A pairing of Mind and Soul

Oh yeah, it’s an exciting week for a Papercut fangirl like myself – new patterns!!!!!

Katie from Papercut released her new collection on Friday. Called ‘Tri‘, it’s a three-piece collection of active/lounge wear – trousers, tank top/crop top, and a swimsuit. Anima, Pneuma, and Soma – ‘mind’, ‘soul’ and ‘body’. (There’s also updated versions of four of her older patterns, now all with active/lounge wear variations.)

And Mel and I were privileged enough to be asked to test the patterns before they launched – yay!

(I love pattern testing. I totally appeals to the geek in me, checking over instructions, making sure notches are matching up, all that sort of stuff. Plus, you know, the added bonus of seeing things before other people, haha!)

And now, since the patterns have officially launched, we can show what we made!

To start with – the Anima/Pneuma (‘mind’ and ‘soul’) combination.

I made up the Anima pants in a black something-or-other. (I admit it – I have no idea what this fabric is, or even where it came from. It just appeared in my stash, somehow. It’s a synthetic, thick with a bit of stretch. Yeah, coz you know, that helps identify it. Not. Whatever.) Since it’s the start of winter over here, I chose to make up the full-length version with cuffs at the ankle.

Anima pants line drawings

This pattern? It’s a dream to make up. I think it took me only about 1.5 hours from when I finished cutting it out to when I was pulling on my new, finished Anima pants. Win!

(Admittedly, I did have an encounter with a broken needle in that 1.5 hours. Totally my fault – I accidentally let go of one end of the waistband elastic when I was pulling it tight while topstitching. Oops. I’m calling it a casualty of creativity. It was probably due to be changed for another needle anyway.)

This pattern has a false fly front, front pockets, and a wide elastic waistband. The pattern calls for a decorative drawstring to be put in the waistband, but since drawstrings annoy me and I always take them out of any ready-to-wear track pants I buy, I didn’t bother putting it in.

The fit is good – enough ease around the seat and thighs to allow easy movement while exercising, and nice and tight around the ankle so when you’re doing things like pilates you don’t have to worry about your trousers slipping up around your knees and flapping around when you’re doing all those graceful (*cough cough*) legs-in-the-air moves. I know this works, coz I wore them to do pilates the other day, and they were a total win. 🙂

(Also, I am extremely out of practice at doing cartwheels. Gah.)

There are options for below-the-knee length (which Mel made – I am totally inspired to copy her coz her pair looks fantastic!) and shorts length as well. I suspect I’ll never be buying RTW exercise trousers ever again….

The Pneuma tank is a really interesting design. A crop top, with supportive elastic underneath and a tight fit, with an (optional) overtop attached at points at the front and back. The overtop is looser and designed to drape down at the back and underarms, giving coverage if you don’t feel like showing off your stomach while exercising, while at the same time nice and lightweight and floaty so plenty of air flow when you’re working out. (Again, this works well – I also wore the top to pilates the other day, and it kept me nice and cool while the crop top gave me good support. I did have to tuck it into the trousers though, as the looser nature of the overtank means it tends to ride up when you do upside-down type movements.)

Pneuma tank line drawings

My favourite detail on the top is the cross-over straps. Made of bra strapping, they’re nice and firm, while also being comfortable to wear. Plus, they cross over at the back! Love it – the top feels super secure to wear, while also leaving arms free to move. Seriously folks – I’m looking forward to being able to go running again, as something like this (support, freedom of movement for arms, and plenty of air flow) is exactly what I want!

Mel and I caught up with Nikki yesterday and ran around the grounds of the War Memorial to get some photos. Such a gorgeous day it was, too! Beautiful bright blue skies and sunshine, an absolutely stunner. Gotta love it when you get weather like that in winter. 🙂

And, you know, coz it was a twinsies photo shoot, we may have gotten lots of photos. Sorry not sorry. What can I say? We had a lot of fun! 😀

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.

Bossy, bossy, bossy boots

Hey hey! A huge thanks to all of you who voted on my Miss Bossy Patterns poll for the March Monthly Stitch challenge! It was so much fun watching the votes climb – a very tight race between two of the options, with the pink-and-yellow-plaid Simplicity inching ahead, then the floral McCalls leapfrogging over it, time and time again. For a while there, I was worried there’d be a tie and I’d have to make both! (Eek!) (Not that that would necessarily be a bad thing, actually…. Hmmm….)

But in the end, there was one winner. (Just – by 2.11% of the votes!) And that winner is….

The 1940’s McCall dress in a floral print!

