This is a really annoying  design fault in some fabric I bought recently.
Babycord which comes with Text boxes with the name of teh design and washing instructions at regular intervals down the side.
Fabric is 145cm wide and has some really nice designs on. But this wretched text box means that attempting to make clothing that fits me winds up looking weird.

 I don't know if it's intended tobe avoided because whatever garments are made out of the fabric would tend to be smaller so the box would be avoided.
But it does make using the full 145cm width really difficult.
Why they can't move the text box further over to the side I don't know. If they did that it would disappear into the seam

This is the left leg of one pair of jeans I was in the middle of making. So I have the text box appearing from my hip before it disappears into the seam. I may need to take the leg in slightly still but I can't see how to avoid having some of it appear.
I was making another pair at the same time so cut it with the fabric the other way round and now have similar just below the pocket on the front.
Very frustrating.

I don't know if i can embroider over it or anything.

Me at 14

I got in contact with a friend whose brother I was at school with in the wake of the Brexit vote. Over the course of a facebook communication he sent me this photo which was taken in his bedroom when I was about 14.
It shows me dressed in Regal gear shirt and hipsters at least. I'd been wondering what the paisley on thsoe hipsters looked like. I gave them away about 22 years back to a girl I'd been seeing around the time.
 I'm now  much bigger than i was at the time. I was a very skinny teen.
 So shirt, hipsters and hat are all Regal.
I think I picked up the jacket at Mr Byrite near Oxford Circus in the early 80s. & the boots were the really pointy type of Shelly's chelsea  boots. I went through several pairs of chelsea and Beatle boots. I'sd already had a pair of the more round-toed type and talked Graham in the Regal into getting spats in  because teh elastic on the side had gone. These pointed pair were stolen from under my bed when I was boarding for a year around this time.
I probably spent more time in the Beatles boots both a 60s pair I picked up from the Carnaby Market and a pair I got from Melanddi which were more chunky.

I'm now more likely to be seen in a pair of bike boots i picked up mailorder from CAboots in Texas or a pair of harness boots I got from a US mailorder place called LeatherUp.

I'm currently working on a new jeans jacket based on that basic design but it's going to have a more |Western collar. it's going to be in this fabric.

Which is a cotton curtain thing called Lavender Maine. I have it about half cut out. I need to work out if there is a way of telling if there is an outside and an inside since the Fabric has the design on both sides.
I was thinking of making jeans in it too but it may be a bit stiff. Jacket should be good hopefully though.
 I still need to really work out how to do trousers. I'm still having trouble with getting the waist right and having to continually pull them up.
Got a new pair cut in this fabric, but the reality is more vivd than the photo.

It reminds me of when Hanna Barbera cartoons were trying to be with it in the late 60s. So kind of  corny but will look really cool I think.
So far I've just been cutting things while the table's been clear and it took me ages to get the table back to clear so I've made far less clothing than I would have liked this year. I still have a stripey cossack shirt I cut about 3 months back partially done which I need to remedy. last thing I pretty much finished was another cossack shirt in orange which is a coincidence to this teenage image of me. But I got the placket the wrong way round which I only realised when i had it done. So I may need to go back and redo that.
Need to remember that cossack shirt placket has opening pointing to left should er instead of to the front. Having it open to the front would mean the wind would get in.

I've left this longer than I meant to but have been somewhat busy with various things.

These are 2 views of the completed Strawberry Thief jeans jacket that I was cutting in the last entry. It's worn here with a pair of paisley twill jeans in a fabric called Joanne olive. The shirt seen here is the long sleeved 3 button tshirt that I made back in spring. The boots area pair of short crepe soled chelsea boot type that I got in TK Maxx, possibly a little narrow for my feet but they look pretty good.
















 The jacket took about a week and a half to do and I think was mainly pretty straightforward. The only point of trouble I can think of was that I had to work out how  to do the side/inner pocket thing which is 2 pockets made out of what is 2 pieces of fabric on the original.

