Summer skull top

 I made this top from a weirdly shaped scrap of fabric so nothing matches pattern-wise. I did try to get the pattern to match but it was a case of either make the top and ignore the pattern or just keep the fabric scrap for pocket linings as I had originally intended because I did not originally think I had enough fabric to actually make anything from it.
 

It is left over from my tie front shirt made from a free pattern from Mood Sewciety.



This top though is constructed from very small panels, so I managed to pretty much keep the grain line whilst doing some slightly inventive cutting. Its actually nearly all correct too. I originally thought I would have to go slightly off grain but by cutting every bit singly I squeezed it out of my small bit of fabric. I wish I had taken a photo of my starting fabric because it was such a strange shaped bit of fabric and I really though it was just a lining for pockets until I wore my red top which I made a couple of years ago.


I got in a right mess when trying to work out Burda's weird directions when I made the red top and to be honest two years on a much more experience at sewing and I still do not get Burda's instructions for this even now. I have though I believe made a better job of making this because this version does look like the Burda version. The first top does not really but it does work and I wear it loads when its hot.

The button on the back neck is an antique glass button so I am not too sure what will happen when I machine wash this. Probably should really hand wash but its not going to happen. My life is just too busy for that. You can just about see it here.

I really should make the dress version of this now in fact because I have actually sussed out how to make this and next time would top stitch across the shoulders. There is meant to be a yoke round the neck not just a facing like I did for version 1. I never understood that before though.

This top is also overlocked inside. The first one has unfinished edges because it was so daunting putting it together I could not work out how to do the overlocking in the right order. Having the red top as a reference for making this also really helped and I got the CF panel the right way up this time too. I have now marked the top on my pattern piece because its very deceptive to work out which way up this goes when you are cutting it out.
 

Thanks for visiting

Bracken

Planet killing Plastic. How to deal with this as a vegan?

About a year ago now I met George for an after work coffee. We both used to work together. It was a few years ago now and there are three of us who temped together and keep in touch. We do not meet very often but a couple of times a year we get together after work for a coffee and a cake, or a beer.

So we were having our usual catch-up when he suddenly brings into the conversation the problem of plastic and its killing the Earth. Well yes we all know!

But, he says: how can we justify plastic shoes then? 

He knows I am vegan, and this is a big issue for me.

Well being a long term vegan I pretty much eliminated all leather from my wardrobe. I do not buy leather although I have a very old 1980s biker jacket and a few pairs of leather shoes which are still going from the 90s which I refuse to just throw out or to donate.

And I get it!

I have, recently to us having this discussion, thrown out several pairs of shoes. All were faux leather - aka PVC.

The soles are all intact yet the shoes have disintegrated. And these soles which are really good condition then went off to landfill and that is criminal! And this keeps happening to me year after year. And I just keep buying more because I need a decent pair of "leather" waterproof shoes to live my life effectively.

Historically, people used to get their leather shoes repaired over, and over again, and keep them years.

Nowadays, if you buy faux leather or faux suede you are lucky to still have it in a wearable condition two years later. And most affordable shoes are PVC.

PVC = Planet killing Plastic.

How is this better?


How is this moral?


Its killing our world.

Its killing the fish, and lets face it if its found inside fish it must also be inside us. Its in the water maybe even in the air we breath and if you eat meat you take it in even more directly because being inside fish its in the food chain.

But I need waterproof servicable shoes!

So now I have a problem: what to do about this plastic that I am contributing to the problem of world pollution?

Yes, you can wear canvas which is vegan or satin or denim or other fabrics but in a cold wet climate like the UK that is really not an option. People do, I am sure, and fair play to them, but wearing wet dirty cloth shoes all day at work will not be a viable option for me personally. Despite work dress codes its very unpleasant.

Well it has taken me a whole year to come to terms with this discussion, but I cannot just forget it and it does not leave me. I truly agree with George on this huge environmental issue which is why I am writing this. Probably this will not be a post many people will bother to wade through, but if you do get this far into reading this I hope you will bear with me a little longer..............

I am still thinking about this conversation a whole year later. Its bugging me so much I cannot just forget it. To me the solution seems so completely obvious.

Its just my vegan-ness that has stopped me from admitting this, but as a rational person in the end I simply must. I am sure this will make me very unpopular with many other vegans too, but I still l am going to write this down. I finally have come to a conclusion or an admission, depending on how you look at life.

As someone who has a PhD in chemical engineering, a degree in chemistry and a job history in the plastics/ polymer industry, this is bad news from a jobs perspective for me as well!

But despite this, I need to accept that I am no longer going to be able to buy plastic if I can find any way to avoid its use.

A long time ago a friend of mine became a vegan and he donated his leather jacket to charity. It did not change the fact he had bought it or it was made from an animal.

