This printing machine is the size of several cars placed end-to-end. It’s massive! The paper goes through the whole machine, from end to end, and the different colours are layered on the paper. If you look very closely at the envelope, through a magnifying glass, you can see that the background colours aren’t a solid colour but made up of tiny dots in magenta, yellow, and cyan. (Turquoise blue, hot pink and yellow if you aren’t sure what those colours look like.)

(here’s how big the printer is – those steps are the size of normal steps!)

There are four envelopes printed on one sheet of paper, which is then cut apart and assembled into envelopes at the printer. (This is why it makes sense to print two different patterns at once, 2+2, or four different patterns at once, 1+1+1+1, but not three or five.)

Instruction sheets are also printed at the same printer, on huge machines like this. I’m very happy that they arrive at my door pre-folded, so all I have to do is slip the tissue into the folded instructions, slide the instructions into the envelope and then fold the top tab in.

Which is what I’ll be doing all weekend! Busy stuffing envelopes for Monday’s big launch. Stay tuned for the new pattern announcement on Monday!

Hello again! I have been experimenting with bright lipstick. When I walk around I feel like everyone is looking at my face but anyone who mentions it says it looks good. Are they lying? You can tell me, but be kind…

What happened in April 2013

A new pattern is out to print! Everything is now at the printers and will start arriving here in the coming weeks. It always feels good to have everything out for printing. My work is done for the moment, until the tissues and envelopes and instructions arrive and I have hundreds of envelopes to stuff.

(giving you the same sneak peek photo as last month! don’t want to spoil the surprise…)

I am really looking forward to launching this new pattern in May. It’s a great addition to the pattern collection, and it’s totally different from all the others! (Be sure to sign up for the Sewaholic Patterns mailing list, it’s a different list from the blog post emails, and it will ensure you’re the first to see the newest design!)

I was a guest judge at the Garbage Fashion Show, a show featuring outfits made from recycled materials, put on by high school students. (Check out the first post here, and some of the runway shots here.)

A quick trip to Vegas! Mr Sewaholic had a conference in Las Vegas and I tagged along. Did I need to go? Nope! Should I probably have worked instead? Probably! But hey, what is the point of being self-employed if you can’t close the office and run off to Vegas now and then?

While he worked, I did a little thrift and vintage shopping, and came home with two very pretty vintage dresses. I’ll post about them next month for a little look at the sewing details! (Here is a peek at one of them. I don’t buy a lot of clothing but these were very special and affordably priced!)

Knitting slowed down. I’ve been working on the Princess Twinset Jumper from Coronation Knits, and it’s slow going. It’s now almost done, just needs to be seamed together and buttons attached. I think this is going to be the perfect go-with-everything sweater!

Knitting full-size garments in very thin yarn is probably a good way to save money, since it takes so long to finish anything! (As long as you don’t end up buying yarn for your next three projects in the meantime.)

I knit mittens to match my coral rainboots! Just in time for the weather to improve. Ah well. If it does rain, I won’t mind as I’ll have a reason to wear my cute new rainboots and matching mitts! I also talked about overcoming my fear of colourwork and how silly it was to be afraid of something so much that you would avoid it. You guys shared some of your fears – including buttonholes and sewing trousers – and hopefully, we can all try some of the things that scare us to lessen the fear a little.

We talked about the different sewing terms (and clothing names) in this post – I say muslin, you say toile… Snaps are poppers, press studs or domes as well as snaps. A stitch ripper is a seam ripper is a quick unpick – love that one! A Peter Pan collar is a ‘col Claudine’ in France. Muslin fabric is calico in the UK and stout in Denmark. I learned that in many countries the word for yarn is the same as wool which sounds confusing when you want to buy yarn made of other fibres. Take a read-through the comments section to learn all about sewing terms around the world!

Top selling pattern of April 2013:

The Cambie Dress! It’s that time of year when we can shed our winter layers and start wearing summer dresses. (Also, perhaps it was because we saw Gemini’s gorgeous Cambie Wedding Dress!) Second place goes to the Renfrew Top and third to the Robson Coat. (Same three as last month, but in a different order, and again that Renfrew Top is always in the top three!)

Challenges

To grow or not to grow? How big should this little business of mine be?