Here I had used interfacing on the back of the pocket part that's made out of  the same fabric as the outer shell. That meant that if I had my hands in the side pocket they would be up against the interfacing which is something better avoided.  I therefore had to work out how to add in a 3rd layer to the pocket.  Since i hadn't thought the process through totally before beginning construction I had wound up stitching the 2 parts of the pocket which I'd started with together and then had to unstitch them to add the 3rd.  The cerise jacket didn't have interfacing on the pocket back so the technique i had already used needed to be adjusted.
There is a way of stitching things so that all the excess bits of seam allowance from the pocket parts will be captured together in an area that isn't open, especially since it winds up sealed within the waistband when that's added. The alternative way has the rough edges sticking out at one point. Subsequently if I'm going for 3 layers on the pocket it is best to start with them being stitched together in the same seam.

Otherwise i think this went together pretty easily. The only mistake i can think of is that I need to watch where I'm cutting the buttonhole on the pocket flaps. I cut the one on one side too high so the thread that the button that goes through it is higher in the fabric its attached to than it wants to be. I'm worried that if anything wrenches it, it will rip through the top of the piece of fabric it's attached to. Not really something it's easy to work out when the pocket flap is unattached, which is the easiest way of doing the hole. But definitely something that I will need to take into account in future. I think I was thinking that it actually made more sense to have it higher when I was sewing and cutting it.

The jeans are similar to most of the other jeans I have made so far. based around a pair of jeans that wore out on me a while back and then heavily custom fitted. I'm wondering if the cut on the originals is the same as the cut on a pair of jeans made by the same firm that I have been wearing for rough work recently. If so the fitting is a lot tighter on the end garment here.
I've nearly run out of the twill curtain lining I've been using for making linings and pockets out of for the last year plus, these are the first pair of jeans that have the new substitute which is a cotton curtain fabric with plants and boats on. I bought this stuff because it comes as twice the width of most curtaining fabric plus it was on a sale. I think this was 280cm wide. I really should have got a few metres of the stuff not just one. Though pockets are now a more papery consistency than the twill had them as. I really need to work out what the best fabric for making trouser pocket bags out of is. Especially if I wind up selling any of these things which people keep suggesting. I think I'm still a ways away from that point, and not good enough or accurate enough and take too much time over each garment. Would also really need a decent sewing machine to do things on a larger scale. But I'm getting there slowly.

I've now completed another pair of babycord jeans, this time in a fabric I've been looking at all summer. I don't think I had really thought they would come out looking like this, since the brown background seemed to be more prominent. They seem to be more prominently coloured by the pattern detail than the background.
I had a lot of trouble with the crotch on this pair which  meant a lot of unpicking to try to get it to go right. I think I am still struggling with zips. Trying to get them to go in absolutely flat and not have excessive use of thread around them.
 I still don't really know the correct place to sew the end of the under seam to. It should be in line with the stopper on the bottom end of the zip but the zip only gets sewn in after that seam is done.

This is a close up of the pattern as shown in the advert. I guess the likelihood of the brown showing through with any prominence is not that high.
Again I'm interested in what colour people would see that pattern as. Especially since the layout may only be really visible on close inspection.

Finally back up and cutting again. Got a jeans jacket underway, actually 2 but this seems to be simpler cos it doesn't need me to work out where it needs to be reinforced.

I'm needing to lay out the pieces of the source jacket and draw 5mm outlines around them to get up to the seam allowance I am comfortable with. the source jacket was apparently done on an overlocker and only has 1cm wide seam allowances which means attempting to do the flat fell seam I normally do would be a non starter. Way too fiddly.

I'm using the Strawberry Thief  William Morris fabric I was originally going to make a pair of jeans from. This was a pretty expensive fabric, selling by the half metre which meant that I was thinking I'd do another trial run experiment with the paisley babycord before I started it in this fabric.
It then transpired that using babycord had its own problems or so I believe, not having actually completed the thing. But I was wondering if the yokes  in the lighter fabric could take the  weight of the rest of the structure and whatever I was going to put in its pockets. So I think I need to work out what needs reinforcing which will take longer. & with whatever double layers it will no longer be the light jacket that was going to be as summer specific. Or so I hope.
This  Strawberry Thief is a drill fabric so I think it should be a lot more robust than the babycord.

