Plum corduroy skirt

I sewed a plum corduroy skirt using a Prima Pattern (New Year 2001) from my collection.

I wanted something which would work with the dark plum corduroy fabric and this pattern was designed for denim and corduroy.

This is a thick plum corduroy with a fine whale. It's heavy. I sewed it with a jeans needle which worked fine. Hand sewing the inside of the waistband was so hard going I ended up with both my thumb and forefinger bleeding!

I lengthened the pattern by 4 inches, which turned out to be too much so I was able to do a really deep (2" hem).

I also added 4 darts to the back waist to get a better fit and adjusted the waistband accordingly. I inserted the invisible zip using the new method I learned at the Weekend Sewing Club.

Note: Prima magazine is a UK monthly women's magazine. For mail subscribers it includes a free sewing pattern, for those who buy it at the newsagent, you can send off for the pattern. The pattern can often be found on ebay and some recent ones can be purchased from the publisher's site.

Soft teal baby cord shirt

 Many years ago I bought a length of soft blue/grey/teal babycord with a section of beading and embroidery across it.

I think I'd intended to make a gathered skirt, but as I don't really wear them it stayed uncut in my stash.

It has now been turned into a shirt. To maximise the embroidered section I cut the front and back with the detail running near the hem, the sleeves, collar and cuffs are plain, though I did need to line the cuffs with a contrast scrap of paisley cotton from Auntie Joy's stash.

front

side

fabric details

cuff detail

back

For the pattern I used the Prima March 2020 shirtdress cut down to a shirt. It is a very economical pattern for short yardages.

Sparkles

Inspired by the lighting at a recent concert by Icelandic band Sigur Rós I decided to make a shirt from black babycord with embroidery and sequins. 

I used some plain black baby cord for the under collar, collar stand and lower back, but was able to get the other pieces out of the 1.2 metres of embellished fabric.

To echo the embroidery and sequin embellishment I chose these amber coloured buttons I bought some years ago from Bonds of Farsley (closed in 2019) and stitched them on with some lovely Ruby coloured Sylko40 thread.

The pattern I used was one I have used before several times, the shirtdress pattern from March 2020 Prima Magazine (a UK women's magazine) shortened to be a long shirt.

The only change I made was to cut the upper back from the embellished fabric, and the lower back from plain black fabric.