I don’t know the right answer to this one. Before starting my own business, I worked at a clothing company that hired me as their fourth employee in a small but growing company. I watched as the company grew to over 30 people, and when I was let go I believe there were twelve employees remaining. That’s a lot of change to experience over an eight-year period. So as you can imagine, I’m hesitant to grow too fast. There are a lot of costs to running a business besides the obvious costs of printing patterns and hosting a website. (Taxes were an eye-opener this year! You work all year to make money and then the government takes quite a large amount of it for itself, just because.)

Then again, I don’t want to let fear stop me from growing. Growth is a good thing! Right now I can’t do everything that I want to do or I’d never sleep. I’m just one person with added (and very appreciated) support from Caroline. Could I find things for a full-time person to do? You bet! How much better could the business be if I were to double the amount of people working on it? What other cool things could we do? It’s just such a big leap to go from being responsible for only myself, to being responsible for someone else’s job.

I’m mostly just thinking out loud here,  but it’s nice to have a record of the state of the business at this point in time. It’s a personal decision, deciding how and when to grow my business, but it’s something to consider if any of you are starting your own business, or dream of being self-employed. What kind of business does it look like in your wildest dreams? How big is it, how many people work there (in its ideal state) and what range of services do you provide? What happens when sales are good, how do you keep up? What are you going to do during the slow periods?

And probably the most honest question you’ll have to address regarding a new business: is this really a full-time venture? If so, are you prepared to make it your life, day in and day out? Would it take away the joy of your hobby? How will you keep balanced through it all? (Karen makes some great points here.) And if your idea isn’t destined to be a full-time pursuit, are you OK with it always being a side business? Maybe the market isn’t as big as you thought. What would it take to make it the business you want it to be?

It’s been a challenging month here. I know that it seems pretty calm and relaxed, maybe even slow because there aren’t that many blog posts and it doesn’t look like I’m doing a lot of sewing. That’s the funny thing about blogging. More posts make it seem like I’m busy but really if I have time to post often then the rest of my business is slow. Good problems to have though, right?

Here’s to a gorgeous and warm month of May! Look for a new pattern launching next month. I can’t wait to finally share it with you!

Like this? Read more Behind the Scenes posts!

• Behind the Scenes, January 2013
• Behind the Scenes, February 2013
• Behind the Scenes, March 2013

These are pretty blurry photos but it will give you an idea of the creativity of each entry, and the variety of recycled materials used!

a dress made with playing cards

a suit made from recycled Coke cans – see the pop-tops detail on the cuff!

this dress was inspired by the legend of the Thousand Paper Cranes- the little cranes on wires behind her head bobbed as she walked!

a dress made from used coffee sleeves, which are a rather wasteful product!

 We made up our own category ‘Judges’ Choice’ so that we could give this one a special mention. I got to make an egg joke on stage and say ‘egg-ceptional’ or ‘egg-citing’ – can’t remember now which egg-word I went with! (I think egg-ceptional and I emphasized the egg, so that the audience started cheering because they knew which entry it was.)

The dress is made of egg cartons discarded by a local restaurant, and the reason we were so impressed with this one is because there’s no glue or tape used in the construction. (Because glue and tape isn’t eco-friendly.) She’s tied it together with old telephone cables from the telephone company. Talk about commitment to the concept!

This next one we named runner-up, because it was so striking on the runway! The colours, the innovation, the movement! It’s hard to put into words and the photos certainly don’t do it justice but this was a really beautiful piece. (If I can find better photos after this post goes up I’ll share them too!)

and a blurry shot of the back…

And the winner? This amazing creation by student Mack Stewart. It’s a samurai suit, made from old filmstrip film of an old samurai movie. The judges and I loved the originality and stage presence  of his creation! Here’s a crooked and blurry shot from the catwalk:

And here’s a much clearer shot from the summary sheet we were provided as judges.

All of the proceeds from the show are donated to a local charity chosen by the students. This year they chose a charity that helps the homeless in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. (I wish I’d noted down the name! The representative from the charity gave a talk about how they involve students in helping feed the homeless, and work with youth to help them stay off the streets, so it’s a relevant group for a high school to support.)

