My Wardrobe – Broad in the seams

December 31, 2019December 31, 2019

Torrens Box Dress Hack

I’d been dreaming of my own comfortable box dress in the style of Elizabeth Suzann’s Georgia Dress in silk, and I knew this fabric would be gorgeous to wear and would drape well.

I have an entire pinterest board of sack dresses where the vast majority look exactly like the Georgia dress and I think the cute sleeve angle is an integral part of what draws me to the dress!

I used the Torrens Box Top pattern (in my usual size A) and simply cut the fabric down in a straight line from where the pattern piece ended. Because the top includes a generous amount of ease, I knew there’d be no need for me to grade out at the hips.

I didn’t include pockets because I was worried about the long-term performance on the silk noil from me jamming heavy things in there, but it would have been easy to draft and add some in-seam pockets in!

Trin from A+R Fabrics kindly sent this mirren blue silk noil my way (I believe this blue and the moss green are the two newest colours that she’s started to stock in her silk noil range).

Silk noil is great to sew with! Because of the lovely texture, it’s not at all slippery, and I almost never pinned the seams before I sewed them (except the neckline)! Since it’s a natural fibre, it’s lovely to wear and will work for winter & summer.

Fabric Usage & Size Details:
The silk noil is 110cm wide and I’d say that I could have cut this dress with about 2.5 metres and still had a small amount left over (I cut on the open, rather than with my fabric folded).
I used the Size A for the Torrens and I’m a 47″ bust and 54~” hip, but I had plenty of room at the hips without grading up.

December 29, 2019December 29, 2019

Torrens Box Top with Sleeves

We’ve been working to extend the sizing and also add some long-sleeve options for the Torrens Box Top pattern that we’ve released under Muna and Broad!

This is my second test of the sleeve extension, and I’m so pleased that I’ve now got the woven drop-shouldered long-sleeve top pattern that I’ve been looking for!

This fabric is cotton crepe from Miss Maude Fabric in New Zealand. I bought this piece as a remnant, and was able to squeeze the whole top out of 1.6×1.4 metres of fabric!

There’s currently a small amount of this fabric left as a remnant!

If you have already purchased the Torrens, you’ll get an email with the new sleeve pieces once we’ve finalised the instructions in the New Year!

Because I didn’t have much fabric, I wasn’t able to concentrate on pattern matching, but the two sleeves are non-identical twins! They’re pretty close, but the fabric was quite shifty and I didn’t want to stress much about trying to get the crepey squares to lay exactly straight.

The same virtues of the Torrens still apply here- Leila drafted the shoulder for larger bodies and also put a lot of thought in to the neckline as well. I find the neckline to be the perfect width for my narrow shoulders- it’s not too high and my bra straps are never on display. I don’t find that the top slips around during the day, and I certainly never have to pull the top down after it has slid backwards and started choking me at the neck (it just never happens and it’s a total game-changer). So, while this is a deceptively simple looking top that maybe doesn’t strike awe- the comfort factor is next level because there’s no ‘poor-fit’ issues affecting the wearing!

November 21, 2019November 21, 2019

Torrens Box Top is Rust Silk Noil

The lovely Trin from A+R Fabrics sent me this gorgeous brick coloured silk noil which recently arrived in her store. The colour is even more gorgeous in real life- part rust, part rich pumpkin colour and, just like my recent forays in to silk noil, this was a delight to sew.

I chose to whip up a Torrens Box Top with Leila and I released under the auspice of Muna and Broad (the box top and the website were released last week)! The silk noil is part drapey but still keeps a great structure, which helps the top to maintain its great architectural sleeve shape even when my arms are down (see below)!

I also used the opportunity to couple one of my new stitch-collective labels with the new tidy-facing technique I learnt from the Love To Sew podcast!

The ingenious instructions for this super-tidy facing is clockwise from top left:

1. With non-sticky and right side of your fashion fabric facing, sew a small edge along the bottom hem of facing/interfacing
2. Clip into the curve, being careful not to stitch into your line of stitching. I also trimmed down a lot of the interfacing to reduce bulk
3. Flip your interfacing over so that the sticky-side is now touching the wrong-side of your fashion fabric (I pushed the hem with my fingers to ensure it had turned out

4. Check that none of your interfacing is visible from the right-side of your fashion fabric, adjust as necessary.
5. With interfacing side down, use your iron to adhere interfacing to fashion fabric
6. You can attach the label at this stage or simply sew your facings at the shoulder seams and continue on

Once you’ve used this method a few times it becomes quite fast, and I find it to be immensely preferable to zig-zag finshing the bottom hem!

If you’re interested in my top, the Torrens Box Top is available from a 50″ bust (I’m a 47″ bust but I love the extra ease) and is 15% off for 2 more days! The Torrens was drafted specifically with larger bodies in mind, and Leila’s drafting was really thoughtful- the top doesn’t slip back and pull at my neck, I don’t have to ‘re-adjust’ where the shoulder sits all day, and once I wrapped my head around the sleeve insertion, this is a super-quick sew!

November 10, 2019November 10, 2019

Summer Peppermint Wrap Skirt

I’d been thinking about buying some of this Australian floral printed fabric of Ellie Whittaker‘s from Spotlight’s upholstery fabric section to make this free wrap skirt from Peppermint Magazine for ages! When Spotlight had a sale, I didn’t hesitate to snap it up. But then it sat in my stash for a while and then I cut it out but didn’t sew it up, and then when I eventually sewed it up I realised that it didn’t really work with a single top that I own, so it languished in my wardrobe until today (a couple of days after this cropped white t-shirt arrived in the post)!

Size details: I’m a bit larger than the 54″ hip size for this pattern, but I cut the pasdttern as-is and used a slightly smaller seam allowance. The sizing difference means that the side-seams aren’t ‘true’ down the sides, but the generous overlap on the skirt means that it’s still difficult for me to flash the public (though not as difficult as it is in my wool version, which was utterly unaffected by breeze)! The only change I made to the pattern was lengthening the ties slightly.

Fabric estimate: I ordered 2.5 metres of this 150cm wide fabric and have a very decent amount leftover, but I did cut the pieces out paying absolutely no attention to pattern placement.

November 3, 2019December 29, 2019

Gingernut Grainline Hemlock

Grainline Studios has recently released their free Hemlock Tee pattern in their new extended size range! I’ve loved the style of the top, and now it’s available in my size! You can get the pattern for free by subscribing to the Grainline email newsletter (which you can do here).

Based on Grainline’s new size chart (below) I made a size 24 (I’m 47″bust and around 54″ hip), and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the size on the arms was quite generous, and meant that I could skip doing a full bicep adjustment!

I cut out the 3/4 sleeve length and the length of the body is halfway between the cropped & mid-length body in this gingernut viscose spandex from Fabric Drop, which is based out of Dunedin in New Zealand. With some pattern tetris, I was able to cut this out from about 1.5 metres (and I’ve got a decent piece leftover too). I usually cut all my patterns on the open (flipping the pattern piece over and tracing a mirror image), and then cut sleeves (and other things I need to cut 2 of) one at a time. Doing that here certainly made it a pretty economical pattern!

The 3/4 length sleeves ended up being almost bracelet length for me, because I have quite narrow shoulders and my measurements put me in between size 20 and 22 but I made a straight size 24. I’m happy with the length, but would do some measuring of the full length arm piece before sewing that as I suspect it would be quite long.