FOs: New Look 6216 and Grainline Moss

Hello everybody, today I'm here to share with you the most boring piece of clothing I have ever made. Settle down and feast your eyes upon my grey t-shirt!

I swear this looks way less wonky when I'm not awkwardly posing for the camera!

It has everything you'd want out of a grey t-shirt. It's grey, it fits and it goes with most of my stuff. Hooray! It was also really quick to make and uses hardly any fabric. Double hooray! I attempted to make it a little more interesting by adding a pocket but I didn't do a great job of sewing it on and the placing was really weird so it ended up covering the side of one boob before disappearing under my armpit so I took it straight off again. The pattern also has a long sleeved version and one without the sleeve bands and I can see myself trying those out soon too. More boring t-shirt posts coming up soon then, please contain yourselves.

Just to try and marginally raise the interest level of this post I thought I'd throw in another recent FO. Made from a pattern I've used quite recently and leftover fabric from my last project this is also quite boring but probably a step up from a grey t-shirt.

Check out how nicely the dogs line up at the top of my fly, a happy accident!

 After finishing Cassie's trousers I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I had enough fabric left to make a Moss Skirt for me. Seeing as I only bought 1 metre I was really quite impressed. I made the pocket linings and the inside of the waistband out of some scraps from another project though because my metre didn't quite stretch that far. I'm really pleased with this skirt, apart from a little whoops with the pockets it's really neatly constructed and the front fly is much better than on my last one. I used a proper jeans button on this one too as well so it looks really fancy. It looks pretty good with my very interesting grey t-shirt too. Hooray for outfits!

FO: Grainline Moss Skirt

A while back I started to think more carefully about the things that I make, I often spend many hours knitting and sewing and I wasn't always ending up with things that I would wear that often. There are so many patterns and wonderful projects out there that catch my eye and I totally need, like right now that actually won't be useful parts of my wardrobe. Identifying patterns that will go nicely with the clothes I already have and are styles that I wear often has become really important for me. As soon as I saw the Grainline Moss pattern I knew that it was very much the wardrobe builder I was looking for. I love little denim skirts for all year round, bare legged in summer and with leggings or woolly tights in winter.

My first attempt at this pattern was a total disaster. I have no idea exactly where I went wrong, but it was just very very wrong. The bit I was worrying about, my first front fly, went in reasonably problem free but the front and back didn't match up and in fudging that the pockets ended up weird and then the waistband didn't fit on. It was there that I finally gave up. This time I took a lot more care just to be sure the same thing didn't happen again. I think it may have been the 1/2" seam allowance that did me in the first time so I sewed the whole thing on my overlocker this time because it was easier to sew the smaller seam allowance without forgetting and accidentally sewing the usual 5/8" on the odd seam. This also meant that I could keep my sewing machine ready for top stitching which I did with a double plain/sparkly thread combo again. This time with a bright metallic blue. Mmmmm, shiny!

I did still have a couple of issues with this skirt. My front fly has a weird pucker at the bottom, I unpicked and resewed it so many times but it kept coming out funky so I decided to leave it and do better next time. I'll be trying out a different method too. The waistband was also an issue again, it was just far too short but I managed to stretch it to fit and it looks fine. I've had this problem a couple of times recently and I'm starting to suspect that the problem is actually my interfacing pulling everything in when I iron it on. Time to try some different stuff to see if that helps.

Other than that I love this skirt. It is exactly my style, is really comfortable and goes really nicely with my work polo shirts. I'll definitely be making up a few of these in the future. Once I've upped my front fly game I can see me being able to churn out one of these in a few hours. In fact., I love this skirt so much that I'm just about to cast on a sweater to wear with it.