2013 theatre trips

When I moved to the centre of London last Christmas I made a little vow to myself that I should make the most of my location and get out to see more events and theatre shows.

I managed quite a number of theatre visits in 2013:

Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty at Sadler's Wells in January. I went to see this with some friends form work and I really enjoyed the dark, beautiful, funny, intriguing and magical show. A great start to the year!

 Paper Cinema's Odyssey in Februaryat the Battersea Arts Centre was amazing! I have never seen anything like it before - its a live animation with musicians creating the soundtrack. I would highly reccomend seeing this if you ever get the chance!

Shakespeake's 'As You Like It' at the Globe was a fun night with the girls. It was rather chilly May evening so the hired blanket and cushion really came into their own. Ity turned out that the entire perfomance was in Georigan - which made for interesting intreptations of the plot! It was certainly an experience.




In July a group of us went to support the lead actor (a friend of a friend) in a show at the Bridewell Theatre which was intense and pretty mad!

In September I treated the girls to tickets for Private Lives at the Gielgud Theatre in the West End. Anna Chancellor and Toby Stephens played the leading roles and it was genuinely much funnier than I expected. A brilliant play!













The final theatre visit of 2013 was to see Stomp at the Ambassadors Theatre in late November with my best friends from Leeds. This is a production that I've wanted to see for a long time and it didn't disappoint; bold, exciting and fun!

Cute Christmas Stockings

I made a few mini Christmas stockings for either gifts or decorations. I have to confess that these started a little gifts for friends but I couldn't part with them ; (

The main body is made from contrasting felt, machine stitched then hand-stitched with blanket stittch. The snowflake and holly decoration are felt with a variety of beads and buttons for added texture and interest.

The little reindeer motifs are from Paperchase (I bought them last year but they still do them - find them here) and I simply added these with a hidden stitch or two to finish them off. The loop is made with a length of felt secured with a large button.

I am looking forward to finding some small sewing related gifts from Santa inside these babies on the 25th December!

Have you made anything festive for Christmas this year?

Music and DIY

I have had a jam-packed month or two with lots of things happening at home, work and getting the chance to squeeze lots other things in too - just not ANY sewing stuff!

Let's start with the Music

I went to see the US band called Warpaint at the O2 Brixton Academy on 30th November. They were great; the only downside was my friend Mel needed to get the 11.05pm train out of London so we left the gig at 10.30pm only to find the underground had ground to a halt due to an incident... Soooo we grabbed a cab but there was a diversion on the way to Kings Cross. Mel missed her train. We could have stayed for the whole set after all!! Annoying...

Warpaint image from standard.co.uk

Check out their music here: http://warpaintwarpaint.com/

The second musical foray was after a crazy few days at work during an Ofsted inspection. Chance tickets for The Killers was on the cards and I jumped at the chance! The Hammersmith Oppollo was an excellent venue - a great atmosphere and amazing shomanship from Mr. Brandon Flowers...

The mad crazy DIY

Its a case of a classic do-it-yourself attitude with house rennovation... Let's just knock this built in wardrobe out and see how the room looks.... and then you can't get away from teh fact you now have a huge gap in the wooden floor. 

Oh, and yes the ceiling dips slightly in the middle - well we had better get that down to re-board and plaster. Two weeks of dust, rubble, swearing and bags and bags of plaster later and we have a nice freshly plastered room. My boyfriends dad and I did the manual labour a friend of the family did the plastering. Looking forward to painiting it over the Christmas holidays.

Pin-tuck Sorbetto

This is my third Colette Sorbetto top (first here and second here) and on this ocassion I decided to slightly deviate from the simple pleat at the front and add pin-tucks to the centre. I franken-patterned the Colette Sorbetto with the pin-tuck section of Tilly's Mathilde blouse.

I added a section of pin-tucking from Tilly's Mathilde blouse onto the centre fold of the Sorbetto

I wanted to make the top in a white cotton polka dot so I could wear it for work with a range of skirts and trousers. Here are the results.

Vintage Fair in Hammersmith

I met my friend Nat at Hammersmith Town Hall at 10am for the P&A Vintage Fair (They are held in London every month in a different venue).

Getting there early(ish for a Sunday) paid off - it was quite quiet!

Nat was looking for 1940's - 1950's stuff and I was on the hunt for 1960's sewing patterns (and any cool stuff really).

