A Study in Pink…

…a bit of stash busting finally finished.  I started this set way back in September last year, well that’s when I put the fabric and patterns in my organisation boxes 😉 

I used the Thurlow pant and Alma Blouse pattern from Sewaholics.  The pink fabric, is a polyester mix of some description, a wee bit slippery to sew and fairly hard to iron.  The flowered fabric is a polyester mix knit fabric, some stretch but fairly stable.  Have had both fabrics for a while and can’t really remember where I got either from, but they would have been either cheeep or freee!  Now I’m not one for pink or this pink, but I was going through a matchy matchy phase and felt these would be great together.

Anyhoo, so these two sat in their plastic container, (I got them out looked at them, cut out the shorts, looked at them both again, put other stuff in other plastic containers, got out the fabric again), till this year when I got a sudden inspiration from somewhere and finally sewed them up.

Thurlow Shorts:

 

These were my first pair of pants with a fly but I did have a few issues:

• My first problem is because I didn’t use a muslin, I thought I wouldn’t wear pink shorts much, so considered these my muslin, but didn’t really do any fitting at all.
• I think I stretched the fabric (as can be seen in back of shorts) around the middle
• the welt pockets  were a bit hard, a little because the fabric was hard to iron to a sharp fold, and because I didn’t want to unpick at all, so left them as is.
• And the fly??? I still can’t understand how to put one in, I followed the pattern instructions, I used online tutorials, all of which were great but I still couldn’t make the darn thing sit correctly.

All in all though I’m pretty happy with how they came out, they fit nicely,  and are so comfortable to wear, I am going to try again, may be with something easy to handle, wool or something seeing as it’s going into winter down here.

Lessons learnt:   Make a muslin, don’t buy cheap polyester fabric, need to practice putting in a pant fly again and again, and unpick until it is perfect, (or I’m happy with it).

Alma Blouse:

While the top looks lopsided, its only the angle I took the photo on 🙂  I bound the neck instead of using the facing, I got a bit confused when putting the sleeve in, until I saw the little note in the pattern sheet saying not to try and match the double notches up hehe.  And the side zip could probably been left out, as the fabric had a bit of stretch.  I’m not really a fan of side zips, they scare me a bit like I’ll get stuck in the top or something, they make me feel claustrophobic, this one was supposed to be invisible but I couldn’t find one in my colour so used a normal dress one.   The pattern was very easy to whip up, I did do the view with the belt but thought it looked better on the shorts.  This pattern is going into the ‘make again’ basket, but in woven fabric next time.

Lessons learnt: Read the pattern instruction thoroughly before starting, easy can be good, gonna make more of these.

And this is them both together, I think they actually look nice together, but I probably won’t wear them as a set very often, too much pink!

The Sewaholic patterns, Thurlow and Alma, are available in our store here.