I love using my personal handmade wardrobe to experiment with patterns before sharing them with you all – so these pieces might look a little familiar to you! I made these cropped black wide leg Ash jeans for myself during the testing process and found that I was pulling them out to wear over and over. Which means that when it came to sew the final samples for our model to wear, I ended up recreating basically the exact same pair except in her size! The fabric is from Spotlight and is actually the cheapest denim in my collection, and since these photos were taken has faded a lot to become a smokey grey colour.
I feel like in the sewing community we can rail on cheaper fabrics a lot, but my enjoyment of this pair of jeans has left me feeling like perhaps i should relax my snobbery a little bit. This isn’t be the best quality denim i’ve used, but there is honestly nothing wrong with it, and it’s worn really well. There’s definitely a lesson there :)
This River top is actually a bit of a refashion, or perhaps it’s a better description to say that i reused the fabric? A few years ago i made a Briar dress hack, and in the tutorial post i mentioned that i had cut my own version a little too short in the front. WELL, that cutting mistake meant that i never felt comfortable wearing that dress and i found myself only wearing it with leggings/jeans underneath. So it mostly just sat in my wardrobe. That seemed like a shame because the fabric is a gorgeous ponte knit from Tessuti, and I hate wasting good fabric on an unused garment. We’ve all been there right?!
I took a deep breath and cut it up and had just enough fabric to make this River top! I’m really thrilled with how it turned out, and I loved it so much that I ended up using this sample in our final photoshoot.
I used to hoard all my old projects, incase someday in the future I would be happy with them, but i’m learning to let go of these past makes to allow new ones to shine. Sometimes it can feel really upsetting when you don’t wear something as much as you thought you would, or if it didn’t turn out as planned, but reclaiming the fabric for a new project makes it feel like a win.
Now i just need to make my way through that box in the corner of my bedroom hahaha
MAKE THIS LOOK
Top: River top pattern + similar Ponte knit fabric
Jeans: Ash jeans pattern + black denim