We both got lucky - Nat got a gorgeous 1950's hand-made Mexican circle skirt. It is yellow with hand-painted black texture and a hand-painted black and bronze border!
I found a stall with loads of old sewing patterns. After a good systematic rummage through them all I settled for these three babies. And they were only £4 each too!

Vogue 6510, Simplicity 6392 and Butterick 3814

Which one would you like to make?

Which one do you think I should sew first?

Goldhawk Road fabric finds

Despite living in London for nearly three years, yesterday was the first time I have visited the material-mecca that is Goldhawk Road and Shepherd's Bush Market.

The Material-Mecca Goldhawk Road!

An early morning start with my friend Kris was the perfect way to enjoy the sunshine as we wandered down the market and scouted the best stalls for notions, threads and buttons. Starting at one side of the road we proceeded to experience a crazy world of fabric for every occasion; as you can see from the photos it was pretty quiet and we had the time to browse at our own leisure.

I tried to be restrained and gave explicit instructions to my friend to curb my enthusiasm for mad retro prints, wild colour-ways and unsuitable fabric weights. I came prepared with patterns for my two makes that are next in line (Grainline Archer and Colette Laurel) so I knew what amount and type of materials I *needed* (I mean wanted....).

Ooops a bit too sunny in Shepherd's Bush!

The first hit of the day was from Fabric House Ltd where I discovered not one but two gorgeous prints for £4.50 a metre. I asked for a metre and a half of each print but due to some printing faults near the selvedge he gave me TWO and a half metres of each for the price of a metre and a half!! The first is an abstract print that reminds me of blurred street and car lights on a dark rainy November evening.

Abstract print £4.50 p/m Fabric House

The second is (unusually for me) a dark floral print that is a semi see-through chiffon-style weight. This reminded me of the A/W2103 Givenchy collection I had seen in Marie Claire the day before!

Dark Floral £4.50 p/m Fabric House Ltd

Givenchy A/W 2013

I thought the Colette Laurel would look awesome in the abstract print and make a second Grainline Scout Woven Tee with the floral fabric with silky black bias-binding.  

What do you think - Will these prints work with the selected garment patterns?

The final fabric of the day was a cotton black and white gingham for my Grainline Archer button-up shirt (a homage / copy-cat of Andrea's at Four Square Walls) which I bought for £2 a metre from Orya Textiles.

Black and White Gingham £2 p/m Orya Textiles

I am excited to get stuck into these makes but I know I have loads of work deadlines to hit over the next few weeks. I will need to heed Lauren from Lladybird's advice and find the time to squeeze little sewing tasks into my working week.

Black spotty Scout Woven Tee

This is the first Grainline garment I have made (the Archer button-up shirt is next in line) and the construction was made really easy with simple instructions and a visual guide via Jen's blog at Grainline.

I have seen loads of cool versions of the Scout Woven Tee on various blog pages and my favourite versions have to be:

1. Dark grey spot version at Stitch and Witter
2. Black and white geometric print version at When all you need is..
3. Colourful geometric print version at Sown Brooklyn

Back to the Tee. I cut it out yesterday to save me the boring job of assembling the PDF paper pattern and cutting out the fabric so I could go full-belt on sewing duties today. It took me about two and a half hours to construct the Tee because I got a bit confused with the neckline and had to refer to some online tutorials to guide me through. I don't think I did it correctly but it looks OK in the end.
I added my own bias binding to the sleeves to match the neckline.

The size of the bias binding doesn't quite match at the neck
and sleeves so I should call it a 'wearable muslim', right?!

Alterations I made straight on the paper pattern were:

1. I cut the smallest size at the shoulders, graded to the next size up for the bust area and the next size up again for the hips (as an experiment) It seemed to work. I have quite narrow shoulders and it fits beautifully around the neckline and shoulders.
2. I also created the classic Hi-Lo hemline. Next time I will need to lengthen the body to sit a bit lower. At the moment it hangs just a bit too high for my liking.

The hemline isn't wonky a big gust of wind blew it as I was taking the shot.

Although I have seen many images of the Scout Tee I suppose I didn't realise how loose fitting it would be and the back of the Tee has a lot of loose fabric that doesn't hang as nicely as I would like. Maybe it will drape better after a wash... who knows?!

I have tried wearing it with a belt and it looks quite nice, but I think the whole point of this Tee is that its supposed to be a loose fitting easy to wear top. Next time I may try to bring it in at the side seams towards the bottom of the Tee (maybe I didn't need to grade to the larger size for the hips considering the fit is so wide anyway?).

Any suggestions about how to adjust the fit so its not soooo loose fitting at the back?