This is what I made with the fabric from the March Sew Hayley Jane classic subscription box. Click here to head over to the Sew Hayley Jane website to have a gander at the boxes and treat yourself to a subscription. Every Easter, my family puts up what we call an ‘Egg Tree’. We head…
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As I’m sure you know by now, I am one of the spoiled receivers of the Sew Hayley Jane monthly sewing subscription boxes. If you weren’t aware, let me give you the lowdown. It’ll be brief, so if you want more info, I’ll make sure to include plenty of links to her website within this post. There…
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Over the past few months, I’ve been suspiciously inactive, I know – and I’m sorry! To start with, I wasn’t really aware of how little I’d been posting on my social media, this blog and YouTube, but then a few of you lovely people who follow me sent me a message to wonder where I’d…
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Autumn is by far my most favourite season, but it’s really underrepresented in my wardrobe! I think most of us in the sewing community would agree – Autumn can be a little bit tricky to sew for. It can definitely be done though! Although, you don’t necessarily have to sew things specifically for Autumn thought if…
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Just so that you have time to prepare yourselves, there’s only been one day this week that I haven’t worn a Sew Over It pattern – I hadn’t even realised I’d been doing that until I sat down to get all of the pictures together for this post! DAY 7 – Monday 7th May WHAT…
Read MoreHello there everyone! Very long time, no speak on here – so sorry about that! I’ve been a busy bee writing my book THE LITTLE BOOK OF STAIN REMOVAL – please feel free to read all about that by clicking the title there. Self promo over, onto what I actually came here to talk about. Me- Made…
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I don’t think I’ve ever done a favourites post on the blog before – usually, I do it on my YouTube channel and end up wittering on for far too long and start talking about something completely unrelated. I thought I’d do it on here this time in the hopes of avoiding the pitfalls of…
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I’ve made and reviewed these dungarees once before, but with all the dungarees-related hype that’s going around at the moment with the Tilly and the Buttons Mila pattern, I suddenly got the urge to make another pair! I used a needlecord from my stash in a colour that no amount of Googling will uncover the…
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Long time, no talk! Sorry about that, I’ve been super duper busy working on the stain removal book I’m going to publish! Today I’m here to chat about the trousers that I made for the Sewing Makes You Love Yourself sewalong (click THIS LINK to head to the video that I made about it, I…
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For those of your unfamiliar with the term, ‘sewjo’ is the word we’ve invented for ‘sewing mojo’; namely, your usual excitement about sewing things. We all know that I love a good pun. So what about when you have a period where you fall out of love with sewing? I classify a loss of sewjo as…
Read MoreEvery now and then we all need a little pick me up or just to find something new that makes you smile. I’ve put together this list of some of my favourite non-sewing related websites and YouTube channels (none of them are shops, so you won’t be tempted to spend any money) to spread a…
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Women In Clothes is a book unlike any other. It is essentially a conversation among hundreds of women of all nationalities – famous, anonymous, religious, secular, married, single, young, old – on the subject of clothing, and how the garments we put on every day define and shape our lives. Those are the first words that…
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As we all know, it’s no secret that I’m a big Sew Over It fan. When the Penny dress was released by Sew Over It, it was around the time that I’d decided that I loved shirt dresses in a big way. Sophia Rosemary, a fashion blogger whose style I’m all over had posted this picture…
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Summer clothes and colours are super fun to make and wear, so why not try and make them work all year round? We all know it, Summer weather takes up a surprisingly short portion of the year when you’re living in the UK. But a lot of the time, there are some items of clothing…
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Boy, what a whirlwind! Me, on the television? Never thought that would happen! Yesterday evening, I appeared on Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas 2017 in the advent calendar competition. (If you missed it and fancy a watch, you can click this link: Channel 4 On Demand – Episode 3) I’d been out in London for the day at a…
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This was my second Alex shirt (from the Sew Over It: City Break eBook) so I was hoping that it would be better than my first one – which, looking back, I realise I never reviewed! What a bad egg – I’ll make sure that it’s all properly gone through here! My first version was…