Amazing, right? I’m honoured to be a part of this event for a second year. Whoever says that young people aren’t motivated needs to check out events like this. These students are smart, talented and committed to creating a better world through green initiatives. If this is the future, we’re in good hands.

Thanks to the Coquitlam School District and Heritage Woods Secondary for inviting me to judge this year’s show, and congratulations to all of the participants on a job well done!

Well, that was me. I was afraid of colourwork knitting. Knitting with more than one colour in the same line, knitting motifs and patterns in various colours. I even took a colourwork class, but I was sort of expecting there to be a secret to colourwork, and when there wasn’t I went back to avoiding it. Beautiful fairisle sweaters, I thought I would never own them. I was resigned to knitting only solid things, telling myself that solid things were way more practical anyways.

And then – I did it! I knit colourwork. And it really wasn’t so hard, not at all painful, and actually quite fast. (It’s fast because there’s a mini-goal, get to the next colour! And the next colour, and the next…)

The pattern is Chevron Love Mittens, also available as a kit with yarn and pattern included, which is what I did so that I didn’t have a ton of leftover yarn. And also because I really liked the colour schemes. (If I’d bought full skeins of yarn for each colour that would be a ton of yarn leftover at the end!) Buy mitten kits and the pattern here. Ravelry link to my project here.

I picked these colours to match my coral rubber boots, which I bought on my birthday because it rains all the time here. Why not give yourself a reason to be excited about rain? (I realize that this is very much what children do, get excited about rain so they can wear rain boots and splash in puddles, and I don’t care!)

But in my case, I’ll be putting on my awesome blue Robson Trench, my coral rubber boots and my toasty-warm Chevron Love Mittens. Bring on the rain, rainy Vancouver! I’ll be facing it in style.

I liked these mittens so much, I wore them before they were finished! With colourwork, there are strands of yarn going across the back of your work, so whatever you’re knitting ends up twice as warm because it’s twice as thick.

Although, you do end up with a lot of loose ends that need to be woven in at the end! (I think I counted 124 ends.)

So yeah. Colourwork, not actually that scary. I didn’t even master the fancy way of doing it, holding one colour in the left hand and the other in the right. I picked up the colour, knit what I had to knit, let it drop, picked up the second colour and knit with it, let that one drop and pick up the first colour. Sure, there are other ways, probably faster and better ones, but you can see that we all end up at the same result – mittens!

I’ve been sewing for over twenty years (probably closer to 25 at this point!) and knitting for nearly two, and I still find myself fearing certain techniques. I know deep down that nothing in the knitting or sewing world is life or death, and yet still I avoided knitting with two colours! How silly. Now a whole new world of knitting in colours and fair-isle patterns has opened up to me!

So if there’s something that you’re afraid of, think of me and my silly fear of knitting with two colours of yarn. That sort of mental block can happen to anyone, no matter how confident they are in other areas of their craft! Don’t let fear stop you from making stuff!

(And now, I’m off to pick out my next colourwork project. Have a great day!)

Here’s the winning dress from last year’s fashion show. (Because it’s impressive and let’s show it off again!)

Well, I’ve been asked to come back and judge the show again this year. I’m excited to see what the students come up with this year!

Here’s a little bit about the event:

It’s called the Garbage Fashion Show, and it’s put on by the Coquitlam School District. The event is at a high school and organized by high school students. (Last year I found the event to be extremely well-organized. There was music, a runway built in the middle of the school, a nice table for us to sit at, and a great turnout in the audience!)

The contestants, high school students, have a few months to construct a garment out of a recyclable materials (ex. used bottles, plastic bags, old boxes, etc). At last year’s show there were over thirty participants! They used everything from old McDonald’s fry containers, plastic grocery bags, candy wrappers, pop-can tops linked together to form chain mail to the tiny plastic wineglasses used for church communion. Things you’d never think to wear on your body!

The purpose of the fashion show is to raise environmental awareness amidst School District #43′s high schools, and all proceeds from this show will be donated to grassroots charities. (I cannot remember which charities but the students get to choose which ones.)

I’m happy to support events that get young people interested in fashion and design and creativity. I really believe in supporting the high schools, I’ve done many talks for home ec classes and even though I’m getting really busy with the business, it’s important to give back and share my passion for sewing. While this isn’t really sewing, it certainly is creative! (And it’s a lot of fun too.)