Which I am rather excited to be sewing up. 🙂 (In fact, I cut it out over the weekend. Fun fun!!)

Feels like it’s been ages since I’ve made anything vintage…. Since January, in fact. Two whole months! Almost a lifetime ago….

Now, why has it been so long? Well, the lovely Mel keeps on distracting me with pretty indie patterns. You may have noticed, we’ve been doing Twinsies patterns (and photos shoots!) for the last couple of months. Making the same pattern at the same time and seeing how we each interpret it. So much fun! (And it’s definitely been pushing me to try a few more of the indie designers, all of whom are rather fabulous, yes indeed.)

In a rather geeky fashion, Mel and I have even put together a Google doc, listing out all the indie patterns we own and want to try (or want to buy and then try!). Turns out it’s quite a long list (especially when you add in the ‘ones-we-want-to-buy’ section. Oops.). Which means, we’re having a bit of trouble choosing what to make next.

So we decided – why not get you all to boss us around and choose what pattern we make as Twinsies next??

We’ve narrowed it down to three:

The Midsummer Nights Dream dress from Papercut

The Rooibus dress from Colette

The Cabarita top from Cake

Mel’s put together a poll on her blog – go and boss us around over here! (Please?! We really can’t decide which to make next!!

Rock-a-birdy Bleuet

A month or two back, the lovely ladies of the Wellington Sewing Bloggers Network (WSBN) were debating – what will our next self-set sewalong challenge be? We put it to vote, and the winner was – making something using a Deer&Doe pattern!

And since we were using Deer&Doe patterns, we figured we may as well head to where the deer were for a photo shoot, so decided on a day trip to Staglands, a family animal park just outside of Wellington. (Not that any of us had been there before, but we figured that with a name like ‘Staglands’, the chance of there being deer there was quite high. Plus, we were somewhat curious as to what it was like!)

So last weekend, a few of us drove along a narrow, windy, steep, surrounded-by-native-bush road, being deafened by the sound of cicadas, until we reached Staglands tucked away in it’s valley. And oh my, was it worth the trip! We spent all afternoon there, and didn’t even get to see everything. It’s set up so well – lots of zones, lots of different animals to meet and feed and watch. Heaps of native bush, creeks and streams and bridges. And a Secret Garden with rabbits running around to pet!

And of course, some deer, too. 🙂

But anyway, I guess you want to hear about what we made, right? Well, would you believe it – the four of us that turned up wearing Deer&Doe creations all made the same thing! The Bleuet dress. So we got to roam around the park in a pack of matching dresses. 😉

(From left-right: Nikki, me, Mel and Jen.)

I made my Bleuet out of a stretch denim. (Admittedly, I would have preferred it not to be stretch, but that’s what I had to hand. And I’ve long been wanting a denim shirt dress, because I found these awesome swallow iron-on embroidered patches at a store a while back, and they’ve been needing me to make them a denim shirt dress for them to live on. So a denim Bleuet it was to be!)

Deer&Doe – Bleuet dress pattern

Just because it was fun, I used the reverse side of the denim for contrast – on the collar (although I used the ‘outer’ side for the inside collar band, for contrast on the contrast, haha!), the bow, and the sleeve cuffs. The original plan was to use pearl snap fasteners, but I’m trying to be very good and not buy more stuff when I have so much already, so I went digging through my stash and unearthed enough red snap fasteners to use down the front. So, red fasteners it became!

I figure it’s got a bit of a ‘rockabilly’ look to it, what with shirt dress, denim, swallows, and red. Don’t ya think?

And because all dresses should have pockets, I added pockets to the centre side panels. Nice, deep ones, good for carrying things.

My little sis’ made a Bleuet too – we spent all of Saturday sewing together, getting them finished in time for the outing. I used some of the scraps of her (covered with birds) Bleuet for the pocket lining in mine – check it out! More birds!!

Changes I made:

• Lengthened the skirt by 15.5cm
• Added pockets to the centre side panels (I’ve written a tutorial on how I did this in case anyone is interested in how to do this)
• Did a super-dodgy small bust adjustment (SBA) by shaving 1cm off the bust curve of the side front (don’t try this at home, kids!)
• Only put interfacing on one side of the collar and collar stand (I figured with a heavy fabric, it didn’t need more than that)

This was my first experience sewing up a Deer&Doe pattern, and I must admit it was a bit mixed. Things I loved – the packaging and booklet are super cute, the language is friendly and engaging, the design is adorable (seriously – that bow is just so cute!!), and the pattern paper is nice and thick, really easy to trace and work with. Oh, and the bow is not only super-cute, but also made in a rather fun and easy way. 🙂

