Two black high low tops - copying RTW

This story begins back in 2013 when I went back to UNI to do my PhD. I had not been a student for years and felt really out of place in my officey work clothes, so what to do? 

Go shopping and buy some new stuff!

Well I as usual bought mostly black, but amongst the new clothes was a very nice high low dress. At that time the term "high-low" and the concept of it was relatively new. Although this style had been around at least since the 1970s, but that was before my time, and for me also this was new, and I loved it. So anyway, I bought this (then) very nice new dress.  

So these tops are a copy of a RTW dress I bought back in 2013 ( for £20) and that is now in holes. The original dress ended up used as a winter nighty more than a dress, but it has been much loved. And is now really rather worn out as you can see from these photos.

Its got a kind of burn out cross in the original fabric. 

This is the old dress:

 

And this is one of the new ones:

I could not find any cross or skull fabric for these so went just with plain very thin black jersey. The fabric is £1.00 /m and both pieces have a slight slubbed look. I can make more of these or maybe just plain Ts from the rest of this fabric, because there is still about 3m left ( in 2 bits) they are actually slightly different fabrics but thats fine. Both are from Pound Fabrics (UK) and in both cases there was a minimum order of 3m but at £1 a meter who cares. 

 

Its easy to sew though has puckered slightly down the back seams but that it irons flat and I think should wear in eventually once I wear them. And of course I will probably also wear these in bed so who cares.

I could have gone with a CB fold and that would have been neater and less to sew up, but you get much more out of the fabric garment wise with the CB seam and the original had a CB seam so why not?

Well, maybe cos it would hang better without a CB seam?

I actually hurt my self a few weeks ago - well I dislocated and broke a toe - so sewing has been difficult hence I made virtually nothing over the last few weeks and thats why my blogging has been so sparse lately. Really I am amazed how much a small digit can get in the way of normal life. I would not have believed the smallest toe on one foot being broken would mean I find it too painful to sew. Its my machine pedal foot though and it was shear agony so I had to just give up for a while. I find it very difficult to sew using the other foot.

Anyway it still hurts but I can do things again now so I made these two tops. They have been on my to do list for a year or so but I was looking for a pattern. In the end I ad libbed. There is no actual pattern. I simply folded my RTW top and cut round the relevant parts. The sleeves were the most difficult and I had to cut quite a bit off the sleeve head to make them fit but having sorted one I just cut the other 3 to match ( using the bit I cut off as a guide for the other sleeves) and then sewed up both garments and here they are:

I am really very pleased with these dresses. I only actually hemmed the one and it did need pressing to look right.

This one has no hems ( yet - I have not yet decided whether to hem or just leave as it is). Its just overlocked on the edges.

The other is currently just overlocked but I may yet add a hem. I am undecided. I really like plain overlocking, but it would probably last longer with an actual hem.  Both have T shirt necks with a small strip to finish them. I did the neck different widths on purpose because I am not sure which I will prefer. Depending on how they feel when worn will probably dictate future neck widths on other tops. I doubt I will bother to alter these though.

 The two new tops also have much longer sleeves so I can pull them over my hands when I want to. I tend to get arthritus in my hands so sleep recently with them covered and have really taken to wrapping up my hands in tubes such as old socks so its probably time to just make some very long sleeves. I do own mitts but I find I wake with the thumb over the hand anyway because that is warmer and the difference in how my hands work in the morning if I sleep with them covered is immense so this is for now the way to go I think.

 

Have a great week and thanks for popping by,

Bracken

Camo hoody Tshirt dress hack

  

I feel I am going back towards a Fae theme with this green camo dress. That's not at all a bad thing for me. I need a little magik right now. Well who doesn't?

I don't really kwo why it feels so faerie but it does. There is no classic pointy hood or uneven hem its just a basic hoody dress but I do just feel fae when I wear this. That Fae feeling might be down to the waning year. And its camo so shades of green and khaki!