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I’ve been a fan of the Tilly and the Buttons Marigold sewing pattern since I got it in June, and have made the jumpsuit version a few times – but this was my first round sewing the trousers! Spoiler: I love them. You can probably tell from the cheery little photo below: In my Autumn Sewing Plans video,…
Read MoreIf you’re reading this quite soon after it’s gone up, I’m sorry about the total lack of pictures in this post! I’m away from home myself at the moment (hence why I’m writing this) and have some pretty limited wifi. But as soon as I’m home, I’ll come back to this and add some lovely…
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The illustration used for this post is by Debbie Powell for Uppercase Magazine Travelling long distances on your own is always going to be stressful – hauling along a ridiculously heavy suitcase that has one of those pingy wheels that carries the ever-present threat of causing your suitcase to veer off in a wholly unprecedented…
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I wrote a full post on the Sew Hayley Jane blog on this dress as the fabric that I used was from this month’s subscription box, but I thought I’d do a little round up over here to show you the finished article. Recently, the majority of the thing’s that I’ve made have been thanks to lovely…
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When you make your own clothes, you want to make sure that you wear them and You want your wardrobe to be functional, so a good place to start in identifying the gaps in your wardrobe is by thinking about how you spend your time (how you actually spend your time, not what you’d like to be doing…
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Being a very nosy person myself, I know that sometimes room tours can go a bit fast, especially when there’s a particularly busy bit that you want to have a look at in more detail or find out more about. So today I’ve written this post to accompany My New Sewing Room Tour video on my YouTube channel,…
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I came up with Mend It Month mainly for my own benefit – I have so many projects that are mostly finished but not quite, just needing to be hemmed or taken in a tiny weeny bit – but I thought some of you might want to join in too! Each week throughout October, I’m going…
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Last weekend (well, technically from Thursday until Sunday) was the Great British Sewing Bee Live – a new event that featured contestants and judges from series past, a catwalk of Vogue patterns, workshops and a snazzy array of shopping opportunities! I went on the Sunday with mum, and arrived just as the doors opened –…
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I know that I haven’t written a post about any of my recent makes in quite a long while, to be honest I’ve been so excited about writing the ones about caring for your clothes that they took a bit of a back seat for a while there! But now the pattern reviews are back,…
Read MoreStarting something new and knowing that you’re going to be meeting a lot of new people – people that you’re going to spend a lot of your time with for a week, a month, a year – is always tough. We worry about how people are going to view us and feel like we need…
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Hello there! Today I have something mighty exciting, even if I do say so myself – so I’ll cut to the chase; I’ve made a free printable for you! This printable is one that you can use for those moments when you see a garment and think ‘boy oh boy do I want to make…
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I’ve been meaning to write this post for about a week, but I hadn’t gotten round to it until now! I’ll start off by saying that the Sewing Weekender was just so amazingly rad – I’m currently rendering the video (as I’m writing, so it’ll probably be on YouTube by the time it’s posted) if…
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Hey everyone! I hope you’re all having a happy day – hopefully this post and seeing lots of cute baby photos will cheer you up if you aren’t! Today I’ll be wrapping up the sewalong I hosted, #TheSewbackProject (if you aren’t sure what I’m talking about, click that link and you can read what it’s all about…
Read MoreHello again lovely readers, me again! Today is just going to be a quick one, because I wanted to announce the winners of my Great British Sewing Bee Live Giveaway Thank you so much to everyone who entered – I wish you all the best of luck before you scroll down! But before you do, let…
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A book review?! How new and exciting! Today I’m reviewing Metric Pattern Cutting for Women’s Wear (6th Edition) By Winifred Aldrich, which, as the title may suggest, is a book about creating and adapting blocks to create clothes for women. I’d been looking at buying this book and reading reviews on it for a little while,…
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I was a very super lucky ducky recently, as I was a Sew Over It pattern tester for the release of their newest paper pattern, the Elsie dress. I’d seen Elsie on their website a few times when looking through the London classes, and knew that there was a lot of hype around the pattern…
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This one is going to be the last of the TCC posts for a little bit – the next step is the closet detox, so I need to get going on that before I write about it (you can probably imagine the problem that would come with writing about detoxing my closet without actually having…
