Yay! Finished my Weekender Bag..

Pffew, I finished this bag just in time to take it with me to Berlin. And I'm super happy I did! It is so roomy and all my clothes for a weekend trip fit perfectly, while the two zippered pockets make it easy to find the little things, like necklaces, that I often pack. 

It does wrinkle a bit at the top part near the zipper, but there's already three layers of interfacing there! And when it is stuffed to the brim you don't see it anymore :) 

I had to handstitch the lining and let me tell you, that is definitely not my favourite thing to do.. It does show a little bit, because at certain points it is not as neat as I had hoped. But I can't be bothered to redo it again.. I might have to at some point, becuase my boyfriend had to find a cable in my bag and I heard something make a stitch-ripping-sound.. Aargh! I did inspect it later but I don't see any tears or loose stitches.

Quite happy with the lining fabrics!

Berlin was awesome! We had such a good time, ate amazing hamburgers and stumbled upon some good parties and Mexican food! What else do you need? Oh yeah off course, yarn shops! We visited Handmade Berlin, which is a yarn and coffee shop in one! How cool is that? Even the guys were quite happy to spend some time there.. I bought some beautiful cotton yarn, which I'm hoping to make into a sweater.

Can't wait to knit this sweater!

I finished a knitted dinosaur present for a super cute baby a while ago, but I just realised I hadn't shown you guys, so tadaa.. Pterodactylus!

Oh Anna, you beautiful troubled one..

Tadaa, I present to you my finished Anna dress! I feel like I've been one of the last ones to make this super cool pattern, even though I've been sewing along with the sew-along.. I used my self dyed silk and I'm in love with how the colours turned out.  

I did have some issues with my dress, but those are completely my own fault.. First of all, my fabric was a bit too narrow and short, so I had to cut some skirt panels slightly off grain, which off course resulted in them stretching a bit while I was attaching the skirt to the top part.. So the darts don't really line up perfectly.

 Then.. I decided to use a shorter zipper because that was what I had in my stash.. After unpicking the zipper 4 times because the waist seamline didn't line up I got it perfectly alligned! But then, I tried to put the dress on and I couldn't get it to fit over my head! The zipper was too short.. So off I went to the store..

Thigh high split? Where?

When parking my bike close to the store I remembered my sister telling me something about bike-police  taking your bike when you don't park it in the right spot.. So I looked left and right, didn't see anyone and quickly bought the right zipper. When I came out of the store I saw three men and a pick up truck standing next to my bike! So I quickly ran there and they told me that they were about to take my bike cause I wasn't allowed to park there.. Luckily they were very kind and let my take my bike after I promised not to park there anymore.. Pfff!

Hand stitched split

All french seams

I used french seams throughout my dress, but at first I used a normal seam to attach the skirt to the top panel. When I had to unpick the zipper for the last time I decided to change the only normal seam to a french seam aswell. Glad I did that because it looks super neat now on the inside!

I hand stitched the split, which I'm quite happy with. My boss asked me if I could put on my deodorant using the split, since it's super high, haha! I wore this dress to a wedding and got a lot of compliments, even from the bride :) and some people told me that I could have been the bride.. I'll take that as a compliment too..

 And it looks great together with my Victoria blazer!

You can also follow me on Instagram now: @Revesmecanique, for more sewing/doggy pics!

What I'm working on, the Amy Butler Weekender bag

Yay, it's almost Berlin time! 

We'll be going for a long weekend with friends and I've been looking forward to this since august :) Also because today is my last day of working fulltime, which means that starting next week I'll have more time for sewing.. But first I need to organise some things, like my room, closet, fabric stash etc. I promise Mieke and Jonathan! (I've got some serious hoarder tendencies and sewing might not be the best hobby for that..)

Offcourse I needed to make something for my luggage. 

After seeing Stephanie's gorgeous pendleton/wool version I knew I had to make one too. I've had the Amy Butler Weekender bag pattern for quite some time now, but I couldn't find the right interfacing. It calls for Pellon interfacing in two different weights and we don't get that in The Netherlands. My long search came to an end when I found Quiltboutique, an online store and Dorien was super helpful in answering my interfacing questions. 

For those who want to know, Peltex resembles Vlieseline s80 and Shapeflex S 101 resembles Vlieseline G700.

Encouraging words from Amy..

Cutting out all the parts was the most work, there is quite some interfacing in this bag.. But the end result really shows it, since it's super sturdy all by itself! I wanted to use a Mexican blanket that my sister bought while traveling, but she didn't let me. She did have another tablecloth from Guatemala that I was allowed to cut up. It had cost her 0.30 Dollar, so that was a good deal!

For the straps and bottom I used black leather. I wanted to make the straps completely out of the leather, but I didn't have enough, therefore I used the tablecloth on the back side. My leather also wasn't long enough for the straps, so I added D rings. 

