For me, winter means purple

I’m not sure why, but it’s my go-to colour in winter. Purple, that is. Purple coat, purple scarf and gloves, purple jerseys, purple tights, purple shoes. (Don’t worry, not all together. Or not most of the time, anyway. 😉 )

So when the days were getting colder, and I felt the need to make a new cardigan (since for some reason almost all of mine are RTW ones), purple ended up being the colour that was pulled out of my stash.

(To be fair, I did pull out a burgundy merino as well, but the purple won out in the end.)

Since I’m on a bit of an indie-patterns-I-can-still-wear-while-pregnant kick, I pulled out my trusty Papercut Coppelia cardi pattern (yet again – sorry! I promise I’m two thirds of the way through making up a non-Papercut pattern at the moment, so you’ll get to see that next).

Would you believe this is the first and only time I’ve made it by actually following all the instructions? That’s right, no modifications at all. The sleeves are the length the pattern calls for them to be (nice and long, by the way! Having suffered through my teenage years with sleeves always ending before my wrist bone, I am rather appreciative of sleeves-that-are-slightly-too-long. Over-correcting? Maybe. But they’re also super snuggly when it gets cold.).

The cardi is the length the pattern told it to be (rather than dress length or hip length). Yep, I actually followed it all!

And I’m rather happy with the result.

In fact, I kinda made this back near the start of May, since I needed some me-made cardis to wear during Me-Made-May (plus it was Sew Stretchy month over at The Monthly Stitch, so it tied in nicely to both challenges), but I’ve been wearing it so much since it ended up in the wash every weekend and as a result I never quite managed to get photos of it.

But the weekend just gone, the lovely Nikki and I caught up for tea and cake and ventured up to Truby King gardens for a little photo shoot. (Wait till you see the dress she had finished making – I want it!!)

Check out that bump – it just keeps on growin’! Luckily since this is a wrap style, it’ll do good for quite a while. And a waist-length style, so I can always wear it pulled up a bit in the front to go over/around ‘the bump’.

Now, if you think this cardi is looking a little too big, I must admit, you’d be right. I’m not sure what happened there. I made it the same size as my Strawberry Shortcake Coppelia, and that fits perfectly. I can only assume it was the fabric – quite a thick wool blend, it just seems to want to be bigger than it’s meant to be. But hey, I’ll be bigger soon as well, so we’ll be perfectly matched. (And heck knows, it hasn’t stopped me wearing it a few times each week!)

Oh, and can I just point out the blue-ness of my hair? I’m rather happy with the colour at the moment – it’s my new favourite. Midnight Blue from Directions. I’ve been playing around with a couple of different shades of blue lately, and I’m definitely leaning towards the darker shades on me. For the moment, anyway. 😉

Strawberry Shortcake Coppelia

Hey hey! Ready for some more Twinsies sewing?

While we were waiting on the votes for what we sew next to roll in, Mel and I caught up to get pics of our latest Twinsies creation – the Coppelia wrap cardigan from Papercut patterns!

Papercut’s Coppelia wrap cardigan

(Spoiler: this won’t be the last one of these you see on here. I may be in love with this pattern. More are planned for the fast-approaching winter, oh yes.)

Now, we always end up with rather different looking garments when we do our Twinsies creations, but I think this time is the most diverse yet! Mel lengthened her Coppelia and the waist ties. I shortened the sleeves on my one. Two very different results, no? (This is what I love the most about Twinsie sewing – we don’t talk much beforehand about what we’re doing, so it’s always a surprise to see what the other one has come up with when we meet up to do our joint photo shoots. As you can imagine, there’s lots of comparing and exclaiming going on at that point.)

(Despite appearances, we didn’t co-ordinate our outfits/hair. Even though my hair matches Mel’s top and the top she’s wearing under her Coppelia matches my Coppelia. Happy accidents for co-ordinated photos, let’s just go with that, ok?)

This is actually the second Coppelia I’ve made – the first was a gift for one of my sisters-in-law for Christmas, which I don’t have a photo of yet. (Mum, if you’re reading this, can you go get photos for me? Thanks! 😉 ) I lengthened that one though, so this is the first one I’ve made at the ‘proper’ short length.

(Conveniently, I also tried on the one I made for my sister-in-law, and found I needed to go down a size from what I was expecting to cut out, as it’s a looser fitting style that I thought it would be. Bonus fitting practice while gift making = all ’round win.)

This is a crazy quick and easy pattern to put together, with nice neat edges due to all the wide hem finishes and the wrist cuffs (if, like Mel, you make it with the full sleeve-length). Very satisfying to whip up, this one was!

I made my one out of a lightweight merino wool, purchased from the Levana textile outlet a year or so ago. I found three rectangular pieces of this gorgeous wide red-and-pink stripe in the remnant bin, for the grand sum of 50c a piece (crazy cheap!!). So naturally, I snaffled them up fast and clung on to them until I figured out what to use them for. (I mean c’mon – how often do you come across pink-and-red-wide-striped merino?!? Yeah, not often. Gotta get that stuff when you can.)

Since I only had the three (reasonably small) remnants, cutting this one out was a bit of a challenge! (In fact, I think it took longer to cut out than it did to sew. Hmmm.) With the raglan sleeves, I wanted the stripes to meet where the sleeves joined the body, so there was a fair bit of careful pattern placement to figure out how to make that happen, while still having enough fabric for the bindings and ties. Oh yes, let me tell you now – there was not a lot of fabric left when I was done! (That’s also what dictated the sleeve length – that was all I had. Indeed.)

I’m pretty proud of how it turned out though – kinda hard to see in these photos, but those stripes, they match up well. And luckily I could get the bindings out of the red rather than the pink, because let’s face it, pale pink next to my skin just Doesn’t Suit Me. At All. (Even though occasionally I forget about that fact. Oops.)

Only alteration I made was stretching the bands a bit when attaching them around the neckline, to make sure they didn’t start to sag open a bit over time. That worked out well – it’s a nice, close fit. (I think I chopped about 5cm off each end of the neck band once I’d attached it? Can’t quite recall though, may have been slightly less….)

This hits me slightly below the waist – perfect for wearing with 1950’s dresses and skirts. (I can also attest that it layers well over long-sleeved tops on colder days.)

Mel and I met up with the lovely Nikki for lunch to get these photos – picnicking out on the grounds of parliament, then posing with trees. Always a good thing to do on a break from work, no? 😉

(Big thanks to Nikki for playing photographer for us!)

And we can’t have a Papercut Twinsies photo shoot without the ‘Papercut love’ pose, now can we? This time, sitting in a tree. Just because we (sort of) could. Even though we were wearing high heels at the time and the tree was on a slope. Coz that’s the sort of thing we do for you guys.