Calcedonia Sewing: 2020

Monday, June 1, 2020

Bright colors outfit for Lisa, Clara legging and a cool tank top

Today is the 1st of June, Children's` Day, and just by coincidence I am going to share a project, actually, there are two, made for Lisa.

While I love making the video reviews and presentations of my projects on my YouTube channel I find it sometimes challenging to get everyone quiet during the day to get a decent video without being interrupted and in the night when all are still the light is bad, so I decided that maybe blogging sometimes get faster and if you are not there to read at least for my own reference :))

Back to the outfit :). The patterns used for these two garments are the Clara leggings from Jalie patterns and the top is from the magazine B-trendy, issue 12.

These leggings pattern is amazing, I made it like 20 times by now. Since it's release in the summer of 2018 I think, I am making them twice a year for Lisa, a few for summer, and than later in the year a few for fall/winter days.

Lisa has a longer torso so her RTW pants/leggings are always too short at the upper part and creeping down her bum when she sits or plays so I gave up buying and enjoy making the Claras in fun fabrics every time. The cool part about this pattern is that it comes in so many sizes so I am good forever :)). I even have traced a pair for myself to try and see.

These days I am making them without the gusset but with the pattern modified to accommodate that gusset like Jalie has it on the blog. It makes this so fast to sew! There is then actually only one pattern piece cut it on the fold, sew the CB seam, inside leg seam, and apply elastic at the waist, hem and I am done!

This time I made a size J, which is a bit lose on the legs but I guess is fine, Lisa is very happy with the fit.

The fabric is from Driessenstoffen.nl is one of their "by Lisan" fabrics, a very nice quality cotton jersey that also holds very nice on wash and drying.

The leggings are entirely made with the serger and only the hem and the final step on attaching the elastic are done with a zig-zag stitch on the sewing machine.

I had 1m of this fabric and in the past, I could take two leggings out of 1m but those times are gone :) so I had to do something with the rest of the fabric, I didn`t want it in the scrap box as it was too nice to stay there. I looked up in my magazines for a little top and so I found this little gem.

A really fun tank top with an open back and a bow-look in the back. It was perfect it was requiring only a bit of fabric but of course for me pattern matching or stuff like that it was out of the discussion! I also didn`t have enough fabric for the front-facing, which I found a bit odd anyway, I think a binding of the neckline it was enough.

But again because of fabric shortage, even the bindings were not easy to get out of those scraps. After cutting a too narrow piece and attaching to the neckline and looking like crap and did that two times!!!! I was ready to throw it in the bin and forget about it, but again the fabric was too much fun to do that :)). So I cut a 2-inch wide piece on the length of the fabric and attached it to the front, wrap it to the inside and stitched in the ditch and I was planning to cut off the excess but that rolled so nice to the outside and it formed such a nice edge that I decided to let it in place, and now I love it !! I will keep that in mind to apply it on a top for myself.

For construction, I used the serger, the sewing machine, and the cover stitch machine.

I have the coverstitch , a Janome 1000 CPX for a few years now and in the last few months, I used it more than in all these years. I always looked at videos and read posts about settings but actually only after I started just making samples and adjusting the tension to get the best result ( and not put right needle tension on 4 , left needle on 3 and so on ) I was amazed that actually, this machine works great! To be honest I sew this jersey with a tension of 9 and 7 for the needles and almost 1 on the looper....well never tried that before and always tried around 3 or 4 tension, never worked!

There is no need to say that this little lady is very happy with her outfit, calling it it the fan top as it has a lot of ventilation in the back :)).

Next, I have for her two cool jersey panels to make as summer dresses and for me, I have some Sew Over It goodies in the work. Those will come soon on my YouTube Channel, including toiles and fitting adjustments, don't forget to subscribe there and put your notifications on! If you missed my latest post there, I shared my modified paper bag waist pants made with Thread Count pattern TC2002 and a sneak peek on my blue wool Chaval coat and a new sparkly Chelsea Cardigan from Designer Stitch. (Aff link)

Happy sewing and take care ! xx Camelia