Contemporary Sewing Patterns for the Modern Maker
This Olive top that I made from offcuts of beautiful gauzy striped linen fulfils two important needs in my life. One it enables my scrap hoarding (you know how much I love sewing with scraps!) and two, for quite some time there has been a serious long sleeve top hole in my wardrobe.
I am so excited to finally be able to share with you my favourite Olive dress!! Yes, I went absolutely over the top nuts with fussy stripe placement and pattern matching on this make and I couldn’t be happier with the result!
One of my favourite things about the Olive sewing pattern is how much it lends itself to playing with print placement. You can be as pedantic or as casual as you’d like with this pattern… but obviously, I lent towards pedantic this time haha. As soon as I saw this striped cotton linen (which is available in my online store here) I fell in love with it. If I were to describe myself in colours, this would be it!
I’m not sure there are enough words to describe how much i love this Darling Ranges dress!
We started working on this dress at the end of last year – I had seen a lot of people making long sleeved Darling Ranges hacks and I thought it looked like an amazing idea! I wanted us to try it out in the studio so we could write a tutorial. I chose a grid check cotton flannel that I was obsessed with and thought would make a really snuggly warm dress for our coming colder months. But once it was sewn up I realised that this was just the wrong fabric to make a long sleeved Darling Ranges. It just looked all wrong – the grid check print felt very heavy and overwhelming with those sleeves. And to add insult to injury the fabric didn’t drape enough to make them look flattering at all.
So I hacked them off and we hemmed it in the standard pattern length with the usual elastic cuff finish, and then we all fell in love with it! And as sometimes happens this sample mysteriously disappeared into my wardrobe ;) Which was perfect timing because the cooler weather is approaching and I was beyond excited to finally be able to wear it today!
This dress was another reminder for me of how much of an impact fabric choice can have on your final make! It can honestly make it or break it! I still think a long sleeved Darling Ranges dress is an amazing idea and I can’t wait for us to try it again, but now I know that I need to be careful not to choose a print that won’t be overwhelm the garment and to choose a fabric with enough drape that the sleeves hang nicely.
How are all of your isolation making projects going my friends?
With how much time we are spending at home right now I am really excited to delve more into shoemaking and have lots of isolation shoemaking plans! Making my own shoes is so rewarding and has quickly become a favourite hobby of mine! I recently bought some shoe lasts as I think that will really help me up my game. I also just signed up for the I Can Make Shoes Beginners Guide to Home Shoe Making online course and can’t wait to start learning more techniques.
Like basically everyone else, I’ve been social distancing for a few weeks now, and with all that extra time at home I’ve found myself sewing more. A little bit here and a little bit there. I’ve decided to use this strangely quiet period of life to finish off all those projects that I’ve had planned for ages, or only gotten halfway through. And this special top is the first make as a result of my staying home and sewing efforts!
This fabric is so cool and I’ve had it for quite some time just waiting for the courage to cut into it. It’s a raw silk open weave, and the texture is unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything like it before! It’s soft and spongey and delicate and I am more in love with it than a person probably should be with fabric hehe.
I took my time with this make and thought really carefully about pattern choice and all the finishes as I knew it would be a challenging sew. I decided on a River top as I knew a loose fit garment with mostly straight seams would be a good fit for this fabric. Every step in construction has included it’s own unique challenges and I’ve really enjoyed figuring out how to tackle them all.
I thought i would share all about the process of making this top incase you ever want to use a fabric like this and are wondering how best to handle it!