Navy men's shorts

Very simple shorts for DBF

They have 2 inseam pockets, one back patch pocket, elastic waist and drawstring.
I made the drawstring eyelets on the machine.

I used a really old pattern from 1990 which I think someone gave me, or maybe I bought in a charity shop.
The only alteration I made was to add the drawstring as well as the elastic. And to go for all the same colour.
If I can get him to model them I will share.

Wear a hat

Think I might replace the black band with something more fun - leopard print perhaps?

Soft Autumn Fan

With the Soft Autumn Fan. I think I could wear some warm pinks and some more blue/green tones which are not on here, but generally I think its pretty good.

Here's a link to the original Muted with slight leaning to Warm done by Fabrickated.

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In September 2015 Kate from Fabrickated draped me to see which colour season was best, you can read about that by clicking on the link above.
Kate wrote afterwards "You have quite a mixture of cool eyes, warmer lips and skin, deep hair and light skin, so you have all of these things going on to some extent. But the one constant was that muted was always better than bright."
After the draping Kate gave me a colour photocopy of a fabric fan which looked like this,

I've since lost it and so bought the above fan on Amazon from Germany as being the nearest commercially available fan - Soft Autumn is Muted and slightly Warm.

So its not as simple as the colour of your eyes which drive what colours work for you. Mine are green (green blue).
I don't know if Kate still drapes people as its a while since she did mine and I've not seen it mentioned on her blog.

Summer Sea

Navy column with a warmer cadet blue cardigan and necklace. The trousers are thrifted and altered, the top I sewed myself from knit fabric and the cardigan I made myself from an Ikea Gurli throw.

I have to be careful with blue that its deep, slightly smoky and/or warm.
Sky blue and cobalt blue are terrible on me. Sometimes I add orange accessories to warm it up, but gold and tan work well too.

Hairstyle changes

I started this maybe 18 months ago. Start top left and work round anticlockwise following the arrows.

1. With original straight across fringe and coloured hair.
2. Started growing fringe out and parting it to give longer face, but mostly pulled back into ponytail!
3. cut to shoulder length and with some layers added.
4. grew the fringe out some more layers.
5. with the natural grey showing through.

Naturally going grey

Hi a few people were interested in the approach I'm taking re going grey.

I previously used a semi permanent hair colour in a medium warm brown and before that a slightly darker one with red tones. They worked well with my green eyes and allowed me to wear some brighter and warmer colours.

I had a few friends who had coloured their hair dark brown for a long time and were having a lot of trouble with regrowth. I decided that whilst I was still only slightly grey I would stop colouring altogether and let the natural grey come through. That was over 18 months ago.

At the same time I also started to grow out my fringe (bangs) and had the overall length gradually trimmed and layers added. It is naturally wavy and I embrace that too.

I did have a little bit of residual colour in the ends but they were gradually cut out, and it wasn't very obvious as I had stuck close to my actual hair colour in the first place.

I don't have any anxiety about getting older, the birthdays are just numbers and my changing hair (and body) are a new journey I'm embracing. I'm calmer and more confident than I was when I was younger and have an interesting life.
So as those new white hairs come in I'm working with them, adding textured and pinstriped items to the wardrobe which have depth of colour like my darker hair but those lighter elements for the white ones.

I would like to see more styling tips for those with parially grey hair, mostly advice is for those with brown or grey not a bit of both!

New Soft Autumn Colour Fan

Here's my new Soft Autumn Colour Fan

I love it. Hopefully it will help my colour and fabric choices going forwards.

Experimenting with my style

A collage of the last week

more fun to come
(Only some things are self sewn, other are thrifted or purchased new)

Summer Sea: reworked blue top

So I cut all the serging off, unpicked any extra seaming, cut the hems off, cut the shoulder seams off, recut the back, and resewed and rehemmed the whole thing inside out. I left the panel seams as they were and just topstitched them to keep them in place.

I am pleased with the result. The fit is much better and the contrast level in the garment is also much better. I can imagine wearing this one. The inside is still VERY striped!

As an aside I thought ages ago about making this up with the darker softer side as the outside, but somehow allowed that gut feeling to be overcome by doing it the 'proper way'. Maybe I should've listened!

(Also wondering if I need to add a little something, button or tab or flower or .... at that point on the neckline where its pulled slightly by the panels meeting. Thoughts?)

Summer Sea - Alterations proceeding well

No photos at the moment however the alterations are proceding well.

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Dress fix - cut the bodice off just above the section where it was too tight, added the skirt section from the too large skirt (having removed the elastic). Topstitched the seam open for a nice detail.
Looser fit works well on, may wish to take in centre back seam for sway back, however nice with jacket over or partially elastic belt.

Skirt fix - repurposed the skirt from the dress as a skirt, reusing the elastic from the original skirt. Nice almost maxi skirt with slimming fit over the hips. (Excuse bad picture)

Trousers fix - scooped the crotch. Seems better at the back though almost want to scoop even more.

RTW navy trousers fix - also scooped the crotch. Improved the fit of these as well. Scooping the crotch is going to be my alteration of choice for RTW and self sewn trousers.

Barcode striped tee, cut apart and started reassembling inside out - this one will take a while! So far I have cut all the seams and hems off, pressed everything, topstitched down the panel seams on the front (which I'm keeping inside out as a feature) and pressed the neckband back flat and resewed the neckband seam. So still have the assembly of a whole garment left to do!

