Manequim February 2011

Much to my surprise, the latest issue of Manequim magazine actually arrived a few days before the new KnipMode (more on that next week)! When I subscribed, I assumed the shipping from Brazil to the UK would be quite slow, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised. And since the southern hemisphere is moving towards Autumn now, we’re finally getting some garments that can easily work for English spring weather in a few months!

The first feature is a bunch of looks from various cast members of the Brazilian soap opera, Ti-Ti-Ti, (yeah, me neither!) but importantly, this silver cropped biker jacket is utterly fantastic, perfect for spring/summer, and in my size, too!

I’m not a big jumpsuit fan and have yet to be even remotely tempted by one until now. Manequim have certainly ticket my boxes – Cowl neck, check. Drapey jersey, check. My recent forays into braver fashion have encouraged me to step outside my comfort zone a bit more. But this risk does involve an awful lot of fabric…

Manequim magazine February 2014

Wow, everyone in Brazil must’ve been partying their bums off at carnival because my February issue was really late – I’d normally be expecting to see March any day now! But I’m just glad it arrived at all, because it’s a really good one, and features one must sew for me in particular!

First up are the Plus offerings for this issue. They may not seem like much, but all three look to be very wearable and versatile, and those bermuda shorts are offered in multiple sizes, too.

The designer style section this month is Victoria Beckham, and, all Spice Girl and WAG celebrity-BS aside, I actually really love a lot of her designs and find they intersect with my own personal style an awful lot. Here we get patterns for a really nicely shaped sheath dress, narrow trousers, and – the one that made me bolt upright when I turned the page – a draped, crossover blouse.

OH. MY. GOD. I adore… freaking adore… this blouse! That I can’t quite immediately work out the construction of that drape from the pattern pieces makes me want to make it even more. And, umm, it’s also in my new size, too. LOVE!

Manequim February 2012

Brazil (and the rest of the Southern hemisphere) are starting to move into Fall fashions now, which is perfect for those of us thinking of Spring! Transitional clothing is so much more flexible for London’s climate than either heaviest winter or barest summer fashions, that’s for sure!

I’m certainly liking this issue a lot more than the most recent summery issues…

In the atelier section, this month there’s a pattern for a dress made entirely from silk scarves! Love that drapey peplum…

It was inevitable with the sheer quantity of jumpsuit patterns Manequim produce that I was eventually going to like one of them… Halter-neck AND cowl? Yes! I’m even willing to succumb to ridiculous bra solutions in order to wear something as chic as this.

How awesome is this Plus-sized sheath dress? There isn’t much more in the way of Plus patterns in this issue, but I think this dress is a knockout.

The “inspired by a designer” feature this week is on Nina Ricci, and I really like this lace dress (which is happily multi-sized!), and also the silk blouse with its open, flutter sleeves that are integrated into the back piece.

Manequim draped collar sweater

There came a point about midway through the construction of this where it suddenly dawned on me that I was creating my second draped collar sweater with pieced sleeves of the month. Clearly the sweater knits in my stash were calling out to me, and I’m naturally drawn to drapey styles. Though I really must remember when I’m in fabric stores that 2m really isn’t enough for long sleeves and a big collar!

This the Michael Kors-inspired, collared sweater from the June 2011 Manequim magazine. Last week I showed you details on the construction of the various pieces and altering the size “Small” pattern to my basic knit tee pattern.

The only problem was, when I was laying out the pattern pieces onto my awesome, ex-Versace sweater knit from Ditto in Brighton I realised that yet again, I didn’t have enough fabric to lay out the sleeves without piecing them, argh! I didn’t want to back down since I’d tried to use this fabric for something else last winter, but 2m of a really narrow fabric really limits your possibilities. So I carried on, introducing two seams in the lower arms. Frankly, sleeves tend to bunch up so much around the sleeves that I find the seams kinda get lost visually around that area anyway.

In the end, I was forced to cut the collar on the bias simply because the fabric was too narrow to place it on the cross grain!

Morphing the Manequim sweater pattern to my size

If you remember from earlier in the week, my next project is to make this collared sweater from the June 2011 Manequim magazine:

Since the pattern is only in one size, “Small”, my strategy was to take an existing long sleeved teeshirt pattern that I know fits me well, trace that, then trace the neckline area from the Manequim pattern overlaid onto it and morph the two together. For simplicity’s sake, I wanted to keep the collar piece as unaltered as possible.

Here’s that wonderful diagram again showing how the Manequim pattern fits together, so we all have an idea in our head of what we’re aiming towards:

While overlaying the Manequim pattern onto mine, I wasn’t quite sure what I should use as the “frame of reference” to align the two patterns together – should I use the Centre Front & Centre Back? Or the shoulder seam/armscye corner?

In the end, it turned out that sorting out the Back first was the key to making the bigger changes on the Front piece work, since the Back of my teeshirt and the Back of this pattern were much more similar.


I’ve shaded my final pattern shapes in blue here to try to make it clearer. The original teeshirt pattern is (mostly) at the cut edge of the paper. Ignore the red lines – they were misaligned tracings!

