Loungewear

Lasst week I wrote about making up these jersey trousers from Burdastyle.com. I was very inspired by a pair of trousers I've seen on the House of Lola site. I thought they wouldn't take long to finish and they didn't!

Source: burdastyle.com via Johanna on Pinterest

Source: houseoflola.se via Johanna on Pinterest

I cut the fabric yesterday late afternoon and was finished by 7.30pm. I made some changes to the pattern. Since most Burdastyle patterns go up to size EU44 I doubted that the trousers would fit since I'm more of a size EU46. So I compared the pattern pieces tto another pattern I had to see what I should change. I decided to add 4 cm to the sides both on back and front pieces. I also made the leg cuffs a little longer, originally the were 19 cm but I made them 25 cm (I have pretty long legs and HATE too short trousers). I also made the waistband a little wider, 10 cm instead of 7 cm (do not feel comfortable in too lowcut trousers).

 

 

I'm happy with the trousers, they're very comfy! But I think I wouldn't have had to add those 4x4 cm, because they are bigger than I had expected, and that's even after taking them in  4-5 cm in the front and back. well, it's a lesson learned if I make them again. I was lazy though and didn't pre-wash the fabric, so maybe they will shrink a little when I wash them.

Here are the trousers combined with my Casual cardi from Ottobre. I feel that I look good even though I'm only lounging about at home in my loungewear... :)

Anyway, I totally recommend the pattern from making some stylish sweat pants.

BTW, we had a really lousy weekend last weekend (away from home and Little Red got really ill, had to visit the emergency room, she could hardly breathe because of a bad case of tonsillitis caused by streptococci, which she later transferred to me, hello tonsillitis!) but before everything tirned ugly I had time to visit a fabric store close to my sister's house. I found some great fabric for only £3/metre. I bought six different fabrics, a total of 14 metres! And some really cheap zippers too. Yay! (Little Red is way better now, and me too, after getting some lovely penicillin. That stuff rocks! BUT you mustn't overuse it so the bacteria become immune.)

Bye for now,

Johanna

Coincidence?

A friend at work has recently started selling these wonderful clothes from House of Lola. I like the style and clothes A LOT, but they are quite expensive so I haven't bought any. These are my favourites so far:

Source: houseoflola.se via Johanna on Pinterest

Source: houseoflola.se via Johanna on Pinterest

Source: houseoflola.se via Johanna on Pinterest

These clothes have been on my mind for a while and yesterday when I picked up the new Burda magazine I found these trousers:

Source: burdastyle.com via Johanna on Pinterest

Lucky coincidence?! Don't they look very similar to the House of Lola trousers? Mhm, that's what I thought, so why not make those gorgeous trousers myself?!

I have already bought the fabric needed: black cotton jersey and knit ribbing, and I have traced the pattern. We'll see if I have time to do more before the weekend, we're going away to visit one of my sisters and that takes some preparation, packing and stuff. So I'd better aim to finish and show them next week.

BTW, if you live in Sweden and want the Sewaholic patterns, but have hesitated to get them from overseas, they are now available from Fagert.se. Good, huh?!

I'm very much into trousers at the moment, and have found these from Onion, which I'm interested to make in a comfy stretchy fabric:

Source: shoponion.com via Johanna on Pinterest

I'm not a big fan of pleats in the front of the trousers, but I like that the waistband is a little wider (deeper, longer, higher?) and so the pleats are set a little lower. I'm thinking of buying the pattern and use the stretchy black fabric I bought a while ago to use for skinny trousers. What do you think, is this a style you like?

Bye for now,

Johanna

PS Taking it little slow with the blog because I'm dead tired most evenings and don't have energy for sewing and therefore don't have much to blog about. Bear with me and I will hopefully get back to normal soon enough.

Ottobre projects - one finished

I've been working on my Ottobre projects, I told you about the Concerto dress the other day, but I've also been working on the cardigan.

First the dress,  I promised pictures of the pretty dress made of horrible fabric. As I said before, the print isn't bad, but the quality of the fabric is awful.

Look at the collar, isn't it cute?! It makes the whole dress. There were some double darts in the front and back of the dress, but I omitted them, because I don't want the dress to be too tight.

I'm thinking of putting in some lining in the dress, to make the dress wearable, because the fabric is quite itchy.

Enough about the dress, because here's something I'm REALLY happy with, my cardigan!!!

It is supercomfy and I feel good in it. It feels like I look good while wearing it. I like that it's long. It was really easy to put together and I used two new techniques on my sewing machine for this. One, I sewed on the buttons  with the sewing machine, jeeze how fast and easy that was. But I almost ruined one of the buttons before I realised that I had forgot to lower the feed dogs. Two, I discovered my sewing machines has some cover stitches and I used one of them to finish most of the edges, like the hem, in the front and round the hood. It looks SOOOOOO professional.

I totally recommend this pattern, it was easy and fast to sew up, especially if you have an overlocker.

Got to go now, bye!

Johanna

Trousers from Burda magazine

A while ago I decided to make trousers. I thought I'd start with something easy, straightforward, since I haven't sewn trousers in 20-25 years (god, I'm getting old...). My choice was a pattern from the Burda magazine 10/2012 no. 139. They're wide and high-waisted, which I've realised that I like a lot.

Source: burda style

There's also some elastic at the waist in the back, which is good, because I don't like it when trousers sit too tight at the waist.

Anyway, here are my trousers...

They don't look like much, but they are very comfortable and it's great to get to decide on the length of the trousers yourself. I have very long legs, so it can be difficult to finds trousers that are long enough, especially since I hate trousers that are too short.

Did I make any alterations? Yes, one. I wasn't too fond of those pleats in the front, so I sewed them down.

Maybe it doesn't show in the photo, but those are the sewed down pleats.

They were pretty easy to put together, but I felt a bit intimidated by the zipper, But then I remembered a totally awesome tutorial on Coletterie. I followed the tutorial and that made putting in the zipper a total breeze.

Now I feel ready to sew more trousers and I have some great black fabric lined up.

Later,

Johanna