Can’t get you out of my head

November 28, 2016 by steelyseamstress 5 Comments

I seem to have made another unseasonal make. I remember doing this last year too. Sometimes I pick up fabric with a particular purpose in mind and then by the time I’ve cut out and sewn my intended make, it’s ready, but for the wrong season.

This particular fabric was bought at the end of July at Birmingham Rag Market. It costs £1.00 a metre and I bought one and a half metres of it. I wasn’t sure on fibre content, but then I spotted a similar fabric on the Minerva Crafts website. I felt sure I saw the plain white on there a few months back, but now I have only seen the tie-dyed fabric. Anyway it seems to be a viscose / polyester blend. It is quite soft to the touch and it has silver thread stitching running down its length and occasional sequins along the length.

My intention was to make a loose fitting cardigan-type garment. In fact, I thought the fabric lent itself more to a beach cover-up. I felt sure I could adapt the cardigan / jacket pattern from Vogue V8546 for my purposes. The cardigan pattern is very simple and has only four pattern pieces; a front which also makes the hood, a back, front arm pieces and back arm pieces.

This particular pattern is designed for much heavier-weight fabrics and lots of top-stitching is suggested. I decided not to do any top-stitching – I wasn’t sure that it would work with my jersey fabric. I ditched the pockets too, as I thought that these would look strange with a sheer fabric. I knew I’d probably have a tough time trying to cut the pattern from my one and a half metres, but after a bit of pattern-piece-juggling, I only had to shorten the front and back pieces by 10 cm and it all fitted on. I am quite short-bodied, so I knew I wouldn’t need the missing length.

The length of the fabric already had a tidy finish on it. The edge was formed into almost a rolled hem by the vertical silver stitching at each side. I decided to keep this finish, partly out of laziness. I did experiment with a narrower rolled hem, but I thought that the original hem looked somehow neater anyway.

My beach cover-up somehow reminded me of the “Can’t get you out of my head” Kylie Minogue video with the strange hooded white costume she wears! Now I can’t get that song “out of my head”!

I haven’t quite yet decided if this is a hit or a miss. I suppose I’m not going to know whether this make is right as beach attire until I get to a beach, which is not going to happen until at least June next year (and that may be an optimistic prediction). I’m contemplating dyeing it any colour. Would this work better, I wonder?

I wasn’t quite sure how to model this number. I thought about wearing my swimming costume, but it’s rather cold here and even though I wasn’t contemplating an outdoor shoot, I didn’t really want to shiver in my beach attire. I decided to wear my summer top with balloons on, as a compromise. I hope it gives the right impression, with my newly painted sunny yellow wall behind!