Diary of a Chain Stitcher

Firstly thanks so much for all of your lovely comments on my last couple of coat posts ! Reading them really made me stop and think about how far my sewing has come since I made my very first top about five years ago. It was so lovely to look back and think about what me then would have thought about the possibility of me ever sewing something so complex! So thank you for making me realise how much I've improved! A couple of people asked about how I applied the piping between the lining and facing on the coat, particularly about how I managed to keep it an even width all the way around that seam. So I thought I'd do a quick tutorial for you all as the method I used was pretty straightforward. This tutorial is for making your own piping from fabric rather than using a shop bought piping or bias, which might not be your ideal width and therefore need to be applied slightly differently. First you need to cut bias strips of the fabric you are using to make your piping. T...

After I posted about the striped shirt I made for my stepdad a few of your expressed interest in a tutorial about how I added the slots to the underside of the collar to house collar stiffeners/bones/stays. So I've put a quick one together for you. I worked out how to do this by looking at a RTW shirt which had this feature and it's surprisingly quick and straightforward! It's my very first attempt at a tutorial so I apologise if any of my explanations don't make complete sense. Feel free to ask any questions you may have in the comments below. Just to be clear before we start the slots need to be added to shirt before the collar is assembled. I'm not sure how you'd go about adding them to a shirt which is already made! First things first you will need to cut yourself a third collar piece. If you are using a pattern which has separate upper and under collar pieces you will need one of the upper collar and two under collar pieces. Only the upper collar ne...

I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas period and all your handmade gifts were fully appreciated!  As promised here are some snaps of my completed Christmas table set up for mine and my boyfriend's mini Christmas day (I'd never be allowed to get involved with my Mum's table plans back home!) The fabric for the runner was a bargain from Ikea when I wasn't even looking for fabric and they also did matching paper napkins and wrapping paper which I also made full use of! I love using simple candles as a centre piece (I'm having a bit of a candle moment actually) but when it came to putting the table together I wished I had a bit of festive foliage, just some fir or holly, to lay around the bases of the candles to make it that little bit more interesting and Christmassy. I think I'm quite minimalist usually decoration-wise but I've definitely come round to thinking that Christmas is the one time you can go all out and throw decorations up everywher...