This dress feels right for Autumn - to me anyway. I think the fabric is a viscose ramie mix from what I remember but I bought it a year or so ago. Its very drapey and soft and almost silky but not too much that its fragile so it should last a while. Its a nice soft warm dress to wear until the real cold comes in. And I feel happy in it!

The dress body is the Peppermint dress which used to be free - I added a hood to my original version but the pattern comes without one. That version was also quite a bit longer. I shortened this version by loads to get a mini. Possibly a bit too much but I have not yet decided for sure. I used to wear very short skirts but it really does not feel right now I am older. It should of course make no difference and yes I still own a surprisingly large number of short skirts but I feel I cannot get away with them as short as I used to. This shortie length seems ok so far and will work really well with leggings later.

In fact I have a pile of short ( very short) denim and 90s combat styles I still own which I love and I am currently experimenting with adding a lower frill / strip of fabric to lengthen them. Some I can just let the hem down and have it as a raw edge ( demin skirts that is) and it will look good and be about 6cm longer. I still want them mini but maybe a few cm longer. Then I can keep them and still wear them and not ( hopefully) look like "mutton dressed as lamb" which is an expression I have not actually heard in a long time but was used by my grandmother to describe older women wearing teen clothing. I am not actually that bad as yet and gave away a few clothes this year I decided I was pushing it wearing ten years ago. Now really feels like a no-no. But they went to people who wanted them and will wear them and hopefully love them as much as I did. 

Sadly, despite I wish it was different, I really cannot get away with some of what I wore 20 or 30 years ago. Maybe I have suddenly started to feel my age? But some things; yes, I still can, so I am. And if adding a strip of fabric to the hem of my ancient studded denim mini means I get another few years of wear out of something I very much love, then that's worth the effort. The main problem with the denims is finding suitable fabric. New denim really would not look right. I have some in the stash but I just think I will be wasting my time so using that is a last resort. I must be able to come accross so used worn in denim in the right colours. A few years ago I added some sequined sparkly fabric to one and have spent the last week unpicking that. It really does not work for me. I need a second hand denim dress or skirt or very wide trousers in both blue and black denim so now I am looking out for some. It does not need to be the same exact shade and a different one will add to the worn look but I really do not want new denim either. Maybe a second hand long skirt I can hack to sort out my several minis I want to keep. I will keep you posted on my efforts here because it deserves its own post I think. Unfortunately, I recycled several pairs of jeans a few weeks ago, before this idea came to me. They would not be so good as a contiuous strip and the shading would probably not quite work,  but I am sure they would have workedsomehow even if cut the opposite way. Never mind. Life is so easy with hindsight. Not so easy in the real world.

Also I digress from this weeks topic. This camo dress:

Above: the mitts are turned back so doubled cuffs.

The sleeves are the Remy Raglan gathered sleeve add on from Sew House Severn. Being a raglan I decided to see if they would work with the raglan Peppermint pattern and yes they do. So that gives me a gathered wrist sleeve for a change. I actually was not keen on the Remy itself (only ever made one of them) but the sleeve is nice on the Peppermint dress. It also fits the raglan seam amazingly well so no adjustment needed to do this at all!

The hood is from Burda Style hoody 103, 01/2017 which I seem to add to just about everything when I want a hood. The hood does overlap at CF a bit more on this dress than on the original sweatshirt but it does work and is very warm in the cold winter going by my other dresses made using the Peppermint with this hood.

The mitts are a longer version of the Feyr Trade mitts from the Make Your Own Activewear book by Melissa Feyr. I just made the cuff part longer to add length to my gathered sleeve. I may next time make the sleeve itself longer but I do like this solution. I had already cut the sleeves when I realised the problem that the sleeves were slightly too short for my arms, and I think a normal cuff would not work for me either. I did not think I had particularly long arms but there you are. This solution works with this dress anyway. 

So this is part of my Autumn look for 2024 and yes it also feels like a very Fae dress which I am liking. Fae was my theme for last year ( well several times over the years!) but I would be happy for it to be a theme in 2025 too. I am thinking far ahead here of course. Even winter 2024 is quite a way off right now. It's not officially the start of Autumn for a couple of weeks. But you can feel the chill today and the last week or so.

