Evie La Luve Rosie Bra - Workshop with The Fabric Wrangler!


My partner in crime for Norwich Sewcials, the very talented Pippa (aka The Fabric Wrangler), has recently started her own sewing school and kicking it off was a workshop learning how to make a bralette!

As it happens a bralette was another tick off my Make Nine 2017 list so that felt rather satisfying to have tried something completely new.

The pattern in question was the beautiful Rosie Bra by Evie La Luve. It is a lined soft bra (non-wired) with adjustable straps and bra clasp fastening at the back - a gorgeous bit of lounge wear!


Pippa spent the day walking us through this pattern step by step which was a massive help - turns out its not easy! Elastic and a temperamental sewing machine made for some pretty tricky stitching.

The sizing of this pattern is very comprehensive. The measurements we took were underbust and bust so to get a good picture of which size would best suit us. The stretch nature of this makes this bra a very nice fit as there is not actualy too much shaping to worry about. The advantage of a small bust ;) I ended up cutting a Small.

After tracing and cutting out pattern pieces we were treated to a table full of lovely lace and elastics to choose from! These came from Evie La Luve and also Elise Patterns who both sell supplies. I went for a kit made of coral lace and dark grey knit. The straps were ribbed blush pink with rose gold findings....ooooooo........

The scalloped edge of the stretch lace is used for the top of the bra, and cleverly flipped to the opposite side of the lace to pattern match.


The initial construction took a litle time however this was because we were all going very slowly and carefully - perhaps a little nervous of cutting into these new beauties! It seemed very strange working with such delicate and small pieces compared to dressmaking!


Now I'm going to level with you - although the pictures look fairly decent - this bra is riddled with errors, mistakes and wonky stitching!! As you can see there is a centre front seam, however I sewed the underarm elastic on the wrong way round and so the raw seams were at the front - I tried to hide this with an extra strip of fabric and a bow!



My machine HATED the elastic and skipped stitches, broke thread and generally threw a hissy fit every 2 minutes. I actually ended up hand stitching the bra straps together as after atempt number 5 of the machine chewing them up it was time to end that trauma...


All in all though a good day was had and a completed bra finally materialised! It fits and it is wearable which is good to know - and as a first atempt into lingerie making it certainly was a great learning curve. This pattern is an excellent stash busted for any scraps of knit you may have around, especially as there are matching knickers/thong to choose from aswell. I think I will try another at some point - after the memory of shredded thread and elastic has faded...



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Busy Bees at Embroidery Night

Norwich Sewcials sewing meet-up took place last week and we were treated to an embroidery demo by one of our very talented ladies, Linda, a long standing embroidery aficionado and all round thread addict it seemed!  

For those of us who had never given this a go, but had been tempted in by all those lovely embellished jeans that are around at the moment, this was the perfect chance to learn some of the basics.

What a wonderful crew!
We covered stem stitch (green stem), lazy daisy (lilac) and a french knot (yellow), as well as satin stitch (green leaves) and a 'rose' technique (top left) in order form little flowers! Here is my rather lame attempt... It's a daisy with petals munched by a caterpillar. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.


It was a very enjoyable evening and so nice to give something new a try...although I have discovered a massive impatience with trying to tread all those strands. Never the less we persevered!


For a while I had been a bit obcessed with sewing a bee...and I mean I was talking about this 6 months ago. I have no idea why I didn't just try it - it's like I was trying to put man on the moon or something rather than sew a bit of cotton on to another bit of cotton. Therefore complete lack of skill and pure brazen ignorance of the techniques prevailed... to produce this!

I think he's quite cute. I used a rayon thread which apparently was a massive faux pas - as you can see it went very fuzzy, slipped all over the place and doesn't look particularly neat on the other side. None the less its this side we're looking at so I think that's fine. To make matters slightly worse - and all you embroiderers out there are going to hit your head on a desk - I covered the entire thing in Fray Check after as I didn't trust by stitches not to fall right out!

I haven't worn this yet so I must see if it stands up to a bit of wear and tear and a wash! I don't know if its cute or I look like I work at a children's creche. Will try and style it out!

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True Bias - Lodo Dress

Following with the theme of sewalongs - Kelli from True Bias recently started a mini-sewalong to her latest release, the Lodo Dress.
 

FYI - the glowing whiteness above is a British person coming out of winter after not seeing the sun for some time. Do not be alarmed. I am also misleadingly wearing sunglasses - it is neither hot nor sunny (yet we keep the faith). However, sunglasses means not wading through 3000 pictures for one where my eyes are not shut! I digress...

As soon as I saw this pattern hit social media it was a winner in my eyes! That is my idea of a perfect dress - clean, simple, comfortable but oooohhh such beautiful little details to make it remarkable. (Those woven facings!)


Within minutes I had the PDF downloaded and taped up - which FYI took all of 5 minutes as the pieces are already printed to fit each other ie no cutting involved!

The dress has a couple of options - a very classy looking midi which looks beautiful in black and also a shorter version without back walking slits. As much as I love the midi version and will no doubt make it - I'm on a stash busting mission and only had enough fabric for a shorter version! As fate would have it, I found a leftover piece of striped ponte (bought from Minerva Crafts) from my Sointu project which was the exact size of the pattern! (Seriously, when does that ever happen)

I made the dress in little 15 minute bursts over the course of a few days but you could whip this bad boy up in a couple of hours start to finish I reckon.

The dress does have a back seam however I omitted this in the interests of not making stripe-matching life more difficult than it needed to be.



Using the chart I cut a size 8 bust, 10 at the waist and 14 at the hip and suprisingly it worked without looking crazy curvy as sometimes happens. I think for next time I would go to a 10 at the bust just to give a little more comfort room and avoid slight pull lines at the arms which occurred.



Let's move on to THE best feature of this stretch dress - the non-stretch facings!! The arms and neckline are stable and don't need any give so Kelli as designed this lovely feature of a woven bindings that sit perfectly against the dress. What I adore about this is that you have a secret little design on the inside - a personal touch which anyone else will rarely see but you know is there :)

Again on a stash busting mission - I used some ladybird print cotton to make the facings (and turned the rest into bias binding). Pretty insides!!


Needless to say this pattern has also reached my top favourites list - now if only there was enough fabric for one in every colour.....


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