So far I have managed to create this jacket in a cerise 8 wale cord that I bought last year. I was intending to make some kind if jacket out of it but I think I was thinking more of something based on the leather bike jackets I tend to wear in the colder months.
The jacket here is worn with a pair of jeans I made from a cotton -viscose curtaining material. I think they look ok but I think the fabric in general has more of a tendency to bag than others that I've used.  I have some of this stuff in a different colour that I'm thinking of making a jacket from. I think I bought it thinking I'd make a jeans jacket and then saw Poldark on tv so have been thinking about trying one of that eras frock coats in it.

The hat here is one that came from a renaissance pattern package. It's made in a fabric called Pizarro Spice which is also a cotton viscose but done in a more tapestry style with a couple of distinctive layers and woven or embroidered pattern instead of printed. The top of the brim is the back of the fabric the top section is made of. The bottom is in a printed cotton curtain material. It is lined with a cotton twill that I got as a curtain lining. Very useful fabric so I might buy some new for various uses..
 The shirt is shown on the previous entry and is an African Waxed cotton, here made in a Folkwear frontier style, so it's a bit of a cowboy shirt.
 Boots are a pair of engineer boots I got mailorder about 12 years ago. They're still going but I need to take better care of them and also get rid of the white residue from the last time i rubbed wax into them.

This is a cotton linen fabric that I've been looking at and thinking God I'd love to make a jeans jacket out of . I'm not sure now that it's heading out of the season. But seems to be crying out to be done.
pattern repeat is 24.5cm if that's any guide.

I keep leaving overlong intervals on here and should try to do this regularly.
I was busy for the early part of the year, made a lot of stuff which didn't finish with the frock coat. Should have gone on to another frockcoat but I thought i had the wrong size pattern, looks like I might have overdone the seam allowances, any way bought a new copy of the pattern so I could start it again,. Had had to wait for the local fabric shop to cycle through every other pattern company to have a sale on the right firm. Then found that I probably had cut the pattern to the  right size anyway, but my big push on making clothing had run out of steam or something by the time that happened so it's still in the to do pile possibly with some amendments from things I've seen in photos since.

I did make a number of shirts and jerseys though and at least a couple of pairs of jeans.
So here's a few more photos of things

 This is a shirt based on the Folkwear frontier shirt design, the same thing I made the Aztec brushed cotton one in last year. Here it's made out of that heavy cotton I've been told is similar to Oxford, which is sold by Hickey's as curtaining fabric.
It's coupled here with the jeans I made outof the other tartan I bought in London.  I hadn't previously discovered the name of the tartan but think it may be called Wallace after just googling it. I think it was pretty successful as a jean but maybe I should be looking at making at least one other type of trouser. Might help hone my craft if I incorporated technique I picked up from the variety of any type of garment I make.

 This is a pair of 8 wale cord jeans in a purple that i intend to use for that frock coat when I get around to it. I liked these when I saw them in  daylight, after having thought they were far too navy while I worked on them.
They're coupled here with another of the Frontier shirts this time in waxed cotton. I think the squares in the design are a similar purple to the jeans. Really not sure what people see when they see that shirt , if other people's reaction to colour would mean they took in the full design. I'd be interested to hear what people would describe that shirt as on first sight.I think when I chose the fabric it was actually the darkness that hit me first and now the lines seem to shimmer yellow. Actually I'm a bit intrigued as to how other people pick fabric in a shop like Meena where you're just seeing rows of fabric hanging  overlapping each other in a small amount of space.

Row of fabric that I probably chose the fabric for the  shirts above and below from. really intrigued as to how a shopper would tend to look at what they were buying. I'm about 6ft tall and I had to reach up to it and everything is crammed next to each other.
I'm buying more from my own subjective aesthetics though. So not from a background in which I have any traditional attachment to any designs or looser categorisations. Not sure how much waxed cotton designs are based on a basic traditional tribal design or whatever, I have no idea of symbolism or anything. Could as easily be that they just keep coming up with new designs that don't have a deeper context. I need to find out more. Oh & get a lot more of the fabric.

