[TOUR] Spring Into Color

Are you ready for spring? Cause I am SO ready for spring. As I’ve been planning and making this outfit, we’ve gotten three different snow storms with cancelled school days and power outages. The district has officially used up all of our snow days, so using another would mean taking a day back somewhere else (starting with Memorial Day and then Easter). So I am really, really hoping that this tour will put a good word in for us and finally bring spring for real!

 

 

When I was in NYC and visited Mood, I picked up two fabrics that didn’t really have a solid plan and this gave me the opportunity to use them. The first was a white stretch denim ponte and the other is a cotton jersey double border ombre.  I have a bad habit of getting small amounts of fabrics which then leaves me limited in what I can make. I should really work on that. I was also lucky that the colors I had bought were ones that work well with the Pantone Spring Color Report, which is our inspiration. I guess it helps that they’re colors I usually go for anyway. I’m also using the M4M/P4P capsule contest as a way to help me plan upcoming makes, and this fits right in.

 

 

I’ve always wanted white pants, and I knew that when I bought the denim, so I made sure to get two yards, which I knew would get me a full length pair of SOS pants (and a few other pant patterns, being short helps sometimes).  I decided that since this was a spring theme, I wanted to make capris. That isn’t an option in the SOS pattern, but I knew I could hack it. I cut the pattern in my size with the straight leg and an inch above the 30″ inseam. I then decided I wanted to spend some time making these look really great, so I researched some jean back pocket designs and found one I liked. I traced the size of the back pocket onto a piece of tissue paper and drew out the design, I then pinned that to the pocket and used it as a guide for stitching. (Shoutout to my ever helpful husband for the idea!) I also took a trip to Joann’s for some rivets for the pockets and also found bars with “handmade” engraved on them that I could hand sew on. They’re not perfect, but I love the way the pants look and feel.

 

P4P SOS & PSD

Once the pants were mostly constructed, I tried them on to decide on some shaping for the bottom part of the leg – this is where I wish I had used the skinny leg piece and flared the bottom out a little. I wanted a slim fit cuffed bottom, but the straight leg was so wide – I think I took 2-3″ out on each side of each leg! Then, I tried them on again and rolled the bottom to decide how big I wanted the cuffs and how much I needed to chop off the bottom. I ended up cutting 6″ off and then turning the cuffs twice at 2″ each (for a total of 10″ shorter than the original cut). I pressed the cuffs with lots of steam and tacked the side seams of each leg to hold it in place.

 

For the shirt, I only bought 1 1/2 yards so I was limited in what to make, and wanted a really simple shirt to allow the ombre to really show. I decided to go with another P4P pattern, the Pumpkin Spice Dolman since I knew I could get it out of a small amount of fabric and it would fit well. The only change I made to the pattern was to change the angle of the back shoulder seam – I dropped the top shoulder/neck point by 1″ leaving the shoulder length the same and redrawing the same neck curve. It doesn’t show much because it’s a dolman, but it’s an easy way for a little bit of a swayback adjustment, because by lowering the back neck (which doesn’t go lower since the shoulders are still attached) it actually brings the center back up higher. I also had to cut the neckband a little longer, because I didn’t have enough to cut one with enough stretch out of only the white parts and I didn’t want to have any of the blues at the neck.

I love my outfit and hope it helps us usher in spring, as well as give you some inspiration for your own Spring handmade makes – or maybe even a capsule (or capsule-like) wardrobe plan! Don’t forget to check out all the other inspiration in the tour, linked below!

See you next time, until then – happy sewing!

LINKS

P4P Pumpkin Spice Dolman

P4P SOS Knit Pants

Mood Fabric NYC

M4M Spring Capsule Contest

NYFW – Shopping Experience

Sewing By Ti Spring Into Color Blog Tour

Thursday, March 1st: Sewing By Ti- Intro

2nd: Tenille’s Thread
Monday, March 5th: Confessions of the Pink Obsessed

6th: Sewn By Lone

7th: Sewing By Ti, Stylin Stacy

8th: EYMM

9th: Stitched by Jennie

10th: Elli and Nels

Sunday, March 11th: Make it Sew with the Bear and Pea Atelier

12th: Very Blissful

13th: My Heart Will Sew On

14th: Sewing Blue

15th: Seams Like Style

16th: Kate Will Knit

17th: Twinado Alley

Sunday March 18th: Mermaids Den

19th: My Sewing Roots

20th: Our Play Palace

21st: Kathys Kwilts and More

22nd: The Fairy Dust Bin

23rd: Oak Blue Designs

24th: Aurora Designs Fabrics

Sunday March 25th: Flaxfield Sewing

26th: Seams Sew Lo

27th: Ma Moose

28th: Back 40 Life

29th: Auschick Sews

30th: Manning the Machine

31st: Mermaids Den