Want to see the show? It’s Thursday night, April 18th, and you can pick up tickets at the door. If you’re in the Coquitlam area, come on down and support young creative talent!

Here’s what I’m dreaming of sewing:

Gertie’s new dress pattern for Butterick Patterns! (Butterick 5882). I think this is the prettiest retro dress. The skirt is full, the bodice is fitted, and it emphasizes the bustline. All good things for people shaped like me! I’m having a hard time picturing it in anything other than a floral print with a bright fabric for the bust detailing. Would it be as effective with the bust pleating not in contrast fabric? The red is so striking, it’s what drew me to the pattern in the first place. (It basically shouts ‘look at my chest!’ Love it.)

Eyelet dress. I have a thing for eyelet, it’s the perfect summer fabric! I’d like to make an eyelet Hazel. I’d keep the extra fullness in the skirt just like my blue rose version, but add a lining to underlining to help with the sheerness. I would lower the waistline by 1″ to 1.5″, I kept it where it was for the blue rose version, but I can feel that when I wear the dress, belts want to slip down into my natural waistline. Lowering the waistline by extending the bodice would help with that. (I’m noting it here, so I remember to make the changes!) I’d maybe skip the pockets in case they show through. And I’d wear it with cowboy boots for bike rides, gold leather high-heeled sandals for dressing it up.

Underwear! I have a little collection of stretch lace just waiting for me to whip up some cute new undies. I made one pair, planned to wear-test it and never got around to making more. I have worn them and find that they fit like purchased underwear of the same style. Pretty comfortable, but they do work their way up slightly.

It makes sense, when you have a small waist, wide hips and big legs, and underwear is stretched over your hips and legs, it’s natural that the stretch lace is going to try to return to its un-stretched state and will migrate into parts of the body that allow it to relax.

To be completely honest, I’m used to underwear needing a little readjustment. It’s the nature of being curvy on the bottom. (I may not even know what comfortable really feels like!) I’d make more of these since I have the right width of lace, but continue the search for comfortable and cute undies. (Original underwear post here for more on the cute pair below!)

Parfait. Remember the muslin I made here? It needed a little work to get the fit right on me, so I moved ahead with making Hazel but left Parfait on the back burner. I have a delightfully spring-like cotton fabric that would make a very feminine Parfait, yet seeing the muslin made me want to choose a solid fabric to show off the detailing. I love A-line dresses for summertime as a change from full and gathered skirts. Less fabric, but still the comfort and ease of the A-line silhouette.

Cambie Dresses for days! I have several nice pieces of fabric I have set aside for sewing Cambie dresses. If I made even half of them, I’d never have trouble getting dressed in the morning!

(I like this photo. More Cambie dresses!)

More vintage dresses (from vintage sewing patterns.) This is the time of year when it’s warm enough to show off our dresses. I love it when it’s summer and you can throw on a dress and heels and be ready to go!

A dress this lovely deserves to be shown off and not hidden under a winter coat! Oh how I love floral-print vintage dresses.

Funny enough, I did a post like this around the same time last year. There’s something about the approach of Spring that makes me feel inspired to sew! (Let’s not mention the fact I didn’t actually sew any of the items on my list. Sometimes daydreaming is enjoyable all on its own, just to imagine all the possibilities of what we could make.)

From last year’s list, I’d still like to sew that gingham tie-front shirt. It’s such a classic look! I’m imagining it in navy gingham with red Thurlow shorts and some sort of classic flat shoe. And sunglasses. And my bike. Warm weather sewing, here we come!

What’s on your mind for Spring sewing?

Yes, I’m a little compulsive about my pincushion. I’m working on overcoming the urge to put them back in colour order, as it slows down my sewing!

When I met Sunni over the summer, she gave me some silk pins, designed especially for pinning into silk fabrics without leaving pin marks. (You can use regular pins, and I have, but I would always pin within the seam allowance to avoid marking the fabric. Now I can pin freely!)

Silk pins – they are thinner and promise not to leave pin marks in silk fabrics!

Here’s my tip: buy a second pincushion for these specialty pins. I can’t keep pins in a box, that’s asking for disaster when I knock over the contents of the pin box into the carpet. Better to keep them properly in a cushion!

This way, if I’m working with silk, I can put away the regular pincushion and only use the silk pin pincushion. (A bowl, or tin, or anything you like to use will work. Bonus if they’re in something that won’t get knocked over easily.) I’ll be able to tell which pin is which, because they won’t be mixed together. Otherwise I’m likely to forget that I own special pins for silk, since I’ve been using nothing but regular pins for so long. This way I will hopefully remember to use them!

That’s it! Having two pincushions makes it easy to use the right kind of pin when I need it, and having the specialty pins in a proper container instead of safe in their box makes it more likely that I’ll remember to use them.

Anyone else forget to use the special tools they have? Thoughts on silk pins? The next time I’m cutting silk, I’ll report on how they work. (Find silk pins at the Fashionable Stitch shop here.)

You would think I would remember to use tools I own that would make my life easier, but with everything else that is going on, out of sight is out of mind. (I was looking for something else when I came across these, and decided to move them to a more obvious place!)

On another note, what a great discussion on this week’s post on the international language of sewing. I learned some surprising things about a touristy accessory! I’ve said this before but this blog wouldn’t be half as interesting without the amazing women that read it. Thank you!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

(source)

It doesn’t have to be red, it can be black or white or blue, but we call these two-colour prints with this style of motif “toile.” That’s what I picture when I think of toile.

Hello, again!

It’s both cool and weird to post a photo of myself each month. On one hand, it’s a true look into my world, as if you were peering through the monitor into my workspace. On the other, I feel like I should have dressed up more each time. (At least I purposefully put effort into my hair this day.) Ah well! Welcome to my regular life.

What happened this month

Launch of a new pattern! You can’t go wrong with a classic trench. As soon as it warms up a little here and winter coat season is over, I live in my trench coat! Perfect with printed summer dresses, effortless with a striped tee and jeans. This pattern was very well received by you guys and our retailers! It’s so exciting when you’re excited. All that sewing excitement is contagious and I get excited about the new design all over again!

As much as I love the design, this was the production process where everything went wrong. Without going into too much detail, I thought I was really on top of my game and had the process nailed down, but this time there were quite a few bumps along the road. One thing went wrong, then the next day I get to work and a second thing goes wrong, then a third thing, then I get a parking ticket – it was one of those weeks! Luckily the vendors I work with are super responsive and worked very hard to make things right again. I’m so thankful to have this pattern in stock and finalized, it wasn’t an easy go!

Another new pattern is now out to testing! This one I am super excited about. It’s something pretty much anyone could wear in their everyday life. And, it’s comfortable! (I hope the photo doesn’t give too much away…)

That’s all I’m going to say for now, since it will be a month or so by the time it goes through testing, I make the final touches, and get it out to print, then back from printing. Here’s hoping the process goes smoothly this time around!

I got a new folding table, a borrowed one actually, to see whether it works well in here before buying one. It’s a lot of work to get furniture in here. Usually I bike so I’d have to arrange to take the car, and not everything fits in the Smart Car. So far, the table is great! More worksurface makes it easier to work on multiple things at once. (We’ll see when the boxes start piling up again, I may wish it wasn’t in here.)

Preparing for taxes. Very boring, very necessary, takes forever to do. It’s easy to get behind on accounting-related things as the other stuff is so much more interesting! However, I’m still responsible for doing the books and making sure everything gets filed on time. Last year I was doing the tax stuff last-minute, filing just before the deadline. This year I am a month earlier than last year!

Last year I was one of those shoebox people, the kind that shows up at the accountant’s office with a pile of receipts in a shoebox and it’s a bit of a disaster to go through them all. This year, I have my books properly entered in a computer program. Although I forgot how to enter things. I started doing my books properly in August, cheerfully did January to July all at once with the excitement of learning something new… and then left them unattended until now. This month I had all of August to December to catch up on, and it took forever. It’s one of those things that you as the customer don’t see, but doing it regularly makes a big difference in the organization of my business – and my peace of mind.

Sewaholicpatterns.com now sends out nice-looking order confirmations! Before, all you would see is a notification from Paypal. Which is fine, it confirms that we received your payment, but we would get emails asking ‘did you get my order? is everything OK?‘ Now you get an email thanking you, and confirming that your order was received, in addition to the Paypal payment confirmation. This was a new feature added by the company that hosts my web store. I’m very happy to be able to add this simple, but effective improvement.

Spinning class! I learned how to spin yarn on a drop spindle. A couple of the women in my knitting group and I have been talking about how awesome it would be to make our own yarn, so when the class came up, we signed up together! I can now make very crude, lumpy yarn. I’m still not certain whether I love spinning or not, but there was an ‘aha’ moment when we learned to ply the yarn and it all came together. With practice I’m sure I will improve! (Now it’s just a matter of deciding if I want to pursue spinning and develop those skills, or use that time knitting instead. There are only so many hours in the day!)

I finished and photographed my coral cardigan. Pretty!

Knitting wise, I’m starting to look at vintage knitting patterns. I adore the vintage sweater patterns that Liz at Zilredloh posts (and knits), and the gorgeous vintage sweaters Tasha and Laura Mae knit, but wrote them off as too challenging for my skill level. I bought A Stitch In Time and Coronation Knits and started knitting my first sock-weight sweater. I feel like they are going to take forever, but at least they’re short and fitted, right? Nothing can be as slow as my over-the-knee-socks. That’s why it’s good to make monumental projects, it helps to put regular projects in perspective! Make a tailored winter coat, and after that, a light collarless jacket seems simple!

I was re-reading the comments on What Do You Like Best about Sewing Blogs to see if I was covering some of the things you wanted to hear about. Barb mentioned my everyday life:

What other things do you do when you’re not sewing, like other interests, such as sports, other hobbies, family events, what you enjoy reading, where you would like to go on a holiday, or where you are going.

Just something of your day-to-day life. If you collapse in front of the TV after working in your studio/office late each day, that’s fine too. I have operated a small business and understand somewhat what is involved!

Um, a lot of the time I do come home and collapse in front of the TV or on the bed. I’ve been working late nights this month, cycling home in the dark and getting home close to 9 pm. On those nights, I eat a bowl of cereal, knit for a bit, and go to bed. Things have really changed since moving my business to an outside office two years ago. I’m busier than I ever expected I’d be!

Other than that, I enjoy knitting, bike rides, long walks around the local lakes and parks, country music, good food, traveling, and daydreaming! I’m pretty low-key, at this point in my life running my business takes up a large chunk of my life so when I’m not working, I want to relax.

(this is my kind of day off! sunshine and a bike ride)

Sabrina B also wanted to know more about the design process, as opposed to the production process. Where do ideas come from? I’ve said before that I’m more of a technical designer. I design based on problem-solving and filling a need, more than I am inspired by sunsets and architecture. Design to me includes the construction process as much as the finished garment’s appearance. How it goes together is as important as what it looks like!

Let’s take the Robson Coat for example. I had the idea for the Robson Coat because I wanted a trench coat in my pattern line, and also in my wardrobe. That decision was easy to make! It’s classic, it looks great on curvy figures and it’s a piece I feel strongly about. From there, I thought about what would make it the perfect trench in appearance, and what factors would also make it enjoyable and fairly straightforward to sew.

I wanted it knee-length so it paired well with gathered skirts and dresses as well as trousers. A knee-length trench looks amazing on everyone, with every outfit, in my opinion! It’s so easy to throw it on and look instantly pulled-together. A cinched waist was also important for that hourglass look, but I wanted it to be possible to wear it loosely as well, so the coat is belted rather cinched in permanently.

For the construction side, I wanted to leave it unlined so it was faster to sew, and lightweight, as well as easy to press. Long coats can get wrinkled when you’re sitting in a car, but it’s a pain to press a lined coat and keep both layers perfectly flat. (Also, there is limited space on the tissue paper, so adding lining pattern pieces would have significantly increased the production costs.)  I still wanted it to look good from the inside, so I finished the seams with bias binding. It’s a way for people to add personality to a classic piece – with printed or striped binding, contrast coloured binding, it’s a little bit of fun when your coat blows open.

Princess seams make it easy to alter, and then I added all of the necessary trench-coat details like epaulettes, sleeve tabs, storm flaps, and welt-style pockets. Again, the pockets look like welt pockets, but they’re simply inseam pockets with a flap covering the opening. Easier than they look! I rounded off the edges of the collar, lapel, and storm flaps for a more feminine look but also because curves are easier to sew and less noticeable if one is slightly different from the other, as compared to pointed corners. I actually started off with pointed corners but didn’t like the way they looked on the first prototype.

(no flopping pockets in this trench coat!)

On the problem-solving side, I thought about what annoys me about my purchased trench coats, and that’s saggy pockets, or loose flopping pockets. So I added a pocket stay to the instructions, anchoring the pocket bag to centre front so it won’t sag or flop around. The placement of the pockets is a little lower so anything you place in the pockets isn’t going to be visible or adding extra padding at the waistline. The storm flaps are constructed as one piece from front to back, so if you were caught in the rain the flap covers the shoulder seam for extra protection.

My biggest concern about this pattern was that people would think it too complicated to sew. So the pieces are easy to construct, and if you only have a little bit of time, sew up the storm flaps, or the epaulettes, or the sleeve tabs. There are many small building blocks that make up this coat.

(not a lot of time to sew? make just the pocket flaps!)

That’s how my mind works when it comes to design. First comes the general concept, which I build out into a proper idea and work out the details as they come up. As I work out the details, I consider construction, wearability, and problem-solving. It’s all very technical and not so romantic, but that’s how it happens for me!

Top selling pattern of March 2013:

The Robson Coat! I’m exciting to see the new pattern leading in sales this month. You guys aren’t afraid of sewing trench coats! It’s the perfect time of the year to make one, too. Second place goes to the Renfrew Top and third to the Cambie Dress. That Renfrew Top is always in the top three!

Report on last month’s challenges

Let’s see, what did I say last month? I did better at eating lunch away from my desk. Two things helped with that – the weather is getting nicer, and I am working on a few things in light-coloured fabric that I didn’t want to risk spilling on! Not that I eat at the sewing station, but you know how it is. If I use soy sauce in the office at all there’s a possibility it could end up on a project.

My office is as clean as it can be, so that’s good. The folding table helps, having another work surface.

And I’ve been taking action all month! Don’t overthink, just act. Start instead of being afraid of starting. That’s going to be my driving force whenever I hit a roadblock!

Challenges

Again, I’m going to focus on prioritizing and taking action, and keeping calm when things go wrong. In the face of conflict, I’m going to step outside myself and look at the situation from the outside. (Sometimes I imagine life is a movie and I’m acting in it.) What’s a reasonable reaction to this situation? What would the actress playing me do next? What would the audience applaud and what would make them roll their eyes? What’s the next right thing to do? Things are always going wrong but if you keep your head and act reasonably, it’s easy to work things out.

Here’s to an exciting April! Warmer weather, longer days and plenty of sewing ahead.

Like this? Read more Behind the Scenes posts!

• Behind the Scenes, January 2013
• Behind the Scenes, February 2013

I also didn’t have a lot to wear with it. It was too glaringly bright to wear with my Chantilly Dress, and it was too short in the body to wear with jeans or trousers. It’s funny though, as soon as I finished the gathered skirt and wore it with the Lauriel, I saw the sweater in a new light. I wore it with the skirt in these photos, the Autumn Cambie and the gathered skirt pictured below!

I wore the sweater to take photos on a Monday and wore it again Wednesday and Thursday of that same week! It was so warm, so cosy, I kept reaching for it in the mornings.

Either I’ve grown a little thicker through the middle, or the sweater has contracted after its first wash, but it seems to fit better too. Looking at the photos it fits the same, but it feels better to wear. (Or I’ve gotten used to the fit.)

(I still love the details – the snaps are holding the button band firmly in place, it hasn’t stretched out at all!)

Plus, I got a lot of compliments on this sweater! At the fabric store, at the office, at a restaurant. My favourite was ‘it’s beautiful, did someone knit that for you?’ Yes someone did, I knit it for me! (I wasn’t that cheeky in real life, I promise.) Now I’m really enjoying this sweater, even thought at first I wasn’t certain.

Has this ever happened to you: after finishing a project, you’re not wild about the results, but after a little time has passed and you’ve worn it a few times, you fall back in love with the project?