I have a bit of a problem with dressing my top half in winter. I love making trousers and jumpsuits. I don’t mind making shirts. But I struggle with making warm tops. I don’t like cardigans and they don’t like me, so I’m mostly limited to a couple of Burda sweater patterns that I make ..read more

Burda’s been on fire this year. I might normally get around to making a Burda pattern a year or two after it was released. This trouser pattern came out last February – so seven months ago – and this is the second pair I’ve made. And I think I like them even better than the ..read more

Remember in the heyday of sewing blogging when we all talked about sewing cake vs sewing frosting (basic vs fancy) and TNT (tried and true) patterns? I was never one for sewing basics and I rarely made any pattern more than once. But now I’ve made a pair of dark blue straight legged jeans, about ..read more

I’m posting about this project for completeness. For the avoidance of doubt I’ll say right away I did not make this camouflage jumpsuit for myself; technically it is for my son although I have no idea when or even if he’s going to wear it. We went on holiday to Glasgow this summer and one ..read more

Recently I have been considering the layering conundrum. The UK is having a cooler summer than we’ve had for the last few years, meaning that some sort of lightweight top layer is often required. And I have never got on with either cardigans or shawls. But back in covid lockdown time I made a big ..read more

A while ago I made these silver trousers to use up some special fabric I’d been hanging onto for years…and realised that apart from a white T-shirt I didn’t have anything to wear with them. A lot of good suggestions were made in comments on the original post – thanks all. I settled on making ..read more

I wrote about these trousers at some length a couple of weeks ago, so this is just a quick update with modelled photos. They’re a recent Burda magazine pattern, 108 02/2024, and proof in my opinion that even though Burda’s resorted to openly recycling old patterns there are still good new designs to be found ..read more

I finally finished the white jumpsuit. Standards slipped as the project dragged on and on. There’s an XKCD comic for any situation Much of the planned top stitching was skipped and I used snaps for the cuff closure instead of buttons. But failing to stick to the plan isn’t the only reason I think this one is a failure; the fabric choice was wrong too. It’s too lightweight so the seams and pockets show through, and it’s a very cold shade of white. Trying to the complexion, as they say. As a reminder here’s the Saint Laurent look I was knocking off. They made this particular design in both beig ..read more

I’m not entirely sure what I was thinking with this project. I wanted to have another go at knocking off a wonderful jumpsuit from the Saint Laurent Spring 2024 collection. My previous attempt was based on the runway photos on vogue.com from the show in 2023, which was all the information I had at the time. But the original design has now become available for sale, which means YSL.com and net-a-porter.com have detailed pictures of it to pore over. I may have spent some considerable time zooming in and making notes. I’m very happy with my first version and have worn it a lot, but it could be ev ..read more

My last go at this pattern was a fail because of the fabric. So what to do but make it up again immediately in something completely different. This coated denim came from Top Fabric quite a few years ago. I bought it to make skinny jeans. I ended up with two cuts of the fabric instead of one because the first parcel got lost in the Goods In at work for a time. I eventually gave up looking for it and reordered, whereupon it turned up. Those were the days when everyone was expected to work in the office all the time and we were allowed to have our online shopping delivered there; things have ce ..read more