Plans but no progress

Work has been busy this week and I've been watching TV in the evenings after getting home late most nights.
To make the cadigan jacket from a throw I switched the thread on the overlocker and sewing machine over to cadet blue and then found, overlocked raw edges and washed some remnants of cadet blue fabric (a non stretch twill mystery mix of some sort). It washed up beautifully so I measured the odd shaped pieces and hatched a plan.

There are 4 pieces of fabric,
90cm + 60cm - jacket, I thought New Look 6481

1.6m - trousers, I thought Burda 05/2017 #103

1m - skirt, I thought my old favourite Butterick 3972. I would cut this at the end as it has smallish odd shaped pieces which can fit round other things.

I'd need to do some alterations to the jacket, I'd need to trace and slightly alter the trousers, I could just cut and sew the skirt.

However I have not yet done the planned alterations to the navy pieces which I already sewed. So I think I will be disciplined and switch the thread back to navy and get those done.

Summer Sea

Cardigan jacket - Doesn't need any alterations.

Skirt - is a bit too large

Dress - is a bit tight around the tummy.

Top - Needs remaking inside out for a softer stripe

Trousers - need the crotch scooping for a better rear fit.

I shall go and change the thread back to navy now!

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PS something seems to be wrong with Stitchers Guild, though I'm not sure what. I know they were adding a gallery for the SWAP photos, so maybe that has caused an issue.

Leaf Print Jersey

I bought this 180cm wide leaf print jersey from Tony the Monday Market Man.

Leaves are my absolutely favourite motif.

So although I have quite a lot of fabric already I did buy both colourways of this, 2 metres of each as I think the scraps could be mixed together with each other or with plains in the various colours. All wonderfully in my colour palette.

This one has a taupe background (rather washed out in the centre by the flash, the real colour is on the right hand edge). The other colours are turquoise, cadet blue, dark brown and flashes of yellow.

The other version has a dark green background with leaves in white, turquoise, cadet blue and teal.

They are both good on me but the dark green background is partiularly nice and works well with the unfinished olive green jacket.

May Fabric Purchases

I went along to Economy Fabrics recently and bought some 2 inch elastic plus some fabrics, which I'll share here.

Here we have some marine navy man-made blue knit, which is strangely narrow (but not in a tube)
also some turquoise cotton knit (which is greener than the Summer Sea blue despite the photo)
and a lovely viscose knit with brown, olive and lime green on a white background. Hopefully this will co-ordinate with the olive green safari jacket should I ever finish it!

This picture includes a rather wrinkled and very bright coral pink jersey knit, a white and soft pink marled knit (quite sheer) and a remnant of the most gorgeous georgette, which will probably be a scarf.

And finally two 1m pieces of cotton stamps print fabric for non clothing sewing, though an earlier customer apparently used the second one for a blouse with a red collar! I plan to use the Christmas one to trim Christmas stockings and the other also as trim maybe on shopping bags.

I might decide to enliven the summer sea with some nice coral.

Summer Sea (navy and cadet blue): Blue cardigan

Here's the last item in the Summer Sea collection (I'm also including the RTW top with long sleeves shown under the cardigan here) which is a cardigan jacket made from an ikea throw.

Using my old favoutire Prima jacket adapated a bit.

A similar pattern to this which is more easily available would be McCall's 6084

Because of the marl in the cardigan it would go with black or navy, white and various shades of blue and turquoise quite easily. I found 5 necklaces from the necklace wall which would work with it and different tops.
Thankfully the fit on this is fine. The acrylic does have a tendency to stretch out on the shoulders and neckline so I stabilised this version with some blue decorative briad across the shoulders and back neck.

Here's me assembling the collection all together, it'll be great once I've tweaked the fit of the other pieces.

I've put the stripe top in both sides out, but I'm pretty sure its going to get remade inside out. Plus I'm not buying those shoes.

Summer Sea (navy and cadet blue): Navy skirt

This is the most boring item in the collection, and like all the others needs some alterations (sigh).

Ages ago I had a RTW knit dress. It had a waist seam and a lovely skirt which flared slightly and draped beautifully. I traced the skirt off at the time so I could add it to my favourite tops to make a dress.The dress has long gone but I kept the tracing.
I've not used the skirt panel for a while so when I came to this ponte skirt I added a bit to the sides and the hem and then added a hidden elastic waist.
The end result is too big. Obviously I made the elastic the right length so it stays up but it is just too big so will need some sort of alteration. It may get morphed onto the dress where the waist is a bit tight (sigh) and a new waistband cut for the skirt off the dress and made into a skirt?
Anyway we'll see how that works out next week sometime. Other wise I can just unpick the elastic and take the skirt in a bit, no biggie.
Once that's done it should be handy for the two navy wardrobe orphan jackets and a colourful blouse to make a nice outfit.
I've been looking at navy sandals, wedges and nude wedges as good shoes really help the outfit. Problem is can I walk in them?

I'll keep you posted
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I went to George at Asda living after work and tried the shoes on. They were not suitable so I won't be buying them. The size 6 (euro 39) were too large and the size 5 (euro 38) were too small. The section across the toes seemed very low cut also.
I tried a lot of other shoes on also and then I bought these.

Off to see what else I have in Leopard darlings!