Laundry Day T and leather handbag

Despite having a flu injection   I managed to fall victim to the flu.  There is a particularly nasty strain doing the rounds that wasn't covered by the vaccine.  This had me down and out for 10 days.  I basically used all this time searching on the internet for more sewing patterns.

Once I started feeling capable of doing something I wanted some quick fixes.  So using up fabric stash and remnants I downloaded Love Notions free Laundry Day T shirt.  If you join their Facebook group you get a code to download the design for free.

This pattern is so versatile. It has various sleeve lengths - sleeveless tank, short sleeves, above elbow, long.  Necklines are choice of round, V or cowl and length can be regular T, tunic or even dress.

The first one used up some fabric from my stash.  I thought this was a t-shirt fabric but when I washed it realised it is a very fine wool.  I embroidered some strawberries to brighten up the grey a bit.  The second one I decided to convert to a cold shoulder T.  This fabric was a remnant left over from a previous make.  I basically just chopped the top 1 1/2" off the top of the sleeve pattern and rounded it out by trimming another 1/2" at the centre sleeve.  To finish I just turned the edges under and top-stitched.

These were both super quick makes, just 2 - 2 1/2 hours.

I'd bought some leather coats at the Salvation Army stores and a friend bought me another leather coat from another Salvation Army as she knew I wanted the leather to make bags.  So this is my first leather bag.  The design is from Kreative Kiwi.  I love how this has turned out.  The leather was easier to work with than I thought and is so soft.  It is fully lined with pockets on the inside.  The only change I made was to add a magnetic snap closure.

Block and sloper

I've spent the last 10 days drafting a block and making a sloper. Here is the final sloper.  This is the bodice sloper joined to the skirt sloper, for a dress.

 I'm hoping to use this to

1. check the fit of commercial patterns
2. Draft my own patterns

I bought a king size duvet cover from a thrift store for just $5 so I had plenty of fabric to make lots and lots of slopers until I got my fit correct.  Manipulating the darts to be pointing to the correct place was the hardest.  When I've used commercial patterns I've just accepted where they put the darts, but I thought it was about time I learned how to do these correctly.

The longest to do was the bodice sloper.  From there I did a sleeve sloper.  Next I drafted the skirt sloper which was the easiest, then copies the top of the sleeve sloper to the bodice sloper to create a  torso sloper.

Once I had created the bodice sloper I looked at videos on how to pivot darts so they are in different places for different looks and how to create princess seams, and had a play at doing these.   It doesn't seem too difficult.

I've also ordered a pattern making book that was recommended on Pattern Review and I'm waiting for that to arrive.

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