Skip to main content

G&G sewing society April kit

I kinda like kit: everything I need is in one place, so here’s no thinking about anything. I also like presents in the mail! So in April I ordered the G&G sewing society as an experiment. 

To me this kit is quite an intimidating make. I’m still not 100% on zips, and I’ve never done snap fasteners before.

I ordered the version in ‘sky’ colour. It was the only one left in my size: but that was lucky as I wanted that colour anyway! It came quite quickly, yay! But I was still working at that point, so it had to wait until the weekends.

The kit included:
  • Printed Closet Case Kelly Anorak sewing pattern
  • Cotton twill fabric
  • Matching thread
  • 15 Prym anorak snaps & tool 
  • 26" YKK open ended zip
  • Liberty lawn
  • Woven fusible interfacing
  • Prym machine needles
  • Sew-in label - "Made by me with g&g'
 


I’m always a bit between sizes, and so I wanted to make sure I was sizing right. So I traced the pattern pieces for the main body onto Swedish tracing paper and tried them on. Based on that I went up a size :(

I traced all the pieces onto Swedish tracing paper before cutting out the fabric. I have been losing a little weight, so I’d like to be able to use the pattern in a different size in the future.

 


There are a lot of pieces in this pattern. I chose to do the variation with a hood, because that lovely Liberty fabric was included in the kit for the  hood lining.


When I came to sew up, I was really careful. I also did a lot of unpicking. Honestly, that seems to be a feature of all of my sewing projects. I just hope I’m learning from my mistakes! I did so much unpicking that I used the thread from this kit, another reel of the same thread (that I just happened to have, magically) and some of a slightly different colour thread too. Yikes!

When I attached the yoke I drew my sewing line in with a chalk pencil, since the fabric was hiding the washi-tape guidelines on my sewing machine. I ended up redoing the yoke a few times, as I was having a comprehension failure. I swear I followed the instructions.

 


I was impressed by how the pockets came together. Carefully following the instructions worked really well. And I was super impressed with them. I can see a lot of people on pinterest/instagram hack the pockets though, and when I do this pattern again, I’ll definitely do that. The placement is fine, it’s just the pockets have a mock-closure, and I don’t see an issue with making it a real closing. It would keep my mobile phone from falling out!



Here’s some examples of people who have done the pockets differently:

Most of the rest of the pattern went smoothly. The only issue I had on the placket was the placement of the fasteners. If you look at the pattern’s cove, and the drawing of  the open jacket, the placement of the fasteners is such that it would be impossible to zip the jacket! If you look at any pictures of the jacket made up you can see that the position of these fasteners is on the other size of the zip. Unfortunately I relied on the illustration, and didn’t read anything before starting this. So when I lined up the plackets I thought my fasteners would be much further away from the edge than they are. That’s meant that one or two of my fasteners are a bit too close to the edge.

 


This was my first time fixing any fasteners. So I did lots of practice. And I still had problems. One of the fasteners on the pocket pulled right through after using it a couple of times. I had to go back and add some fabric reinforcement to the pocket. So I’d really recommend doing that before popping the pockets on the jacket.

Here’s the finished jacket.



Summary
Pattern:Closet Case's Kelly Anorak
Fabric:Twill
Lesson learned:Lots about working with the kind of hardware that needs hammering in!
Audio book:Fifth Season - N K Jemisin 


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Safiya Jumpsuit

I'm a bit late to the jumpsuit party. I'm sure they've been cropping up more frequently, in fashion and in patterns, for at least a year. But the first ones I saw had the shape of boiler suits in a lighter fabric. I actually quite like that shape, but I wasn't ready to dive straight into that! My most recent SewHayleyJane box came with viscose crepe based on an Italian wallpaper pattern. Although to me it looks like Delft fireplace tiles ! And I had received the latest Tilly and the Buttons book from my Mum for Christmas, so it was about time I did something from that. In the book there's a hack to make the Safiya trousers into a playsuit, and a hack to pop pockets in. So I sorta half-hacked the playsuit - after all I wanted the long legs of a jumpsuit. Side note: is that the difference - just long v short legs? Either way, I wanted the long leg style. I quite like the idea of the mock-wrap bodice. Doing the half-hack version did mean a bit of jumping around in th
Post a Comment
Read more

Shelby dress

Ever since I saw Liz’s ’ 90s ditsy grunge ’ tea dress in the Great British Sewing Bee, I'd been planning to do something similar. I used to live in black dresses of that ilk when I was a teenager.  But I also don't want to buy new fabric now - I have plenty! So instead of a black dress, I've done a summery dress with cotton lawn fabric from a Sew Hayley Jane box.  The Fold Line suggested the True Bias Shelby as the pattern that Liz had been using. So I grabbed a PDF of that, and got to sticking/cutting. I'm using View A, which is the mini-dress. I am also interested in the full-length romper (View D).  Sizing and adjustments:  I normally manage to cover 3 different sizes with my bust/waist/hip measurements: but my waist and hips fell on the same size in this pattern, with my bust just one size smaller. Bonus! And with the princess seams going up to the bust I decided to just do a single size, and adjust the princess seam if needed. On the model the skirt seems a litt
Post a Comment
Read more

Filet crochet: pansies (part 1)

For a change I've decided that I'd like to try a new style of crochet... filet crochet. In its most easy form this uses just two crochet stitches to build up a grid of empty or filled-in squares, allowing you to make a blocky pattern. Using smaller yarn than normal, mostly called cotton, allows you to make the blockiness less obvious. I decided to do some example items just to see how large they will work up. Here's the biggest cotton I could find. It needs a 2.5mm crochet hook to work it  - which is one I happened to have already. You can see the difference in hook sizes and yarn/cotton in this picture. I also had fun doing searches on Pinterest to find a pattern that I thought would give me a good idea of gauge. Most of these don't look like normal crochet patterns. Instead they look like graphs/grids. Since filet crochet only uses two stitches the pattern can be simplified a bit. The two stitches are a treble and a chain (or in the US you'd do a double
Post a Comment
Read more