 This is another Folkwear design you've probably seen before. This is the Missouri Riverman shirt, here in a waxed cotton. I love the design on the fabric here. Think I like the colour orange quite a bit anyway so probably need to make more stuff in it.
The jeans here are babycord in a design that features several concentric circles superimposed over each other. I find it quite psychedelic but it might look a little too much like kiwi slices.
I'm finding babycord quite good for making jeans out of. I have 3 pairs in the fabric so far, with another on the way.  The fabric is light enough to be quite cool during the summer, but also doesn't seem overly cold in the winter, at least from what I remember from last year.
I'm trying to make a jeans jacket out of the fabric too but that seems to be getting tricky since I think it needs to be double layers of fabric where a heavier cord was a single layer. The fabric I'm using for that is the one from the next photo though

 These jeans are the paisley babycord I'm trying to make a matching jacket from. These were made a couple of months back and have been worn quite a bit since.
 The shirt here may be seen in earlier photos since it was done even earlier. This is a blackwatch brushed cotton version of a shirt I'm calling Doge since its based on a medieval costume. I heavily reduced the size of the garment from what it's based on and it is still extremely baggy I had to lengthen the sleeves to make them the correct length and now I'm doing the cuff pretty long, not sure if that shows here.
The shirt has a drop yoke which is not a feature you see that frequently.

NB doge was the title for the civic leader of Venice at the time.

 The paisley/tartan combination done the other way round.
This couples a lawn cotton version of the doge shirt with a Gordon dress tartan pair of jeans.
I really like lawn cotton and need to get some more it seems to be light enough to wear in summer and is generally pretty tasty.
 The Gordon Dress tartan is a design you see on people in a number of photos from the garage rock era, possibly most notably on Arthur Lee on the cover of Love's 1st lp.

Here's those jeans again, now coupled with a Hawaiian flowers 3-button long sleeve tshirt thingy.
I really like the design, It comes from a Simplicity pattern that looks really straight but if you make it in the right fabric it can look pretty groovy. I have another one in stripes and one underway in polka dots

This is a voile top based on a pattern for a pirate shirt ferom a Simplicity pattern. This shirt is about the first one I've made that doesn't have a yoke. It just has the front and back meeting at the shoulder.
I'm not sure how I feel about that. It just seemed that a yoke was what the weight of the shirt hung from so would be important. Voile isa ligt fabric so may behave somewhat differently to what a heavier one would. I was going to make one of these in a floral design of that heavy cotton curtaining fabric but was having troble working out where to position a large design on the body of the shirt so thought I'd go ahead with this more simple repetitive pattern first and hopefully see what hung where once it was made. Not sure how I would translate a flat pattern to a 3d shirt still but at least I have a working shirt.
I think may have to do something about stitching the neck facing down since this fabric is so fluid that that tends to work its way out of the hole.
I've also had some trouble with the sleeve working its way outof the bottom of jacket sleeves in a way that I haven't had from heavier fabrics.
I might need to look into working up cuff plackets in future to prevent that happening.
The shirt also has the sleeve a bit off the shoulder which might contribute to this too.

This was the first shirt I made that had a normal straight placket. I have previously made a Ukrainian style one with a weird airlock placket which is a bit different but this is the standard straightforward style.  I think I need to experiment with it a bit more.
This shirt is also the first to feature a separate neckband and collar. I'm not sure if either actually show here.
This was the shirt that came from the pattern package that included the frockcoat I made earlier this year, the more Western style one.
 I think the cuffs came out too big because I was worried I'd make them too tight. I think I've taken them in since.
I added a bit of length to the cuff too I think, and then was wondering if there was much point on a shirt that didn't have baggy sleeves. This was because it meant there wasn't enough space in the puffed out sleeve to take on the excess of the  extended length of the sleeve.
Anyway this was done in the heavy cotton I like to use so is probably more suitable to Autumn than summer. I'll probably wear it more then. It was finished in June after I took some of the excess length of the cuff back off and added the buttons taht it had been sitting around without.