All it meant was that he could pretend he never owned it. Some other sensible person bought it from Oxfam and gave money both to a good cause and got themselves a very good jacket which maybe they might even still own. I decided in my late teens/early twenties I was not going down that route. For me to donate changes not the fact you bought it, it just slightly salves your conscience. I am not a hypochrit hence I still own most of the leather I ever bought. But I do not wear it!

Pretending you never bought leather is just a con to yourself and everyone else so I never did that. I still own the leather I bought all that time ago it and I am going to wear it again. I still love my ancient leather biker jacket which I bought in 1984. I was already a veggie then and the idea of buying leather somehow did not worry me then. I was a child really though. I did not question things as much.

I actually got it out a few weeks ago and cleaned the leather because this was on my mind. I have hidden that jacket away in my loft for many years not wanting to throw it away but feeling guilty for owning it. And I have worn faux leather/ PVC with pride - because its vegan. And I have contributed to killing our planet. But what the hell, I am going to wear my leather jacket again now because the PVC one gave up the ghost. And I am going to wear it out maybe, but at least it will then be reasonable to dispose of it. Some poor animal died. Giving the thing away does not change that.

Do you know that tanned leather is sent to landfill and takes between 25 and 50 years to completely decompose?

Reference here:
https://www.reference.com/science/long-leather-decompose-c6ece124c2dba5a4 

Well that is also a shocker for me as well.

So all those old but serviceable leather sofas, chairs, coats, bags and shoes that get sent to landfill take up to 50 years to biodegrade. BUT AT LEAST EVENTUALLY THEY DO BIODEGRADE!

PVC doesn't!

So we have literally tonnes of leather than is going into the earth, and not biodegrading, and we have a problem with killing the planet with manufacture, as well as disposal, of plastic.

It seems the obvious solution for both problems is not to dispose of any of this leather but upcycle it, reuse it, take care of it. Wear it. Yes the vegans will hate me for writing this, but I honestly cannot deny what is obvious.

Plastic shoes are terrible for planet earth and its the only home we all have. We should take better care of the planet and stop making this rubbish. For that to happen we must stop buying it. So I need to change my buying habits quite drastically. Buying a vegan advertised product is great, Its self serving, its enjoyable, it seems riteous and the right thing to be doing. Save the animals etc.

But pretending its good for the planet is simply, for me, no longer possible.

Thank you George, for opening my eyes!

I will not be buying any more plastic fabrics. You will not notice a difference on this blog, I would expect for many years, because I already own the polluting fabric and its very warm, wearable and easy to keep clean and I am using it all up, but since I am no longer going to replace this its going to mean it has to be a bit more precious and so it should be because every tiny item I sew is contributing to my part in the murder of animals and the pollution of our world.
 
I already own a half a roll of faux suede,

several metres of stretch faux leather

I own polyesters - possibly 50-100 metres

And  I will be using these up. And  its going to take me years to sew this lot up completely and no I will not donate because how does that solve anything?

I am not exactly going to buy leather or at least not new leather. But I am going to replace my shoes with leather ones -  second hand leather but leather it is going to be.

After all you only need a couple of pairs at most of decent waterproof shoes, and then I can carry on using my canvas shoes the rest of the time. But sorry folks, I cannot find anyway round this problem other than accept that leather is really much more the way to go than any version of vegan pleather and PVC.

It does grate with my morals I admit it.

I am sure if the world decides as a majority to stop buying plastic shoes then leather is going to cost a great deal more as well because if we stop eating animals, and thats a major environmental movement in its own rite, then we also make leather a scarce commodity, so the price increases, but how else can we stop this plastics pollution?

 And if you made it to the end of this essay : thanks for reading

 Bracken

 

Fluorescent yellow dress and Upcycled band T shirt - Damned Damned Damned

 

I have always loved the Damned. 

Right from about age 12 I have been a fanso I do likea Damned Tshirt. I bought this one at a gig back in 2016 but despite my love of the band I do not love this T shirt. It started out virtually identical to the one below except my lettering was in white.

Its the wrong shape. I hated the tight neck - I am sure Damned T shirts used to be less tight round the neck when I was younger - maybe its my saggy old body😕

Or maybe cos int he 80s I cut the neck and sleeves off all my Tshirts!

Whichever I do not like this T shirt. I considered Ebaying it but will probably only get 99p or similar for it and in the end its a really good album - Damned Damned Damned that is so I would like to keep it. It also cost quite alot because I bought it at a Damned gig so its an official Damned T shirt and not copy.

I previously upcycled a few other old Ts and it was a real success because I live in them so I reckon this would also be good for this one rather than me chuck out what is a virtually unworn T shirt.

So there is was sittingw aitng for me to get round to doig something with it and I decided to look for powermesh to make a bra ( see a later post because this is yet to be finished). I find msome powermesh and also this offcut of large holed fishnet that I used to make this top inspired by Frieda Petrenko in Holby City.