I'm almost finished now, my machine had no trouble at all with all the layers, but it was quite hard trying to manouvre the whole bag around the needle..

Then I decided it was a good idea to mark the position of the bag feet before sewing the bottom together, let me tell you, that's not a good idea.. The position was completely wrong, so now I have a nice bottom (hehe) with 4 extra holes in it.. 

And some red wine to help with the problems.. 

I'm not excited at all to sew the lining in by hand, I often think that sewing by hand is not as sturdy as machine stitches.. But with the stiffness of the bag I'm afraid I don't have a lot of options.. Wish me luck!

You can also follow me on Instagram now, for more sneak peaks/doggy pics/little updates/sewing related stuff.. @revesmecanique

Geometric sweater

Hi everyone! 

Sorry for this late post, but while last weekend I was hoping for some rain to test my Minoru jacket.. This weekend all we had was rain, while I was waiting for some sun to take pictures.. Since that didn't happen I did sew quite a lot, so I've made some progress with my fall sewing plans!

For now this is just a short post about one of my favourite sweaters so far.. 

A couple of years ago my sister went to Berlin and she got this super cool sweater there. It's one of her favourite sweaters and looks pretty worn by now. So with the Kollabora Closet Copy challenge in mind I decided to replicate it.. 

It was quite a bit of a puzzle, because the shoulder seams are integrated in the hood seam and the side seams are moved forward a bit, so that it folds nicely. I've sewed it completely on my serger and after I got the pattern right it was a super quick make. Most of the seams are hidden, which makes for a nice clean look. The only thing is that I didn't cut the cuffs the right way, so next time I'll do that differently..

I added a snap closure instead of a loop, which the original sweater has, but I just couldn't really be bothered with a loop and took the easy route.

After looking at the pics of my sweater and my sisters one, I think I need to make her a new one too, maybe for christmas?

Next up will probably be my finished Drape Drape shirt, but as I've also finished two Hot Cocoa Sweaters from Dixie DIY plans might change..
I've been sewing along with the Anna Dress Sewalong, but I already finished mine, so that one will be coming soon too :)

My waterproof Minoru and the give-away winner!

Hi guys!

Thank you all so much for the super sweet comments on my Watson jacket! It was awesome reading all your fabric ideas and plans.. So first things first, the winner of the Watson pattern is.... 

Drumroll please....

Lisette! She blogs at What Would Nancy Drew Wear and she was super sweet to let me borrow one of her pictures from the meet-up.. Please email me your details at Revesmecanique (at) gmail.com and I'll email them to Katie from Papercut Patterns!

And then, my next make, another jacket! I've wanted to sew up the Minoru jacket ever since I saw Lladybirds version in real live at the meet-up. I followed the Sew-along and it was super helpful.

Finished Minoru

I cut a size 6, even though the hip width is too wide for me. I figured I'd just try and see how I would like it. For my next jacket I will take it in a bit at the hips, as it stands out a bit right now. 

I used waterproof fabric that I got in Italy for 3.5 Euro's per meter, (discounted 50%) so that was super nice! I'm really happy with the colour, even though it might not be the best colour for me in winter..

To show you how waterproof it really is we did a little experiment this afternoon.. For once we had no rain in The Netherlands for a whole weekend, so we had to simulate some! (Which my sister was super happy to do) At first I was like, wtf aaarrgh! But then I realised that my jacket was actually waterproof and I could relax a bit.

Good result right? Considering she poured like 4 watering cans (gieters in Dutch) on me..

This jacket will mainly be used for walking the dogs (often in the rain), so I added side pockets into which the doggy-poo bags fit. I followed Amy's tutorial on how to add side pockets.
The instructions were easy to follow, especially with all the pics on the Sew-along. I noticed I was short on thread, and two sewing supply stores didn't have the same colour as I was using, so I switched to using the bobbin as top thread and use another close matching colour as the bottom thread. For topstitching I used the triple top stitching setting on my machine which worked fine. Another issue I had is that the zipper which was supposed to go in the collar didn't fit, it was too small, so I ended up using my front zipper and then having to go back to the store to get another long zipper. I still don't know where I went wrong, but in the end it worked out fine.

Marking the elastic casing

For the lining I used a cotton, only the sleeves were lined with a much more slippery polyester, which I still had in my stash. I changed the internal pocket size, so it would fit my phone. Here are some close-ups for the internal details.. 

Sleeve lining..

Velcro closure pocket 

Triple topstitching 

The hood, which can be hidden into the collar

Overall I'm super happy with my jacket and can't wait to bring it with me to Berlin in 2 weeks!

 My next Minoru will be a thin wool version, I'm thinking of adding some extra layering, so it will be more winter appropriate..