The Late Night Sewist

Hi!

I think in the world of sewists on social media we inspire and get inspired often even subconsciously, the beautiful makes of others affecting our fabric and project choices without us realizing. And then there are moments when inspiration hits like a hammer and we know very clearly that we want a pattern or a fabric or a combination of these exactly as someone else just posted.

So this happened to me when I saw Keira´s (https://islandsewcialist.com) color block shirt back in February on her Instagram account. I screenshot the image and started looking for matching fabrics in terms of weight and color to straightforward copy her shirt. But I was unable to find this beautiful lemon shade of yellow and eventually opted for light pink, lilac, mint and blue cotton poplin that I finally found from Abakhan. That was really convenient as well, because they had just offered me a second collab, so the fabrics were bought using the allowance they kindly gave me and this is also the second post of the three that I said that I would write as a result of this collab.

I apologise if it is getting boring for you, but yes, I did choose a pattern from Style Arc once again. You have already heard the reasons for this so many times that I am not going to count them all here again but I particularly loved the back detail of the Roxy Shirt because I realized I could play even more with the color blocking thanks to this.

So after some head scratching on how to place the different colors on the pattern, I made the shirt and I am happy with the result. I didn´t really enjoy the instructions that stated one thing in the text and other on the drawings, but with some help from my Burda book, I managed to sew the sleeve plackets perfectly. The pattern instructions were all Greek to me, but the Burda book that is actually in Greek, was quite clear, haha!

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Soon after I finished the shirt, an event was announced on the biggest Estonian sewist community on Facebook and the theme was “Inspiration”- in order to participate you would have to show the inspiration photo and next to it your own creation. I had finished the shirt but did not have suitable pants to match and so my entry is technically the pants only, but I know that the shirt steals the show 😀

Keira so kindly gave her permission to use her image for the purpose:

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As you can see, I didn´t make jeans although that would have been even cooler, to try to copy the whole outfit, but I wanted to make a second pair of Liana Stretch Jeans from Itch to Stitch patterns and my jean fabrics were not stretchy enough for the purpose, so I used a dark blue stretch fabric that I bought in October from a warehouse sale paying 2 euros per meter if I recall correctly. It is of excellent quality but does not handle close up photos well, so just two of these which are heavily edited to resemble reality at least a bit.

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Today was a perfect spring day that actually felt summery and as the day proceeded, the temperatures rose even higher so in the evening we went out to a children´s playground by the sea and basically wore short sleeves. But it was quite windy and as I took the photos during the day by the seaside, my tripod tripped over several times, my hair was flowing in the air and my shirt ballooned in the most unflattering way… the struggle was real! And the whole “photoshoot” was cut short by the battery dying… !

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After all this winter stuck at home (and we haven´t really experienced serious lockdown as in terms of mobility restrictions and curfew) and despite knowing how lucky we have been to still have our jobs that allow us to work from home and not having any close family member catch the virus, after all this, this beautiful day felt so deliberating and I also felt that I looked good after a long long time, because I somewhat dressed up wearing this shirt. I even attended an afternoon online webinar wearing it although I normally opt for a decent jersey top when working from home.

My 3 year-old daughter asked me later in the evening: “Mommy, are we getting closer to the next winter?” and I felt goosebumps just because of the fact that the statement is true. But thankfully we are still in spring, I want to enjoy it to the fullest and wish you the same!