 The only items I made over the middle of the summer were completing 2 already started garments .
I cut this cerise 8 wale jeans jacket about 2 or 3 months earlier and just had it sitting around waiting to be worked on while i went through a number of other items. Its based on an existing jeans jacket I got from a charity shop which I bought for the purpose of making copies from.
Making it was pretty complex and i did need to work things out withot instructions.  I think I got most of it pretty straightforwardly apart from the cosntruction of the side pocket. That does have a slightly complex nesting bunch of openings that had to be worked out, but I think where i went wrong was thinking the side facing went a different way than it does.
I have another version underway in the paisley babycord that you see in a couple of photos on here.
The other garment I finished was the striped drill jeans. I had thought i'd completed last year but they were very large around the waist so needed to be slimmed down to fitting better. That took way longer than it should have done but they're back to being wearable now.

Other than that I've had a bout of flu or something that's lasted far too long. It hasn't helped that the summer here in Ireland has been as wet as it has been. Cos it keeps on redosing me with cold/flu.

I've also had to try to find the receipt/warranty for the tv that ceased to work a couple of weeks ago. That was taken to be looked at/repaired this morning so I'm hoping it will come  back to me in working order. I've done most of my hand sewing in front of it.

An update of sorts

I haven't posted on here in a while.
I am still sewing pretty heavily so do have some things to add

 


This is a jacket I made last month based on the same pattern as the one I made out of curtains last year. This new version was made from some striped drill I bought last year with the intention of making a pair of striped Levi style jeans. When it arrived I discovered the colours weren't as described . The listing had it as 2 shades of blue and a yellow. It arrived as Black, mid grey and beige as well as white which was the only thing that came as listed.
 Since it wasn't going to be as multicoloured as I had envisioned I thought I would make it into a frockcoat instead.
It wound up being put on the backburner while I went around making a load of jeans and shirts instead. I think it has turned out ok, not sure I could have done it much better at the moment. The one thing I've been a bit self conscious about is the facing/contrast which came from a piece of what appears to be late 60s curtaining.When I got it it was made up into some form of bag of some kind, possibly a sleeping bag though I'm not 100% sure.
  I picked that up from the Curiosity Shop, the local charity shop that I was getting a lot of fabric from last year. At the time I wasn't really thinking what it would become so it sat around unused for several months. In the interim I came across some brocade which I think looks great but was shedding colour every time I washed it.  Otherwise the facing here would have been red floral brocade. I think this alternative, which only occurred to me after that seemed unusable, looks pretty good but I'm still not sure.

I also made the lining from a curtain I bought from the same shop.

I'm wearing the jacket in the 2 bookending photos here with a Missouri Riverman shirt I made in some curtaining material I bought from a reduced section in Hickey's, the one shop chain locally that sells fabric. The design is some form of vine with pods and large burgundy flowers . I really like the cartoony aspect, it looks like something from a Hanna Barbera cartoon and I think of it as the Mr Farmer shirt after The Seeds song.

The other photo was taken at a different point and features me wearing a waxed cotton shirt in a style I took from a pattern for a renaissance era top. It has been heavily reduced in the amount of fabric that has been used. Probably by at least the amount that you would need to make another straight modern shirt from.
What you don't see in this photo is that the shirt features a drop yoke which means that construction is pretty different to a normal shirt. I'm not sure if that shows any better in the shots with me in the waistcoat and the pair of jeans that I made last year and have talked about elsewhere. I will examine this shirt further at another point. I really like the design and will be making other shirts in it. I think there will be a paisley lawn fabric shirt coming in it over the next couple of weeks.

The trousers in the photos at the top are another pair cut from the model that I've used for all of my jeans up to now. This pair is done in a viscose tartan that I'm not 100% sure of the blend for. It's definitely got some polyester content but I'm not sure how much.
I would like to find out more about working with viscose since it seems to be the one fabric that you can get tartan in that is suitable for making jeans. I would probably prefer it if I could get a heavy cotton with tartan pattern but so far haven't found anything of that kind.  Not sure if there is a reason for that. I know that plaid is traditionally made from wool, but I would have thought that the design would be more widespread. I have come across brushed cotton in tartan but it isn't heavy enough for trousers. there will be more on that later since I made a shirt in it. As shown below, this is another dropped yoke one, this time with a 2 button cuff a detail I think I will probably incorporate in future having stumbled on it by accident during the cutting of this version. The jeans here are in the one form of striped drill that I could find at the time. Seems to be a striped drill drought happening for some inexplicable reason.

