Shall we get us thingies?

A weird title yes, but highly relevant to today’s make. Well at least to me anyway.

The Fennel Fanny Pack.


Or in my mind, French holidays in the late 80’s and 90’s with my cousins which are now etched into my memory as synonymous with THE BUM BAG.


Who would have thought a bum bag would bring up so much emotion! Armed with these wonder bags strapped to our fronts, feeling like the cast of Fresh Prince, off we’d wander into foreign towns, solving mysteries like the Hardy Boys and being chased on bikes by dogs. Warm air on our backs, cicada beetles humming and laughing ‘til we dropped down. To cool off, our Fab Four would attempt to order refreshing Soleros in our best school kid French - before delving into that bum bag for those holiday centimes... a few confused exchanges between les enfants anglaises and the moustachioed shop keeper led to ‘shall we get us thingies?’ in broad Yorkshire dialect, and as if by magic - the ice cream was ours. Joy.

All that from a bit of fabric and zip.

 
 
These are fun to make, relatively straight forward (except trying to wrangle rectangles into corners) and best of all - the joyful bit of Snoopy lining inside! The only change I made to the construction was to make the main bag and lining bag separately and drop the lining inside, hand stitching it to the zip closure. This meant no need for binding all the internal seams!



Vive la bum bag. I’m happy it’s back.

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Lounge Lizard

Talk about getting the most out of your fabric. A couple of meters of reptile scales turned into 4 separate items in what I am now calling my 'lounge lizard' outfit.



This beautiful fabric is cotton jersey from Olumis. I'm not sure if the blue is still available however they do now have 'rainbow dragon scales'!

First up I went for some Fehr Trade Yoga Bottoms from Melissa's 'Sew Your Own Activewear' book.  I had already done the work fitting these in previous projects so now have final pattern pieces drawn up and ready to whip up when needed. I also added 1.5" elastic into these aswell so they stay up really well and don't bag out/ride down as some cotton jersey leggings can do.

After making these I had some big scrap pieces left over and so onwards to the P4P Fierce Undies.

This underwear pattern comes in about a million variations - high rise, mid rise, low rise; cheeky, shorties, midi, full coverage, thong and any combination of those! I cut to the size chart and low and behold they were fine.


The Fierce Bra is a wonderful little top. It's really supportive and the cross-back bands are really stylish. It's a 'lounge bra' however it is definitely sports appropriate and I have seen some people have made this into a bikini in swim fabric. There is even the option to double line it and add bra cups.

If I was going to make any changes I would just add and inch to the length of the top as it does ride up a bit over the course of the day.

I feel like it's a good mix and match of items as I have either undies or instant yoga gear!



Finally I made the Lane Raglan by Hey June Handmade. A great pattern with multiple possibilities again. I had some super cosy black sweatshirt fabric from Anglian Fashion Fabrics and used this for the hoodie version of the pattern. 

Initially this was going to be a very plain and practical black hoodie. Then I hit the scrap bin and picked out a few usable pieces to jazz it up a bit.


I covered the inseam of the hood in a strip of the lizard fabric so you just get a little flash of colour when the hood is down. There's also some multi-blue variegated thread over locking in there!

There was a couple of strips of lizard left so I folded these in half length ways and sandwiched them between the shoulder seams to get a piping effect.


The length of this hoodie is brilliant. It skims over the bum and gives good coverage for leggings. The extra length also makes it really warm and toasty for cold days.The hoodie string is some brilliant twisty cord that just matches the colour combo perfectly, and this is inserted through some brass Prym eyelets in the thick hem of the hoodie.



The lounge lizard - made for lazy weekends basking...

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