Denim Love

Although I'm not a designer jeans kind of girl, and in truth don't really understand what anyone can do to a pair of jeans to justify them going from a few pounds to several hundreds (especially when they rip out half the fabric you pay for), but I do like denim as a fabric.

Anyway when I stumbled across a lovely soft washed denim in of all places our local Boyes, I couldn't resist it.

I had just the pattern I wanted to use from Angela Kane. It's called a pinafore as it's cut to allow for a tee shirt underneath, though I intend to wear it as a simple dress.

In the unlined version on her site, she has suggested just turning the seam allowances in. That's not something I could live with and so I decided to go with a self made bias binding. I usually do the continuous binding method, but didn't have enough fabric to do that this time, so I just cut my regular 2 inch strips along the bias and joined them all separately.

I mostly use a Frixion pen when needing to mark things nowadays as with a mere touch of the iron it disappears.
I subscribed to the Angela Kane site a few years ago and have made several of the designs. All very classic, but one of the benefits of the site are the wonderfully detailed videos. Even as someone who has sewn for years I have found some very useful tips.
Of course that doesn't mean to say that everything always goes right. When like me you have to lower the bust apex as well as do a full bust adjustment, it can and did give me a bit of a headache. Add to that a sway back and you can understand why I sometimes still have to refer to my fitting bibles....

I made a muslin first, which I did fit, but as you can see from my mannequin,when I made up the denim I somehow managed to make the top too big! That must be a first.

Admittedly the dummy is a bit smaller than me at the top but it still required a bit of adjustment.

So here it is with the further adjustments made.

I'm quite pleased with the final result though not so much with the vertical bust darts. So I have already made a new muslin correcting that for my next version. I intend to make it again in the pretty green spotted cotton I showed here, though this time I will line it. (And there's a video for that too).
I just realised when I took this photo, that the skirt I was wearing was an Angela Kane too and even had the same pockets!

It's only a few weeks now to the Knitting and Stitching Show, and so it looks like I will have used all the fabric I bought at the last one I went to. I'd better start saving again then. I can't imagine I will go and not bring anything home.......

Have a good week

TTFN

Jenny xx