Things I didn’t love to much – the instructions were a bit odd at times. They don’t include cutting the interfacing in the cutting layout, so you have to hunt through the instructions to figure out what bits you need to cut – not so good when you want to do all the prep in one go as it’s very easy to miss things. Also, I felt they ask for too much interfacing – usually only one side of the collar and collar stand gets interfaced (if I remember correctly anyway – I’m now doubting all others I’ve made in the past, oops!), rather than both. I don’t feel that the sleeve cuff needs interfacing either, since it’s essentially folded in four and is therefore quite sturdy and strong. Also, the instructions for attaching the collar and stand are just plain weird – not clear at all, and what they seem to be asking you to do is a heck of a lot harder than it needs to be, with lots of room for having to unpick and resew things due to things not 100% lining up. (Same with attaching the sleeve cuff, for that matter).

So yeah. The pattern itself I like, but I do feel that the instructions made it harder than it needed to be.

I’m pretty happy with how it turned out though. The sleeve cuffs are a little bit tighter than I would have liked (I’ll extend the sleeve cuff width by about 3cm next time so they’re not so constricting), and I’m not 100% certain I like it the length I’ve ended up with, but still I am rather fond of it and I suspect it’s going to be getting a lot of wear, especially in weekends. 🙂

Oh, and we got to meet, and feed, lots of animals!

My Little Guy (and my Bigger Guy) both came along too and really enjoyed themselves. Such a fun day all around! 🙂

Archways and undergrowth

Continuing on the Papercut love, here’s another Papercut make just for you.

That’s right, it’s the Ensis tee!

After we became accidental twinsies with our Bellatrix blazers, the lovely Mel and I thought it would be fun to carry on that idea and be Ensis twinsies, too!

And also use it as an excuse to go to random spots around Wellington and take photos together, just for the fun of it.

(And oh my, was it a fun way to spend the morning! Well over 300 photos, we may have gotten a little trigger-happy with all the fun spots to get shots, and the enjoyment of a) having someone with you who ‘gets’ why you’re taking photos, and b) not feeling like a complete idiot standing by yourself with a timer. Seriously, you guys who do the timer thing, I take my hat off to you – I am far far to shy to do that! 😦 )

We went for a wander up part of the Southern Walkway to Truby King Gardens. (A favourite photo/walk spot of mine – so overgrown and shabby and lovely.) Mel had never been there before so I got to introduce her to the little archways and the seats and the tumbling-down brick walls.

Our walk was punctuated by happy exclamations of “oh! There’s a log with ferns all around it! Let’s stand there!” and “check it out – a stump in a clearing, like a mini stage!”, followed by us taking turns dancing around and pulling odd poses just for the heck of it.

Culminating in a bunch of “twinsie Ensis tee” shots, oh yeah! (And a conversation with a couple of ladies who wandered by and were a bit bemused by our antics, haha!)

All up, a great way to spend a weekend – make a top on Saturday, go for a walk on Sunday with a friend for photos. 😀

So, the tee….

Quite frankly, I am now in love with this pattern. It’s super-fast to make up, you can use up little bits of fabric for the top contrast panel, and I can see lots of variation possibilities. The line between the two panels ends at a flattering spot, and the shirt is long enough to not worry about showing skin when you sit down (even for us taller girls!). It’s a good cut, too – not too tight, not too loose. The only change I made was shortening the sleeves for a summer tee.

I have a couple more of these planned already – one in black and silver with a lower neckline to wear tucked in to skirts for work – I think the contrast panel with a dressier fabric would translate quite well into office wear, we’ll see how that goes. I’m also thinking of using the Ensis pattern for a sweatshirt by cutting a size bigger and using the version with cuffed sleeves and hem. Could be cute, yes?

The entire thing was stitched up using my trusty four-thread overlocker, gosh I love that thing, makes things so fast and the coverstitch is great. Me and my overlocker, we’ve got a little love affair going on. (Complete with occasional tiffs where it throughs it’s toys out of the cot for no reason at all. Huh.)

The Facts

Pattern: Ensis tee from Papercut
Fabric: pink/navy stripe cotton knit from Levana; grey marle cotton/synthetic blend knit no idea it’s been in my stash for a while
Size cut: a straight XS
Alterations made: sleeves shortened to summer length
Verdict? Loving this far more than I thought I would! (Even though the pink stripe makes me feel like a bit of an 80’s throwback, haha!) I can see this getting a lot of use, and have plans for more already, maybe even this weekend….

And also – taking photos with another sewing-blogger is HEAPS OF FUN!!!! 😀