You can read about that one here: https://brackencrafts.blogspot.com/2018/03/black-mesh-frieda-petrenko-inspired-top.html

So finding the mesh got me inspired and I decided to go a differnt route to my previous upcycling of T shirts which all use my TNT pattern McCalls M6612:




I do not want a low neck on this top because I want to keep all of the print so I am thinking slash neck maybe and because its the Damned and I previously had a tour T shirt with black lace on it I am going to trim the overlocked edges with black stretch lace rather than just hem them.

My intention in fact was to make something like this from it

 

So I used Butterick 5562 View D and this is how it turned out. Theres is black stretch lace on neck sleeve edges and hem of this top and I really love it though perhaps the neck is better without it being a boat neckline it sort of stands up. Stuff it, its there now anyway so I can live with it.

Here is worn over my fluorescent yellow vest dress which I also sewed up this weekend.

This was just a very quick make to use my lovely fluoro yellow ribbed fabric before summer ends and it becomes unwearable. Its not best shown here really because the black round the neck belongs to the exercise top I am wearing underneath it. Its just a basic vest dress.

I love this type of basic vest dress because they are so easy to wear. This is my old TNT pattern McCalls M6612. I really need to get round to tracing a version of this before it totally falls to bits. I have repaired it many times already so if I want to keep on using this its time I traced it. Its really weird because I bought this pattern by accident. I never realised I had put it into my shoppoing cart until it arrived and there it was. I bought it in a sale so no point returning because the retrun post was more than it cost. Yet I have used it more than any other pattern I own. Just shows you a basic pattern is often best I suppose.

This dress is some very stretchy lycra unknown fibre ribbed fabric off Ebay. I also own a green version f this fabric which I am making something from next I think.


Its exactly the same pattern as my fluoro pink dress but about an inch or 2.5cm longer since I thought the pink one is maybe a tad short. Also this is of course made from a different fabric. I love that dress so much though so that the obvious thing was to make a second one. Though I am thinking maybe I now need a racer back dress pattern. Just for a change.


I am planning a hoody to go with this but the hoody will be in stretch polyester crepe - my long hated but very warm fabric, but as most often, I intend to reverse this to make it handle-able for me. I think the hoody should transition well into autumn which is useful and will be very wearable with jeans etc. More on that later because I have yet to even cut that out or decide on a pattern.

I must admit to slight feelings of childishness when I wore this to Asda. 

But there you have to be who you truly are, else its no point in living is it?

I do love fluorescents! 

Bracken

Mermaid underwear -BRAugust - my first attemps at Bra making

This is certainly NOT the best thing I have ever made. This is though, my first attempt at underwear.These are made from McCalls M5665 which I bought years ago and it was already discontinued then so I have no idea if you can still buy this pattern.

I bought some very cheap mermaid scale fabric off ebay. I would not recommend this stuff. Its supposed to be polyester/lycra. Its very un-stretchy. I actually intended to make leggings but ended up making underwear instead and to be honest it does work and at least I know the pattern will fit me ( or at the least how to make it fit me!) but its not very successful at all. Having said that I have worn these for work which was a risk and I was not uncomfortable despite the imperfections.

The rest is fold over elastic trimming the bra and the knickers have stretch lace edging.



I actually made the striped bra a few years back. This striped version is much better because its more stretchy but still not very good. That really is down to me though because I had just started sewing and was no way good enough to cope with bra making. I abandoned the idea of making underwear after that attempt which was back in 2013 before I had even really started sewing and long before the blog.

In both versions of the bra there are no proper fasteners. The straps should have sliders but the back does not have any fastenings. That is how the pattern is made. The back is just one piece so its a pull over the head type of bra. In my case the pattern in both of these versions is wrong in that the back piece is huge. Its just too big for my body.






















I had to take out loads of fabric from CB ( a good 10cm or 4 inches) which means adding a seam which stops it being comfortable. Also I removed the excess fabric after sewing up hence its not finished that well really because the edges are previously all bound in fold over elastic.

Since both versions have the same problem the conclusion is its not me, its the pattern. I will know for next time because probably I will make another of these so thats something I will make sure I do right next time.

The mermaid bra will not last long because the fabric is too non-stretchy but in the other stripey bra the fabric has just about as much stretch as possible and has been around for a while now. 

Sadly I have non of this fabric left. It was all used on other projects. I made a skirt already from the scraps and leggings and a shrug so I got my moneys worth from my couple of metres of that stripey fabric. I just wish I had bought more of it when it was available because as you can see from my previous items it dyes well too! The bra is the original colour of this stuff.

For the knickers gusset liner I used a scrap left over from my tie dyed T shirt so not quite conventional gusset material but hey why not?

 

The knickers are comfortable. It would be good if they were more stretchy but I will definitely be using that pattern again.