Just thought I'd run through some of the things I've made over the last few months
1) The cavalry shirt
This was made from a folkwear pattern for Frontier Shirts which means it is based on a 19th century design. I think Folkwear are pretty authentic in the designs they sell.
I made it from a brushed cotton in a pattern they called Aztec. I noticed that it seemed to be fading very rapidly and wasn't sure how to counter that. I'm hoping it can be stopped since I really like d the colour.
Other than that I think I failed to get the pattern for shirt and bib to line up too well so need to keep that in mind if I make another one.

This had some design features I found pretty difficult at the time like a curved pointed middle of the yoke at the back which I'm not sure shows anyway. With a bit more practise that should prove to be a bit easier to do but had me having to attempt it several times before i got it anywhere near right.
Then summer hit so I have hardly worn the thing so far.  Think I will be over the next few months though.

2) The striped jeans
These were inspired by the style of striped jeans that Levis and others were making in the late 60s and early 70s. They were made from a striped drill that has 2 alternating groups of coloured stripes. The main one that is visible here which is the group with a red/pink wide stripe on the outside and the same group of colours in a slightly different order with orange on the outside of the group.  The prevalent colour grouping is dictated by the way they are cut. I'm not sure to what extent the way they are cut is dictated to in terms of the way that the groupings lie on the uncut fabric. Anyway I think they look pretty good even if I do say so myself

I had a couple of problems in making these, mainly that the sewing machine I started them on broke down when I went to sew the bib on the cavalry shirt on the morning after I started them. That left them not being worked on for about a month at the start of the summer. Thankfully Vic came through with a sewing machine she no longer used and I got them done and wore them quite a bit over the summer.
 I've been worried that colours have appeared to be fading really fast, I noticed great patches of white appearing behind what was supposed to be a solid colour line which is obviously a great shame since the delight of  these things is the vibrancy. I've tried soaking them in distilled vinegar which was supposed to be a way of getting coloured dyes to stabilise. I'm not sure to what extent it's worked since I've spent more time in more recently made jeans since.
 I've also recently undone the belt loops which were too restrictive as they were which you can see in the photo on the right. I think Tina had told me that belt loops get sewn into the waistband as in captured under the seam. This proved to be really difficult to get belts in and out of. So on later pairs of jeans I've sewn the bottom of the belt loop has been attached to the top of the trouser leg.

3) The Dickensian jacket -Burda 2767
This was the first jacket I made with the new sewing machine. It is based on a pattern from a company called Burda, though i made some alterations to make it something I could wear practically.  These included changing where the waist pockets are located and adding pockets to the breast both outside on the left and inside.
The fabric used derived from 2 sets of curtains. I also used the lining that came with the main curtain to line it.  This was also the first garment that I seam finished to any extent.  It is my variation of a flat fell .

The jacket does still need to be hemmed but it finally got the collar topstitched and buttons put on the front over the last couple of weeks.

I was told that the jacket did come up very tight, I've been wearing it open all the time that I've been wearing it. Not sure if i can comfortably close it over the waistcoat I normally wear which tends to have things in the pockets. May need to expand the size if I make another one. But it's not exactly weather proof so may not be worn with too much more under it. Might not be worn in much worse or colder weather in other words.

4) The Cerise cords

I bought some material which arrived after some delay and when it was opened it was some of tghe softest stuff I'd ever felt. Kept wanting to pick it up and fondle it again.. Lovely stuff.

I think it was designed more for curtains and upholstery than for garments but it does feel awesome as a pair of jeans

These were again cut from the old dismantled pair of cords which I've now used about 7 times over the summer. They are really comfortable though the waist may still be cut too loose. I think I've had them slide off when they weren't worn with a belt.  Which indicates I have a lot to learn about fitting properly.
I wasn't sure how much dismantling and reconstructing the fabric could handle so I've left thenm as they were initially constructed. I think the central picture here which was in daylight is truer to the correct colour than the 2 shots bookending .
Anyway do love these things. I was interested in a colour range that included the darker shades of things like purple, pink, orange also the more chocolatey of browns . I am currently working on a pair of aubergine twill jeans which i had meant to make much earlier in the summer.