summer!

I've got a plan in mind for a top to make this half term using this fabric which I bought at the Sewing fair in Manchester last September.

It's going to be a semi self drafted strappy top, using a pattern from last year's Sewing Bee book. I hacked the pattern last summer to make the dress below and it worked out quite well! I'm thinking of breaking the rules and making the straps in a totally different fabric, just to make it a bit wilder! 

I really need to wear that dress again actually. As well as that I'm going to make a few wee bits and bobs and finally put them on Etsy with the aim to top up my ever diminishing student loan, stay tuned for a link on here! I have a huge stash of fabric that needs to be used up, my first placement class did enjoy choosing from it for their iPad cases at our craft club though!

Anyway, you'll definitely hear more from me this half term, but until then - Happy Sewing Crafters!

Katharine xx

A Foxy Tea Dress

Two posts in one night! (that last one was actually in this one but then I realised I'd rambled on so much that it needed it's own section)

A few weeks ago I finished my latest dress with this foxy ass fabric.

It's a very heavy cotton, almost like curtain material, and was about £5 a metre from the craft show I went to in September with my mum (read about it here). My current obsession seems to be foxes and I just couldn't resist.

I decided, because I like the fit of the last one I did so much, to make the English Tea Dress by SimpleSew again (see here), but this time sans sleeves. The problem is, however, that I started this dress in September, and because of PGCE insanity I only finished it in December. Which means the fit is completely off around my bust and my waist. I could fix it, but I'm bound to gain the weight again, and I really can't be arsed right now. So here it is:

To be completely honest with you all, because that's the best policy, I am not 100% happy with it, it hasn't been worn out yet as I am struggling to style it and it is much too big. When I get a chance I'm going to take it in but for now it's considered finished and hanging with the rest of my creations in the Sew Well Travelled wardrobe!

I'm off to HobbyCraft tomorrow with a voucher, so hopefully the next blog won't take too long!

Til next time,

Kat

Pattern Hack | The Elephant Allure

Hi Blogisphere! This is an old make, one of my first pieces, but it was my first hack and I was happy with how it turned out :)

The title makes it sound like an odd one, but my mum and I often joke that when I undo the top button of a dress or shirt, or wear a v-neck I'm switching on the 'allure'. So this is my Elephant Allure top. 

It's a pattern hack from the GBSB sleeveless shell top pattern (which I made here) but with a v-neck and sans facing. It was a bold move and I was kind of sewing in the dark so to speak,  but I do love it and get lots of compliments on it!

It has a precarious dart right in the middle of the V however, as there was an inexplicable fabric issue which resulted in what looked like a third nipple. I do not have a third nipple.

All I did was use the basic template for the shirt then cut a V out of the front and back. I wish I could say I did more than that....


(So, I was going to airbrush and edit the following pictures to make myself look slimmer. Shameful, I know, but I wasn't at all happy with how I looked in them and I've always been self conscious of my weight. But you know what? No. I'm a size 18 "plus size" woman, and yes I am trying to lose weight but this blog is all about handmade things and real life. This is the real me, flabby top-heavy me. So here you go. So there!)

Not all that adventurous but I do love it and its fit!

Til next time,

Kat

Self-Drafted | The "Days of Yore" Skirt

A few weeks ago... or months ago, I forget, I hit the Fabbadashery with my boyfriend. It was only right that he experienced my happy place first hand. I think it's fair to say that he didn't really get it but did resolve to make a picnic blanket; out of checked cotton material straight from the bolt. So no sewing really, just buying a metre of fabric. He didn't buy it in the end when I threatened to teach him how to use a sewing machine.

ANYWAY, the darling that he is bought me a couple of metres of this beauty. In true Kat style I didn't have any plans for it but I'm damn chuffed with how it's turned out!

The fabric, for some reason, reminds me of that episode of Friends where Rachel buys a ton of furniture from Pottery Barn and convinces Phoebe that it's genuinely from "the days of Yore".

This skirt is 100% self drafted, no hacking at all. I started by measuring my waist, hips and the length from my waist to where I wanted it to end. I added four inches to my waist then divided that total by four to make the front and back skirt pattern pieces, one on a fold and one not. I also measured the distance between my waist and hips to make sure when I was drawing out the flare of the skirt it skimmed my hips nicely. I also made it three-ish longer at the back and curved the hem, which I'm also very happy with. Generally I'm just really happy about this skirt. I also added quite a wide waistband and a centre back zip. And here it is!!!

I look silly when I pose.

Totally not photoshopped to
make me look slimmer....
*ahem*

In all honesty, I'm immensely proud of how far my sewing and dressmaking skills have come, to think that six months ago I'd sat down with my first pattern and called for my mum for help, and now I am designing, drafting and creating my own clothes! What even.

Anyway, you know the drill guys, til next time...

Kat xx