Neither bra has a lining so these are very basic starter underwear but they have got me to feel its worth pursuing making bras and knickers despite these are not the best examples possible.

So my thoughts about this are that I should jump on the bra making band wagon and make more underwear. Maybe use up scraps to match my main garments. This would especially be good with for example my recently made pink dress because you can see my bra just slightly through the fabric so making a matching bra and knickers would be really good and I do have some offcuts left from this project to have a play with. I am though drawn to the free Madalynne bra patterns so I intend to make one of them next I think.

Until next week then.........

Bracken

Fluorescent Pink dress and T shirt

I came across this fluorescent pink fabric a few weeks back and its just sat there in my fabric stash and  I decided I really should get round to making something in this before the summer is over.

I love fluorescents but they can be hard to wear and it very much depends on my personal confidence levels as to whether I am currently able to handle them.

They do kind of work with hot summer weather though. It has already gone from very hot to rainy but its not yet too late for a summer dress. I feel I should use this fabric while its still new because its the kind of colour I may just decide in a years time that I hate and cannot handle and then it will remain my my fabric stash till who knows when, so I went for a simple fast to make vest dress and cropped raglan long sleeved top over it to make it wearable for both hot sunny and cold rainy days.

Its a stretch polyester crepe fabric. I actually said I would never buy any more of this crepe stuff but in this case the crepe is not obvious and quite subtle and has a much less obvious crepe texture than many of these fabrics, and to be perfectly honest I surprisingly decided the right side of this fabric is OK for this. Usually I use the reverse because I see this fabric as old-lady-ish. Maybe its the bright pink makes it acceptable? Who knows.

Anyway I cut this out one evening and sewed it Saturday morning and wore it Saturday afternoon. I went food shopping in it and have to say it turned heads in Aldi and that does not happen much these days. I am usually too boring in my dress to get noticed.

This is very bright though. A true fluorescent.

Seems all ages and all genders noticed this bright pink dress. But then it is "in yer face". I have some ancient DC trainers which include fluorescent pink and they went very well with this look.

Especially since it was a very rainy cold day so the high top shoes kept me warm. It was actually raining when we took the photos hence they are a bit uninteresting because I was pretty cold.

Honestly what you do for blogging!


I used my well used, and starting to fall appart and I need to trace a new version, dress pattern: McCalls M6612 but I left the sleevs off and shortened the skirt a bit, and I previously made a different view of this top which is Butterick B5679.

I left the collar off for the bright pink though because it seemed a bit OTT to have the cowl neck when its the middle of summer. I did toy with adding a hood but in the end went for the plain wide boat neck instead. I think its a good choice. I extended the sleeves a litter bit too much.

The original black top had slightly too short sleeves which annoys me every time I wear it so I added a few inches but now they are just slightly too long. They work OK rolled up for now and to be perfectly honest standing there in the rain with my sleeves over my hands was much better than being cold.

Its all overlocked in white because I had no fluoro pink thread and then twin needle stitched in black because I thought it looked more punk than white (and it was already threaded in the machine making it easier and faster to make). It looks quite nice I think with the contrast stitching.

So not the hardest outfit to make, or the most inventive outfit, but I have to say despite the crepe polyester fabric I love this new look and intend to wear this loads for the rest of this summer.

See you next week

Bracken

One two three black tops

I realised back in may when we all took are in the #MMM2019 challenge that one thing my wardrobe really, really needs is basic black tops so here are three to start me off. These are all versions of McCalls M6612.

This one has the top as made from the pattern with no alterations:

It is plain black cotton lycra ribbed fabric.

 

This one is the same pattern but I raised the front neckline and lowered the back neck since I really want a ballet style low back top. There as no rules for this and no guidelines. I just cut the back out on the fold as usual and left the piece folded and cut the neck lower. had no idea how low but its impossible to wear a normal bra with this without it showing so next time I may have to consider that if I make another one of these. other than that it fills a need I had for a low back top for summer autumn very well. I reversed the ribbed fabric to make this top so the rib is the inside of the fabric I used for the normal top above.


That gives me what looks like two different fabrics. You can tell if you look at the inside of this top. So I made one form each side of the fabric. I had to sew them up in daylight rather than electric light which delayed my finishing these because I really could not tell which side of the fabric was which at night.

You can probably tell this is the top I like the best! Its not really work worthy though.

The my third top is a normal M6612 back and I raised the front neck because this pattern actually has a very low front ( as seen in the first top) and sometimes I really wish it was higher. This is a thicker less stretchy ribbing.




I made this orange dress from this fabric last summer and it keeps it shape well so will be good for an every day work top. I probably won't wear this one until the weather cools down a bit.

So not the most interesting sewing this week, but should make a huge difference to my getting ready for work in the mornings because it will be much easier with these three basic tops and save me time trying to work out what goes with what.

See you next week

Bracken