I made this jumpsuit as a wearable toile for an attempt to reproduce a look from Saint Laurent’s Spring 2024 show, below. The original is orderable from ysl.com for a quite astonishing £3885. For a jumpsuit made out of maybe three and a half metres of cotton twill. Yes, it’s beautifully designed, and I bet the quality of the fabric and notions is amazing (and the leather belt the model is wearing is included). And a lot of fashion is exploitative and bad for the planet and we should be buying less and paying more for our clothes…but I still can’t see myself ever paying that sort of money for ..read more

“How many jumpsuits do you have?”, my husband asked the other day. The answer is currently seven (four Closet Core Blancas, one each of The Assembly Line’s maxi and v neck jumpsuits, and vintage Vogue 1500). It would have been eight, but Vogue 1645 is in the donation pile and so doesn’t count even though it’s still in the house. So what am I making now? A jumpsuit. Or rather, two jumpsuits, because the latest project is slightly experimental and so I’m doing one in cheap and cheerful fabric before I cut into my fancy wool suiting. I’m knocking off a Saint Laurent design. The last time I tried ..read more

Here are two of my sewing favourites combined: vintage Vogue designer patterns and jumpsuits. The pattern is Vogue 1500 by Christian Aujard and dates from around 1976 [Vintage Pattern Wiki entry]. It’s a dolman sleeved jumpsuit with wide straight legs, a front zip fastening, four pockets, and a blousy back bodice ending in gathers at the back waist. Vintage Vogue 1500 pattern envelope I haven’t been able to find out much about the Christian Aujard brand. The pattern envelope has a short blurb on the flap: Christian Aujard is known as the “Couturier of Ready to Wear”. His soft, feminine clothe ..read more

People often talk about the number of wears an individual garment gets as a way to measure its value – cost per wear – or its sustainability; we should aspire to 30 wears per garment. My ikat dressing gown gets worn most days and I made it over five years ago, so it’s the best value and greenest garment in my wardrobe by some way . And unsurprisingly it’s now looking a little tired. Replacing it was one of my sewing plans for 2023. I don’t often sew with print fabric. But if there’s one place you can go really wild with print and colour it’s a dressing gown. I wanted a large scale print with s ..read more

I’m calling this the Top N of 2023 because this blog post is based on Gillian’s Sewing Top Five format, but as I only made 12 items this year doing a top and bottom five wouldn’t leave much of a middle. Gillian does five categories: successes, fails, highlights, reflections, and goals. My most successful project was my blue trousers. I wear them about once a week, almost always with the blue jumper from the photo, but in hot weather with a grey RTW t shirt. I love the colour and the shape. The pattern was originally Burda, but I adjusted it to try to match some of the features of a Saint Laure ..read more

I never thought I’d sew a waterproof. I find it difficult to find ones I like in RTW, but there weren’t any patterns that called to me either, at least not enough to be worth wrestling with waterproof fabric and seam sealer for. Then I saw The Assembly Line’s hoodie poncho pattern which has the twin virtues of being relatively simple and having all the drama one could ever need in a garment designed for keeping dry. Here’s the technical drawing. There’s a bit more to this pattern than meets the eye: that big front pocket has extra snaps inside so the whole garment can be folded inside the poc ..read more

This is the Maxi Jumpsuit from The Assembly Line. When I first saw it I was immediately drawn to the combination of coverage and drama in the design. This is not one of your practical jumpsuits for climbing ladders and getting into helicopters; the wide hems tend to sweep up bits of Lego as I walk around the house and I have to be rather careful on the stairs. And because I’ve made it in black it’s difficult to see the details, so here is the technical drawing. The Assembly Line Maxi Jumpsuit technical drawing, thefoldline.com This style is all about the deep inverted pleat at the front. The ..read more

I’m often guilty of making fancy dresses that I do not have the lifestyle for. I love the look of a dress, but they aren’t the most practical in my line of work. I wore my new white dress to the office last week on a day I was sure I’d be able to stay safely at my desk all day…and found myself doing a outdoor job that involved picking my way around pigeon roosts. Sigh. Anyway, this post is about the Hoodie Dress from The Assembly Line, which I have made up in practical black and am hoping will hit the sweet spot between Wearing A Dress and Able To Wrangle Hardware. Being black, of course the ..read more

The sun is my enemy. I burn easily and don’t cope well with heat. I used to have a few reliable cotton dresses with collars and good coverage to get me through the hot weather, but I had to retire the lot this year because they’d all become so worn or stained with sun cream. And none of them was 100% perfect anyway: my Style Arc Tonis always wear out and rip under the arm, McCalls 7727’s skirt flies up on a windy day, and Vogue 1410 exposes too much shoulder and back. Vogue 1933 envelope front, sewdirect.com So I was quite excited when I saw Vogue 1933 from the spring release: a sleek new sty ..read more

I had high hopes for this one. I live in jumpsuits these days and this one is practical (pockets, easy to get into, reasonable coverage) while being a very interesting design (wrap front, unusual closure). The pattern is Vogue 1645 by Rachel Comey. Here’s the envelope photo: Vogue 1645 envelope photo, sewdirect.com A lot of people mentioned that this is a difficult pattern to fit because of the unusual construction. I don’t have the time or patience to toile anything short of a wool coat, so this version in navy stretch denim is by way of being a trial run. If successful my original plan was ..read more