Posted on March 10, 2014 by thecuriouskiwi

You may have noticed that Kat and I have been doing a bit of regular Twinsie sewing. It’s a lot of fun sewing the same pattern and seeing how we each put our own twist on it.

We get the feeling you guys like seeing our Twinsie shoots too 😉

We have a list of patterns we both own and have been working through the ones we like but the list is so loooooong we need some help, and that’s where you guys come in!

Can you help us decide what our next Twinsie make should be?

We’ve narrowed it down to three options:

Papercut’s Midsummers’ Night Dream

Cake’s Cabarita Knit Top

and Colette’s Rooibos

So, do you feel like bossing us around? What do you want to see next?

Oh pants!

Posted on February 28, 2014 by thecuriouskiwi

February’s challenge for The Monthly Stitch was Smarty Pants.

Pants shopping for me is pure torture.

Here is an old post where I vent after one particularly distressing pants shopping expedition, if you are interested.

In my filing cabinet I have a few pant/trouser patterns but I love a good bootleg/flared pant – I don’t care what the “fashion” people say, bootleg/flare is always “in” in my books! Since Kat and I both have the Sewaholic Thurlow pattern we decided to make those up together for another Twinsies shoot.

Oh, yeah! We made Twinsies Pants!

We’ve both been super busy so we took these photos during lunchtime at Frank Kitts Park where we found one of Wellington’s many awesome sculptures. This one is Fruits of the Garden by Paul Dibble.

Pants are kind of hard to photograph…but it’s easier with a friend…and fun backdrop 🙂

Fun waistband lining? Check!

Back pockets? Check!

This was my first Sewaholic pattern from the envelope. Previously I have printed off PDFs for pattern testing only so I was really surprised at how thin the tissue paper was, probably the thinnest I have ever encountered. I am on Team: Trace All The patterns and it wasn’t the easiest to work with.

Since I had high hopes for this pattern I copied on to thicker tracing film for durability – I am hoping I can tweak this to become my “go to” solution to my pants shopping woes.

I selected some poly/viscose/spandex suiting out of my stash, bought with trousers in mind way back in March 2010. The pattern envelope stated 2.30m would be required for my width of fabric but I only had 1.60m, oops!

I am always up for a good pattern layout challenge so with Harriet’s help I did a test layout:

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Harri’s face says it all, “2.30 meters? ‘sif! It totally fits!”

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She loves ~~hindering~~ helping!

I cut all my the lining pieces from a cute quilting cotton that I picked up from one of my last trips to AT, it has teeny tiny fruits on it!

I really like the final result, they fit quite well (although a little tight at the moment since I’ve been slack in my gym attendance 😉 ) and give me the professional look I was after. I can see myself making up a few more pairs and maybe even the shorts version.

The back waist band is in two pieces which lets you stitch a snugger fit, no gaping, yeah! I also like the generous back extension and the sewing order makes it easy to adjust the whole fit as you sew.

I do feel the rise is a little low so next pair I will try to correct this.

The instructions are good, I haven’t made pants in ages and I managed fine with them however I do wish the right and wrong sides of the lining pieces had been marked on the diagrams. This slowed me down a little because I wanted to make sure the printed side of my cotton ended up inside the pockets.

Imagine if I’d gotten it wrong? I wouldn’t be able to show others the awesome hiddeness of my pockets! But I worked it out eventually and marked my instructions for next time.

Welt pockets, so sexy!

The back welt pockets instructions and fly construction were really clear but I found some of the waistband diagrams a bit misleading, more notes added for next time 🙂

I chose not to “stitch in the ditch” to secure the inside of my waistband and hand stitched it down instead. I find that machine stitching can often look messy in this instance. It didn’t take me very long and between this and the hemming my hand stitching is really improving.

Make sure you check out Kat’s awesome denim Cat’s Meow Thurlows over on her blog too 🙂

THE DEETS:

Pattern – Sewaholic 1203 Thurlow trousers, straight size 8

Fabric –

1.60m of 148cm wide Poly/viscose/spandex suiting from Fabulous Fabrics, Perth, purchased March 2010 for AUD$22.95
Quilting cotton from Arthur Toye, Wellington

Other notions – 1 button (from stash), metal pants slider thingee

Big thank you to Sandra for playing photographer, you rock 🙂

Refracted La Sylphide

Posted on January 10, 2014 by thecuriouskiwi

I haven’t spent a lot of time online these holidays (I don’t even want to look at my unread count in Feedly!) but I have done quite a lot of sewing and acquired some new “toys”.

Yay 🙂

I’ll share these with you soon and round up my 2013 sewing year but first I have my last two projects to share.

Late last year I made a rule for myself that I wouldn’t put a new item into my wardrobe rotation until I had posted about it. This was supposed to encourage me to get out of my photography slump and take some great photos – and it actually worked! I’m enjoying taking photos of my items more and I feel like my creations are getting better and better. I am particularly proud of the last two makes of 2013 so I really need to get them posted and into my wardrobe 🙂

First up, another La Sylphide – sort of sewn-along with Lauren but mostly sewn along with Kat. Oh yes, it’s another “Twinsies” photo shoot, our favourite kind 🙂

We found a great new photo location too: Hello Wellington, you’re looking gorgeous!

These photos were taken up on a hill in the suburb of Maupuia. That morning it rained so much I thought we would have to cancel our plans. I’m glad we were patient, Wellington weather has been tricky these holidays and we were eventually rewarded with sunshine and 360 degree views of Wellington!

You can see the transmitter mast of Mount Victoria on the left, the location of our last twinsie shoot.

Water storage towers with amazing graffiti – perfect for amazing sewing photos 🙂

I don’t have a lot to add to my previous comments about this pattern – it’s just great and you should make one too!

I made this version to wear on Christmas day, the cotton is bluey-green and pink stripes, a twist on the traditional Christmas green and red.

No?

Ok, maybe that is pushing it.

I can tell this dress will get a lot of wear, it’s prefect for work and I think it will be great in winter with a blazer, tights and boots.

Excuse the back wrinkles, I drove us to our location and it was hot sitting in the car.

I did things a little different for this version – my fabric stripe ran diagonally from selvedge to selvedge so I thought it would be fun to cut the back panels to create a chevron effect.

To do this I added seam allowances to the pieces that are normally cut on the fold. I also cut off the button placket so that I could cut them with the stripe running vertically, then I interfaced the life out of them to prevent any warping.

I made a quick little tutorial on my pattern alterations, it’s not very complicated but I know sometimes just visualising the changes can help, you can find it here.

The La Sylphide dress is from Papercut’s Covent Garden collection so dancing seemed appropriate.

But watch out for that cheeky Wellington wind – I had several knicker shots to delete out of the 400+ photos we took!

Wanna see Kat’s dress too? Her post will be up soon but here are a few of our twinsie photos – there were far too many fun shots to choose from:

Papercut Love

Kat’s dress looked great against the blue graffiti – graffiti fight!

Just kidding!

Looking towards the Hutt Valley

Can you see any more twinsie photo shoots on the horizon?

THE DEETS:

Pattern – Papercut Patterns La Sylphide (Covent Garden Collection), dress, straight size S, skirt lengthened approx 16cms. Other pattern alterations as per this tutorial.

Next time I would like to lengthen the bodice by 1 or 2 cms, and lengthen the neck ties.