Manequim August 2011

I’m not sure what I did to deserve this, but this latest issue of Manequim is chock-full of lovely silk blouses! Over the past few months I’ve been wearing my silk blouses all the time – with jeans as often as with skirts! I wear them out to casual weekend outings as much as to the office or dressy dinners, and the blouse I made from the February Manequim (twice!) is my favourite of the lot.

So I foresee quite a few of these making their way into my Fall wardrobe in and around work on some other, bigger projects…

But let’s look at all my picks from this issue!

I really like this lavender sheath dress, especially the little sleeves, but I’d alter the back so it’s not quite so low. I don’t normally wear this colour, but I think it looks really light and fresh on this model, especially considering it’s coming into Spring in Brazil.

This yellow cocktail dress with its angled, pleated bodice and skirt is possibly my favourite dress of this issue. It’s a size too small from me, but there have been enough similar styles in the past that I should be able to mix and match to make it work anyway.

Manequim silk birthday blouse

I love this blouse!

It all started in Paris last June when I saw this amazingly gorgeous silk satin (charmeuse) in Tissues Dreyfus that I just had to have. But it was €22/m (zoot alors!) so I only bought 1 metre. But even now I still love it love it love it love it so it was worth it worth it worth it!

Ever since, I kept my eyes open for a good blouse pattern that only needed 1 metre of fabric, and along came Manequim Feb 2011 #158, which called for exactly the amount I had – 1 metre long and 150cm wide!

These two were clearly meant to be together! I don’t often do prints, but this one is just so gorgeous with the psuedo-floral/paint splatters of silver, black, orange, and fuschia that I wanted it to form both the centrepiece of my March Mini Wardrobe as well as be my special birthday garment this year!

Manequim January 2011

This was a total surprise when it appeared in my postbox last week, as I’d only received the December issue a scant week or so before that (I believe December was just delayed from the holidays and my subscription starting later in their publishing cycle). I must say, I always let loose a little squeal and do the happy dance when I see one of my magazines in our postbox!

Brazil are still in the middle of summer, so there are a lot of shorts in this issue, but it’s an awful lot more wearable than the bulk of December to my eyes!

This pleated, banded sheath dress is exactly what Manequim do best! To me this looks like it was taken straight out of Victoria Beckham’s closet, I swear!

This might be my favourite dress of this issue. On first glance, it just looks like a basic shape, but if you look further you can see a huge amount of crazy diagonal seaming, and if you look closer again, you can see that some of the seams have exposed zippers that you can open for little flashes of skin! It’s only one size larger than me, too, so it’d be simple to size down a smidge.

Happy 2014! (My Sewing Year in review)

As I do every year, I like to spend the first of a new year to take the opportunity to look back on what I’ve sewn in the previous year. So without further ado, here’s a visual reminder of 2013!


Click the image to see it better, or right-click here to see it in a new tab to get a better look!

Tip: If you’d like to skim back through the posts for the above projects, you can click Gallery in the upper left menu, which will only show you finished projects, without all the magazine reviews and in-progress reports getting in the way!

The Year in Stats

In terms of pattern companies used this year, I made: 15 Self-drafted (including Pattern Magic), 11 Burda Magazine (aka Burda Style), 8 FehrTrade, 4 Style Arc, 4 Cake Patterns, 3 Christine Jonson, 3 MyImage, 2 Pattern-Scissors-Cloth, 2 Jalie, and 1 each from Elan, KnipMode, Papercut Patterns, Drape Drape, Lolita Patterns, Kwik Sew and Simplicity.

So that’s precisely one garment made from any of the Big Four, but a whopping 23 items I either drafted myself or drafted and then released as a pattern! It’s no surprise Burda is otherwise up in the 2nd place position, and I’m pleased to see Style Arc and Cake ranking highly this year, since I discovered both companies this year. It is a bit disappointing that I failed to make a single Manequim pattern this year, despite reviewing my monthly copies! I must try harder next year to justify the subscription cost.

By my count, I made: 22 tops, 13 trousers (including leggings), 9 dresses, 9 pieces of lingerie (bras, panties, slips, etc), 3 skirts, 3 jackets or cardigans, and 3 bags.

Spring 2013 Sewing Ideas

Thank you all so much for your lovely comments on my asymmetric Drape Drape teeshirt! A girl could get used to that level of flattery…

It also marks the start of my sewing short sleeves, which means it must finally be Spring, and hence, time to start thinking about marrying up the patterns and fabrics I’d like to sew for the next few months. I really do these only for my own benefit, and so they’re not a “SWAP” in the sense that everything must coordinate against each other (lord knows I have enough clothes that I don’t have problems putting combinations together!).

This is more just a set of ideas towards which I’d like to work, so when I get to the end of a project, I can quickly refer to this image and go “oh yeah, I want to sew that next!”

For the first time I’m also including running/exercise gear in my plans, since I’m wearing lycra as a significant portion of my weekly wardrobe, and I want to contain all of my sewing ideas together. So you’ll find all the running stuff on the bottom row, and the rest of life’s wear on the upper two rows!

Top row: