I know, I know … “tartan” and “Japanese” are not words that should generally go together but anyway, let’s not digress! I bought a short length of this beautiful piece of wool during our recent holiday to Japan. At the time, I vowed to make up everything I’d bought in Japan within a year, and so, ta da – I made a little skirt, and then since there was a decently sized piece leftover I made up a matching top too.
The skirt is our very own Meelup pattern, which is currently my number one top favourite. It has all my desired features; deep pockets, no zip, and a streamlined, yet comfortable and roomy silhouette. I carefully lined up the pockets to match the pattern in the skirt front; Pattern Matching 101. The skirt is lined in deep green lining fabric, not a perfect match colour-wise but t’was already in the stash thus making it the perfect candidate.
I also used a khaki cotton for the pocket lining and red buttons for the same reason… I know I know; the purist in me shrieks “NO!” however the thrifty-miss in me reassures myself that it’s not like you can ever see either of these wrongly coloured things when you’re wearing the skirt! I used the same khaki cotton to make bias binding to finish the raw edge of the hem inside…
Some waistband thoughts: sometimes I think applying a fusible interfacing to wool is just not a good idea; the interfacing is surely not going to adhere to the “fuzziness” of wool felt and will peel off too easily, although I have no evidence to back up this thought. Just a hunch. Anyway; to ensure the waistband stays nicely interfaced in the long term, I used dark green thread to run a hand-running stitch around the top edge of the waistband, around 4mm or so in from the fold, through all layers. You can’t even really see it, but it’s there and I just feel better knowing the fold is being held firmly in place like this, as well as keeping the interfacing where it should be too. btw, my apologies for the “fluff” in this photo I promise it’s actually barely visible to the naked eye! It’s just very hard to see those tiny hand stitches without zooming in this hard.
The little tee-top is kinda based on another old favourite, the epaulette top from “she has a mannish style” by Yuki Takada. I had enough tartan for the sleeves and two big patch pockets, and the body is cut from an ivory wool felt that has been such a very long-term stash resident that I cannot remember its provenance. I did not include the eponymous epaulettes, … also I lined the body fully with an ivory silk habotai (also long-term stash) because the ivory wool is really itchy.
I stabilised the neckline with a biascut strip of cream cotton, then attached the lining to this, before stitching them all down to the top around the neckline.. yes, quite complicated but gives a nice finish, imo. The armscye of the lining is also stitched to that of the outer, and the remainder of the body and side seams float freely from each other. Having a silk lining makes it quite beautiful to wear!
I finished the lower raw edge with cotton bias, just like with the skirt… You can see here how I used dark green thread in the bobbin to stitch on those patch pockets… and no that is not a mistake! I discovered that a cream coloured thread to match the wool showed up just very slightly on the outside of the pockets, not terribly but enough to bother me…so I unpicked that and re-did it with the green thread. Now the topstitching on the pockets is nicely invisible…
I’ve also run up two new ivory merino T-shirts in the past week… this is another of our patterns, the Pinjarra twinset. These two items are of course the tee part of the pattern, and both have the scoop neckline. I basically made these to use up the last of a length of ivory merino that I’d bought a few years ago but only made one tee so far. Now it has happily realised the purpose it was bought for, at last!
A few little moth holes had sprung up during its confinement to the stash, so while I could cut mostly around them, I darned the few unavoidable ones up before making my tops… The merino is so fine, I used regular stitching thread for darning… and even then it looks thicker than I’d like.
Honestly, though, it really is near invisible, unless you get up really close! and I know these two items are going to work hard in my wardrobe next winter… btw, can you see how I used a white thread and and ivory thread in that double top-stitching? No?!
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