I made the mitts a bit wider than previously because I found many of my older tops with mitts a bit tight round the hands. Thats a mistake. Or at least they needed less widening than I gave them! I will make the next pair slightly narrower but wider than the pattern pieces. That should sort it.

So really I suppose you could say this dress is a wearable muslin. Its an experiment and thats something I enjoy.

The super soft fabric also means I got tunnelling round the hem with the twin needle stitching but despite I sewed it twice I just could not get it better so I will live with a slightly dodgy hem. Pressing it will probably help 😀

I know I should really iron more but I hate it so much.

I am going to make another of these anyway. But possibly I will try a different raglan sleeve and see how interchangeable these are because if they all work, I suddenly have many, many more possible patterns from what is already owned or traced so I just have to try these out. I am thinking of the smaller puffed top sleeve from this top:

Its also a raglan sleeve but here its not the best fabric to see this design but its just a puffed sleeve at the top and then a long cuff and very easy to wear and I wonder if it will work on these kind of dresses?

I have yet to find out that pattern from the loft (where I store my traced patterns), but it's now high on my list of what to have a play with next. Thats after I finish the few projects I currently have on the go. I have changed my sewing regime recently due to the fact I often have a small child running round and its just not safe having things like scissors and pins lying around for days so instead of a large cut-out pile ready to sew up, I only have one or two ongoing items that can easily be stashed away. Its not ideal from a sewing perspective, but this is not an ideal world. Its real life. 

Thanks for visiting my blog. I have not recently had much time for visiting blogs but now the summer is virtually over I should get to catch up on a few visits around the blogosphere and I look forward to seeing what I have been missing out on the last 6 or so weeks.

Have a great week and thanks for popping over,

Bracken

Bunny jumper with bobble tail for age 2-3 years.

 

I have had this pattern for many years. I do not know where it came from but it was from the internet so apologies if this post does not credit the right person or company. If I come across the pattern again I will add a link here but it may be it is no longer online.

Its just so cute I really wanted to knit this. I did not want it in pink though which the original is knitted in  ( its for a boy) and I came across the snuggly bunny yarn reduced because its discontinued at Wool Warehouse so I ended up knitting in what is sold as green yarn though its more turquoise really.  The white yarn is actually a different brand (RICO) but works just as well. I could not get the correct yarn in white. 

Incidentally I originally bought an extra ball to what the pattern says is needed in the green yarn but still ran out. My tension is correct. I ended up needing an extra ball of the green despite adding stripes to the sleeves. Because I bought extra yarn to finish this jumper ( I was so happy they still had some!) I now also have spare left over, but I might just knit a hat to go with this from the spare yarn.

It was surprisingly difficult to knit this yarn because its so fluffy you cannot see the stitches so I ended up only knitting it in daylight. Thats a pain because I mainly knit in the evenings. Luckily its been summer so we have longer days. I knew I needed to finish it for September because of the age of its recipient and the fact children grow so fast. That was a challenge. Or at least the knitting part was ok but the sewing together of loads of pieces has taken far longer than I was hoping. In all there are 9 pieces to this - 4 ear parts, one hood (which I very much like the directions for the shaping I have to say! Its a really nice shape and is better than other hoods I have knitted. More shaped!), it also has two sleeves and the front and back. 

I decided due to lack of yarn to add white stripes to the sleeves and I actually think they look really good. This top reminds me of the teen goth/ emo tops you see with ears and stripey sleeves. Of course its not black but the basic concept of it is there.

You can just about see the pompom tail here. I made the old fashioned way and had to make a second one because the pattern said 5cm pompom. That came out huge. Maybe pompom makers measure the pompom differently? I went with diameter of cardboard circle. I ended up with 2.5cm diameter.

 

 

 

Anyway, I now wait in anticipation to see this on the small person I made it for.

Thanks for visiting my blog, have a great week,

Bracken