Sewing Success!

I am pleased to report a bit of sewing success.  Hurrah!

Here is some pictorial evidence:

Me and Partner.  Oh dear. Do our glasses and grins match?

I am wearing a Sorbetto top and my two-zip hipster bag in crazy colourful print.  He sports his two zip hipster bag in more sedate colours. We both style all our outfits with ridiculous grins. Also jeans and other things to make sure we are decent in public.

(*I don’t style any of my outfits. I just wear clothes. Sometimes to match other clothes, but mostly not.)

The Sorbetto was wonderfully easy.  I wanted to make a summery top to wear on a brief trip to Brisbane. I ended up washing and wearing this top three times in the five days I was up there in the heat.  It flabberghasts me that I forgot all my “dressing for the heat” rules. I packed ridiculously inappropriate things: close-fitting trousers, jeans, tee-shirts.  All these things break my rules.  Always: loose clothing, no knit fabrics (cottons and linens breathe better) and for goodness sake never ever oh lord no not jeans.  I have two pairs of loose-fitting trousers made of 100% cotton.  Did they make it into my suitcase? No. Why not?! Oh, the recriminations I heaped upon my own head when I tried (and failed) to not complain about the heat. Have I mentioned I don’t like heat?

And then I came back to Melbourne and there was a heatwave.  Thankfully, only for two days and today we are back to 18 degrees Celsius (that’s perfectly comfortable Farenheit, in case you are wondering).

Oh yes, back to the Sorbetto.  I french-seamed it because I did not have enough of the correct coloured thread to finish my seams by overlocking or zig-zag stitching. And french-seaming is awesome! (although this fabric – a sort of quilt weight cotton – is perhaps a wee bit too thick for such shenanigans. But no matter. It works fine.) And I only half bound the armholes because I decided I liked the look of the wider binding.  This had nothing to do with laziness or running out of time.  No, really, honestly, truly, it did not.

My two-zip hipster is 1.5 times my partner’s (which is cut to the pattern size).  I sized up by putting all the dimensions of the pattern pieces (which are all rectangles of one kind or another) into a spreadsheet and multiplying by various increments (1.1; 1.25; 1.5).  I had thought of making mine even bigger than 1.5x the pattern size, but 1.5x is quite capacious enough, thank you.

All the items sewn have imperfections.  My partner thinks I should not point out the flaws but I seem unable to show anyone my sewing without in almost the same breath telling them about all the bits I did wrong.  I think you can see in this picture what I did wrong (or what I could have done better if I had better spatial awareness) on my partner’s bag.

But you know what? I like them all heaps. That’s why I have such a silly grin.