I have had this piece of multi-coloured plaid cotton sateen out on my cutting table for several days trying to decide what to make from it. It was an on-line purchase, so I didn't really see that it had an unbalanced plaid until I received the fabric and spread it out - had I realised this I would have bought more fabric because it would have made things far easier! I tried so many combinations of different dresses, shirts and skirts to get that dominant blue line equally balanced on both sides, and then I tried a simple shape but on the bias which also didn't work due to lack of fabric. So ..read more

Earlier this year I bought some vibrant home dec fabric by Kirsten Katz from Spotlight with the intention of making some new cushion covers for my lounge. But the longer the fabric sat on my cutting table the more I wanted to make something wearable from it instead. Which is what I did! The fabric is a thick, non-stretch cotton so I couldn't make anything that needed any drape or stretch. My favourite pleated a-line skirt is the perfect shape for this fabric. The pattern is from a 2014 Burda Easy magazine that I picked up at a Sydney Spoolettes fabric swap day and I've now made several t ..read more

A shirt dress is fast becoming my favourite style of dress in these weird 'stay at home business casual' kind of times. I made Simplicity 8014 four times last year (see the round up here) but this time I thought I'd try a new pattern just to mix things up. And why not use beautiful and expensive Liberty on an untested fabric right!? Sometimes my cavalier attitude appals me, but hey it's only fabric..... This dress is McCalls 8030, one of the new trendy instagram age patterns that has its own name - 'Josie'.  It's a loosefitting dress, hence it comes in the s-m-l-xl range instead o ..read more

I'm very sceptical when it comes to pattern envelopes that just have an illustration and not an actual photograph of a model. Vintage patterns are notorious for the illustration looking completely different to how the project turns out because no-one these days has those teeny tiny waists and pointy busts.   This dress however lives up to its promise - it did only take a jiffy to make and it turned out pretty much exactly like the pattern cover. This is Simplicity 8682 from 1970: I've made this before back in 2018 which I still wear so I knew this would fit with just minimal fitting ..read more

It's only the beginning of spring here in Sydney, yet we hit 30 degrees (84F) here today - that doesn't bode well for when summer actually rolls around. Despite my love for sewing summer dresses I do not like the heat at all, but clearly I'm living in the wrong country! After the last failure of a dress I decided to make a super simple dress that I've made before and I knew would fit with minimal effort. The real star in this project is the fabric - a bold graphic print cotton sateen from Nerida Hansen Fabrics. I'm not too impressed with the fabric though - it's rather thin and more like a co ..read more

Earlier in this never ending lockdown I needed to buy some buttons, and I discovered that Spotlight has a flat rate shipping fee of $13 no matter how much you spend. So instead of spending more on shipping than the actual buttons, I decided to fill up my order with some patterns and fabrics which handily were on sale. I ended up spending way more than the cost of the buttons and shipping, but that's sewing logic for you!  Plus I bought two beautifully soft velvet fabrics - one a teal crinkle velvet and the other an olive green quilted velvet. I've only sewn with velvet once before many y ..read more

You can't win 'em all. A wadder every now and then is inevitable, especially if you don't make a fitting toile! This dress definitely falls within the category of a not so great outcome, but hey it's only fabric and a bit of time that's been lost and right now I have lots of both. Actually this dress took quite a lot of time to finish and it's only because of refusal to make any new UFOs that I finished this at all. And looking at these photos of the finished dress I'm probably going to refashion into a skirt when I get over the frustration of this pattern. So this pattern is Vogue 8685 whi ..read more

Here I go again.....another attempt at getting back into blogging and another attempt at finishing off some UFOs! At the beginning of this year I set myself the goal of finishing at least 16 UFOs by the end of the year, this is number 8 so I guess I'm on track. I started this jacket maybe 2 or so years ago, and didn't finish it at the time because it turned out overall too big and really shapeless. It's taken me this long to do some unpicking, take it in at nearly all the seams and finish it. It's now done, still a little oversized but I can live with that since it's a casual jacket and not a ..read more

If you follow me on instagram (@kristysewsalot) you'll know that this year I am trying to sew up all the fabrics that I bought in 2019 that are still sitting in my stash. I'm also trying to finish up at 16 of my UFOs for good measure. This mini challenge follows the success of last year's efforts to sew all the fabrics I bought last year - fingers crossed I can do this too! I'm off to a fairly decent start - of the 23 fabrics I need to sew this year and the 16 UFOs I want to finish I've already sewn 4 pieces and 4 UFOs (just my blogging hasn't kept up). My latest project is fabric no.4 from t ..read more

 After more than 20 years of sewing, pants remain my nemesis. Sure they are fairly easy to make, but we all know that getting them to fit well is very difficult. Every time I make a fresh pair I make slight adjustments and I feel I am slowly getting there! Last year I made six pairs of pants, with varying degrees of success. My favourite pants that I made last year is a wide leg pant from a a pattern that I have made a few times previously: Burda 10/2016 #113. I made a pair in a blush pink medium weight linen that I made as per the pattern with the wide legs and the sewn on pockets on ..read more