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I’ve been wanting to shower you all in free gifts for a long while now, but so far I haven’t been in a financial position to be able to do that really – but I have been saved by the lovely people behind the Great British Sewing Bee Live, who have given me a whopping five…
Read MoreHello! I haven’t done a Chronicles of Illness post in a while, have I? Seems about time. Rather than this one being full of tips on how to cope with your illness, this one’s more of an update on my life, and why I’ve come to the decision to take a momentary YouTube break. As…
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Yay, the prom dress was made in time! I’d been planning this make for ages, but there were lots of calamities involved, which meant that I didn’t actually finish it until two hours before the prom – despite knowing what I wanted to make since around October. Year 13 prom (which is basically the last year…
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This post is going to sort of include three steps from The Curated Closet, but one I’m not really able to talk about properly because I went through it taking mental notes rather than written ones. And that step was going through (almost) all of the things written in my master list in the TCC – Discovering My…
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Hello! Yesterday heralded my first Marigold jumpsuit – a Tilly and the Buttons pattern – something which I’d been meaning to make for a while but ended up being one of those items that ends up being taken over by sewalongs and the sort of garments that you just need to make for a specific day…
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This is the most exciting bit so far!! (Well, I think so anyway) I went through all of the sites, shops and accounts that I wrote on my checklist in the TCC – Discovering My Style (Phase One) blog post, looked through everything, and made notes on everything that I was drawn to. After that I had…
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So, this next bit is where it starts to get exciting! I’ve been looking through magazines, websites, blogs, Instagram, Pinterest, online shops and everything inbetween to find exactly what it is that I’m drawn to style-wise and making a note of it. Something that’s really handy to do here (and may or may not be…
Read MoreI know I haven’t gone into much (if any) detail on how this series is going to be structured, and the reason for that is that I’m not really that sure myself. So I hope you don’t mind both me and you going with the flow! Today I’m going to be going through the first…
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Hello to you lovely sewists! Just to let you know, I’m going to be extending the deadline for #thesewbackproject until the end of July instead of the end of June! I know that there are a lot of sewalongs ending this month, so to give you a chance and so that you won’t need to rush,…
Read MoreWhen I first heard about this snazzy-sounding sewalong (does it count as a sewalong? If not you know what I mean), I thought that it seemed right up my street. I know I’ve mentioned it in one of my previous blog posts (which one though, I don’t know), but since writing it I’ve been mulling…
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This is my second Mimi blouse, and hopefully you’ll be pleased to hear that the making of this one was a much smoother journey! (If you’d like to read about the many mishaps of the previous Mimi, I’ll link the blog post here.) The fabric was very lightweight so I knew it would gather nicely,…
Read MoreI say a lot in real life that I don’t want being a bit of a lemon to define me as a person, that I don’t want to be known as ‘that disabled girl’, so it seems ridiculous that I would choose ‘Hobbling Handmades’ as a name, right? The truth is, being disabled does define me.…
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TATB, for any of you wondering, means ‘Tilly and the Buttons’ – an independent pattern and sewing company owned by the very fabulous Tilly Walnes. I just couldn’t fit the whole name in the title of the blog post, so abbreviating it was really my only option. This one’s a bit late. Dropped the ball…
Read MoreAlthough I only started sewing about a year ago (well, a little less than a year actually, I started in summer) my commitment to binge-watching the videos of sewing vloggers has meant that I have quite an in-depth knowledge of Me Made May, despite this being the first May that has passed since I’ve started…
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This cardigan has been so many months in the making, and it’s a bit weird that it’s finally done. It isn’t perfect and there are lots of parts of it that I’ve been having arguments with, but it’s wearable. I’m just not sure if I really will wear it. When you’ve spent so long on something, it’s so annoying…
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Hello to you lovely readers! Long time no speak, right?! (I have finished another garment but I can’t write about it yet because it’s for a sewalong so it isn’t time) This is my exciting news – or at least it is if you want to join me in my idea! I’ve come up with…
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The Little Dressmaker 