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How To Sew A Basic Stretch Lace Skirt – Sew Fun!

by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 28, 2014 | Craft, Sewing 101, Tutorial

Yay sewing tutorial! Today is part two of a shirt and skirt set remake! I’m classing this as being part of the Sew Fun series but keep in mind it’s not so much for complete beginners, it’s more intermediate so I’m going to be skipping some basic steps along the way. There will hopefully be more beginners tutorials as soon as I have time to sew.

A few weeks ago I bought a skirt and shirt from Supre and I really liked the comfy stretchy lace they were made from. It’s perfect for summer and also super comfortable to wear. It’s a crazy easy pattern and I had managed to find some lace fabric on sale so I decided to make a couple of others so I could mix and match them together.

Here’s the finished set!

So last time we made the shirt, this time it’s the skirt!

I changed the skirt design to be even more simple than the original version by removing the zip. The lace and cotton that I bought was far more stretchy and a little more structured than the original so I decided to just not bother using a zip and instead rely solely on the stretch. Also… I didn’t have any zips left in my sewing cabinet and I couldn’t be bothered walking to Lincraft >_>

So the process was very similar to the shirt, I laid out the fabric and cut out the pieces leaving a 1cm seam allowance.

The skirt is made from identical front and back sections and two waist pieces. It’s not quite enough fabric to made it a circle skirt and it drapes much more nicely when the fabric is cut on the bias.

The same pieces need to be cut from the lining as well.

The first thing to do with the actual sewing is to overlock the waist pieces to the skirt sections. Do this with both the actual fabric and the lining.

Next overlock the front and back together down each side so it becomes a complete skirt shape. Do this with both the lining and the lace.

Then place the lining inside the lace with the good sides facing each other and overlock around the top of the waist.

So basically you should have an inside out skirt now.

Flip it the right way out and hem the bottom of both the lace and the lining.

You should also top stitch the waist band to give it more structure and a nice finish around the top.

Done!

Perfect! I love this skirt, it’s so swishy and fun to wear!

Perfect for dancing with my pretty assistant!

How fun! This was a really great project set so I can’t wait to do more sewing soon!

How To Sew A Basic Stretch Lace Shirt – Sew Fun!

by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 26, 2014 | Clothing-Tutorials, Craft, Sewing 101, Tutorial

Yay sewing tutorial! Today is part one of a shirt and skirt set remake! I’m classing this as being part of the Sew Fun series but keep in mind it’s not so much for complete beginners, it’s more intermediate so I’m going to be skipping some basic steps along the way. There will hopefully be more beginners tutorials as soon as I have time to sew.

The shirt is a very simple shift design. It relies completely on stretch to fit and has a stretch cotton for lining as well.

For this I am using purple stretch lace and pink stretch cotton for the lining. Keep in mind that I can’t advise you how much fabric you will need because it will depend on your size. I used less than 1m of each fabric for both the skirt and shirt if that gives an indication.

To get the pattern I laid out the old shirt and cut around it leaving 1cm for seam allowances. It is made up of a front piece, back piece and two sleeves. You can make one of these yourself by using the same basic shapes as I’m cutting out but fitted to your measurements.

Lottie was extremely helpful as per usual by napping on my fabric.

This is the front piece shape in both the main fabric and lining, note the large scoop neckline.

The back piece is the same with a much smaller curve for the neckline.

The sleeve pieces don’t require lining and the are standard cap sleeves.

As this is stretch lace I’m not bothering to top stitch most of the seams, just overlocking and sewing where it’s actually needed.

So to begin with I placed the front panel and it’s lining with the good sides together and overlocked the scoop neck. I did the same with the back pieces.

I folded them right way out again and you can see it creates a nice neckline seam.

Next, I overlocked the front and back pieces (and their linings) together at the shoulder seam.

I then opened it out again and pinned the cap sleeve along the seam. Sleeves can be a pain in the arse to sew straight so I always advise to do them as soon into the pattern as possible so you don’t find yourself trying to sew in tight spaces later.

I overlocked the sleeves on. Opened out flat you can see how it attached to the front and back section below.

This is what it looked like folded up the right way at this point.

I turned the whole thing inside out, overlocked the edges of the sleeves to avoid future fraying and then overlocked the shirt down the sides so it was sealed together into an actual shirt shape.

Then it was just a matter of tidying up. I added a hem to the bottom of the shirt.

And one to the edges of the sleeves. I also top stitched the neckline in place because it looked nicer.

Done!

This took me around half an hour to do including the cutting in the beginning so it really is a nice and easy pattern and if I ever have time I might churn out a heap of them in different colours because they are SO comfortable!

Looking good together!

And it looks good on too! In the next post I’ll show you how I did the matching skirt as well!

Lottie approves!

Warm Cable Knit Hot Water Bottle Pattern

by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 24, 2014 | Craft, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

Another cable knitting project today! I don’t know if it’s quite weather appropriate but it was definitely time for a new hot water bottle cover, the old one I made was totally past it’s used by date!

This is another cable knitting project but with fairly simple cables. I used 4mm needles with 8ply yarn

This was my original sketch for the idea…

Cast on 108 stitches.

Then follow this row pattern:

k3 p2 k2 p2, 2 strand cable with 2 stitches per cable, p2 k2 p2 k2 p2, 4 strand cable with 2 stitches per cable, p2 k2 p2 k2 p2, 2 strand cable with 2 stitches per cable, p2 k2 p2 k6 p2 k2 p2, 2 strand cable with 2 stitches per cable, p2 k2 p2 k2 p2, 4 strand cable with 2 stitches per cable, p2 k2 p2 k2 p2, 2 strand cable with 2 stitches per cable, p2 k2 p2 k3.

It looks really complicated when it’s all written like that but when you get in the rhythm, it’s quite easy because the second half is just a mirror image of the first half.