A Mountain of Your Makes (Part One)

I am long, long overdue at showing off all your incredible, inspiring, and beautiful versions of my patterns, and I’ve accumulated so many over the past 6 months or so (shocking, I know!) that it’s enough to fill not one, not two, but three posts! These are only in rough date order from when I collected them, so if you don’t see your more recent make included, hold on, as it may be in Parts Two or Three (all of the Surf to Summit Tops are yet to come!).

Devon and her “Rainbow Sparkle Pants of Awesome” PB Jams


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Winnie’s third(!) art-print VNA


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Ms McCall’s spotty Duathlons


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Kat’s new XYT Workout Top


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Ms McCall’s Threshold Shorts


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Maria’s Funki Fabrics “dyesplosion” XYT Top & Duathlon Shorts


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A Mountain of Your Makes (Part Two)

Following on from yesterday’s Part One, I’ve got a whole new heap of activewear sewing inspiration coming your way. You ladies have been so busy sewing up a storm, and I love that you get so excited when I release a new pattern like the Surf to Summit Tops that you make it all in droves!

Winnie’s fabulous peacock print Duathlon capris


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Cidell’s winter running Surf to Summit Top for her husband, Jordan


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Katherine’s green cherries runderwear (included in my Threshold Shorts pattern)


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Veloswer’s kiwi-styled cycling Surf to Summit Top


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Carey’s teal and white Surf to Summit Top


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An alpine Tenacity Shorts set

Today it’s time to look closer at our third and final sample of the new Tenacity Leggings pattern, and it’s one that got a true testing – immediately after the photoshoot I set off on a run around the Lanhydrock estate, in Cornwall, even though it was fairly muddy, because I just couldn’t help myself! Also it was super fun to be able to play with my friend’s lab, Freya, for some of these photos. I guess this makes her my first “dog-lete model”??

Happy 2021! (My year in review)

What. A. Year! I’m not even going to attempt to sugar-coat things, and any attempt to try and put things into perspective just sounds like a cliché after all this. But for a year where I was essentially under house arrest since March, it’s surprisingly not all bad. Above all else, I’m grateful to have spent the time with my husband and that we both were able to continue our office jobs from home at full pay and remarkable support. My sewing was both a welcome distraction and a balm in this year of chaos and uncertainty.

I’m going to try to use my usual year-end format again, though this was clearly a year that broke all attempts to contain it so let’s do what we can (clearly a motto for the year!)…

Happy 2020! (My year in review)

Happy new year! I always like to take the opportunity on the start of a bright new year to look back on the year that was – what I made and loved, what I made and swore at, and other big life milestones that will make 2019 stand out in my mind. And because I love stats, I also like to take a step back and get an overview of what I’ve been making to get an eye for any trends that may have escaped me at the time…

Happy 2018! (My Year in Review)

Happy fresh and new baby year, everyone! I always like to celebrate the first of the year with a look back at the year that’s just completed – this gives me a chance to reflect at the things I’ve accomplished, the garments I’ve made, and challenges conquered. As is traditional, I find myself starting 2018 with lots of great stuff on the horizon but unable to talk about it (this time last year my two big secrets were my Threads article and my book deal, so you’d better believe 2018’s secret project is a good’un!) so you’ll just have to trust me that the outlook for 2018 is rosy indeed!

Named Harriet lumberjacket in wool & vintage silk

I am both back from our trip to the States and feeling back on form now, so I’ve started to tackle documenting the absolute mountain of finished makes from the last four months. I have some garments from early January, some made more recently and well, I’m just going to share them with you in no particular order! The photos are a bit more slapdash than usual, but I know that if I waited to do proper photoshoots of all of these then it’d be another 6 months before you’d get to see them!

So I’m going to start with a garment that was the longest in the planning, and also quite possibly my favourite of the early 2016 makes. It all started back in summer 2014, when I bought some fabulous navy wool coating & vintage silk twill from Ditto when I was down in Brighton. I knew I wanted to use them together for a transitional, short coat, but then I had quite a journey in finding the right pattern!


The psychedelic 1960s vintage silk twill lining that was originally made for neckties!

Over the course of 18 months, I ended up making five different muslins before I was happy enough to cut into the wool and silk:

  1. StyleArc Audrey (the silhouette and proportions were just so bad on me. So bad.)
  2. Burda Jan 2015 jacket in size 42 (way too small for non-stretch outerwear, oddly, though Burda’s fit is usually very standard)
  3. Burda Jan 2015 jacket in size 44 (traced ALL the pieces again and it still fit very weirdly)
  4. Patrones 342 No23 dolman sleeve coat (ridiculously tiny sleeves and zero arm mobility even with the underarm gusset)

And then finally I muslined Named’s Harriet lumberjacket pattern, bought during a flash sale during their advent calendar promotion. And I was like Goldilocks, it was juuuuuuust riiiiiight.