Diary of a Chain Stitcher

So it seems March is a good month in the Indie sewing pattern world! Lots of beautiful spring collections. It’s got me inspired to sew up a new spring wardrobe and now I’ve got my new sewing space set up in my flat all I need is time to make it! I’m heading to NYC at the end of the week and will have my eyes peeled in the garment district for spring/summer prints and colours…my favourite time of year to fabric shop for! New Patterns Style Arc ’s new releases this month include the Harriet Jacket , Renae Woven Dress and Natasha Woven Pant . The free patterns with any purchase this month were the Tania Tabard and Terry Tie Cardigan so if you've got your eye on those you've got until the end of the day to jump on them! The latest pattern from Wear Lemonade is the Lena Shirtdress . The line drawing looks super 1920s to me with it's loose fit, dropped waist and box pleated skirt. I'd love to make it up in a vintage inspired silk. Sew Over It released another...

I've been meaning to sew up this pattern forever. It's the Rigel Bomber from Papercut Patterns and I've fallen in love with basically every version I've seen on the internet. Every time I've seen a new one I've hopped on over to the website and hovered over the buy button. I've always hesitated though as I've never been tempted by the bomber style in RTW and wasn't sure if it was one of those designs that looked amazing in other people and like lots of fun to sew but yet wasn't quite 'me'. Then Papercut had a Black Friday sale and and the pattern dropped through my letterbox about a week later... I can't believe I've waited this long to make it. I loved constructing it and despite it being a trial version in non-ideal fabric it has rapidly come one of the most worn handmade items in my wardrobe. It is designed for woven fabrics but at the time of buying the pattern I’d recently picked up a piece of really interesting gr...

When one of my lovely new sponsors offers me the choice of sewing up any fabric from their site which includes a huge range of prints, stripes and colours of knit fabric you may think my choice to use a charcoal grey cotton spandex knit slightly odd...maybe even boring! But I had a vision in my head for this project which I could not be swayed from and I'm pleased to say it turned out just as I had hoped. It seems that I do indeed take after my Mum and am a grey kinda girl. Thanks Girl Charlee for making my grey marl dreams come true! I've been after a good turtleneck pattern for some time and had been eyeing up the Papercut Patterns Rise & Fall Turtlenecks but neither variation had quite the classic slightly sixties vibe I was after. I sat down one evening to have a good browse through Style Arc 's PDF patterns on Etsy and low and behold they have about three! It was hard to choose between them as Style Arc don't provide photos of sewn up and modelled sampl...