I managed it

I love the monthly stitch and particularly Indie pattern month but I didn’t think I was going to get a chance to participate this year as life has been crazy the last couple of months.  However, by the skin of my teeth, I am squeezing in an entry for Indie Royalty, which feels like an appropriate way to participate in a month celebrating indie patterns.  My patterns are the Sew Over it Vintage Shirt dress and Mouse House creations Julia cardigan.

 

The dress is made in a dashwood quilting cotton from the altitude collection at Sew Crafty.  This is a really gorgeous range of cottons which are perfect for a dress like this.  For years I mainly bought cottons like these as they are so easy to work with and come in amazing patterns and colours.  Then I moved away from them to other fabrics as I expanded the range of what I could sew and my stash was surprisingly low in this kind of fabric.  I really must rectify this as I do really enjoy working with them.

This is my fourth version of this dress (I really love this pattern) so I have the fit changes sorted by now, although I did have a few other changes that I made. I hadn’t ordered quite enough fabric so I made a couple of adjustments; I made the shirt a smidge narrower and made the sleeves short rather than 3/4 length with a cuff.  I then ventured out into the rain to take some photos which was much rougher on my photographer than on me, so thanks Nini.

The Julia cardigan was circling the blogosphere a few years ago and when I checked my harddrive, I’ve had it stored for 2 years without ever getting round to printing the pattern and making it.  Part of the reason for my lack of action was the difficulty in finding the right fabric.  I really didn’t want a polyester cardigan which ruled out a ponte or something similar.  Also as I really feel the cold, I wanted something with a wool content rather than just cotton.  Anyway, a few weeks ago I found the perfect black wool jersey in my local fabric shop and as my trusty RTW black cardigan has started sprouting holes, it felt like fate!

 

Cardigans and jumpers are still the items that I’ve made very few of and don’t see all that many patterns for, but I’m so excited I finally found the right combo!  This is such an easy pattern to put together and so speedy, I cut it out one evening and by lunchtime the next day, I had a new cardigan.  The only thing I don’t like about the instructions is that is isn’t clear that so much extra fabric is needed for the doubled over cardigan and I did not have enough fabric to do this.  It’s not a big deal in this black fabric as very little is visible but in another fabric I think I’d prefer to have the doubled over collar.

 

So although the weather in the UK is grim at the moment, its still too warm for this cardigan really, which is perfect as it means the wool is doing its job.  Winter Alexa will thank me.  I’m so pleased with my outfit and now off to celebrate a new outfit and the end of a fairly stressful period!  For other posts and info about me, please come visit my blog.