Forest Path and Finch - more winter sewing

I am absolutely over winter weather. It's officially spring but we've been having some seriously arctic winds and plenty of squalls of rain and hail recently. Enough already!

I'm hoping this was the last of my winter sewing completed...

I had lots of projects to do in June/July, then had an enforced "week off" from sewing. Of course that turned into about three days of tidiness and inactivity, and then I couldn't help myself and went on a big tracing and cutting binge. The end result was this huge pile of cut out projects:

There was P's jacket and undervest, A's impossible jacket, my Lisette coat , a top secret project for me and then this cape for A. All are now finished, and as I said, I am over winter sewing!

The cape is the ever so cute Forest Path Cape by Oliver + S, and if you know the pattern you might have already spotted the alteration: I added a collar.

Previously I made a size 4 cape and I love it, but I always thought it might look better with a collar or a hood. Having just recently made the Sunday Brunch jacket with its darling little mandarin collar I wondered if that collar would fit the cape. It does. Perfectly!

I made the size 6 cape and used the size 6 Sunday Brunch collar and didn't need to do a thing else. Just sewed the collar in before attaching the facing for the cape. Easy! I added a hanging loop and a cute bit of Daiso adhesive cotton tape as a label. By stitching the label on through all layers it also helps to keep the facing in place.

The lining is the lining that I picked up at The Fabric Store when I was searching for lining for my Lisette coat. I loved it,. but there wasn't enough left on the bolt for my coat. It came home with me anyway with no particular project in mind and turned out to be perfect for this cape.

The outer wool is that same double wool that was P's School Days Coat. It is all finished now and I think three garments out of the original cut at sale prices made it a very wise purchase. See, fabric hoarding is completely legit and cost effective.

Button hoarding is perfectly understandable too, as my button stash yielded the perfect buttons for the cape. Nothing gilt or fancy this time, just lovely nut/wood buttons in a variegated grey brown that matched the cape perfectly.

This time I haven't handstitched the lining around the perimeter and it seems to be behaving just fine and not sagging out at all. This wool, being more like a coating, is much more stable than either my Woodland Stroll cape or A's earlier cape so I'm sure that's the difference.

And then my pile of cutting out was complete and I immediately figured that A needed a pair of lined wool shorts like mine! I jumped straight into a pattern that has been in my to-make-one-day pile forever: the Finch Shorts by Clever Charlotte. 

I noted Nicole's (treasure trove of pattern knowledge!) comments that the Clever Charlotte patterns tended to run large and so went with size 6 which was a tiny bit below her measurements. Sure enough, they're quite big and the elastic in the back waist is cinched in a fair bit.

Lining the shorts was easy. The pattern already has the waistband and cuffs constructed from inner and outer pattern pieces. I just cut the facing pieces out of lining and made sure to understitch the seams so that the lining rolled in nicely. I then cut the shorts out of both wool and lining and followed my own "reverse the pleats" tutorial to baste the lining shorts into the outer shorts before adding the cuffs and waistband.

This lightweight wool works well for these shorts. It's just crisp enough to hold the pleats but still soft enough to move nicely and feel great, along with the lining, when worn over tights. I think they'll feel nice on bare legs too and hopefully they get a bit of warm weather wear as well. Did I say I'm over winter yet?...

Details:

Cape:
Pattern: Oliver + S Forest Path Cape
Size: 6
Modifications: added collar from Sunday Brunch pattern. Added hanging loop.
Fabrics: Double wool originally from The Fabric Store , same for lining

Shorts:
Pattern: Finch shorts by Clever Chalrotte
Size: 6
Modifications: added full lining
Fabrics: Wool blend and lining both from Rathdowne Fabrics

Buttons: all from Buttonmania via my stash

(Top: previously made Rowan Tee Skivvy, seen here.)

KCW: Forest Path Cape

I wear my Liesl & Co Woodland Stroll cape a lot. Quite a while ago I bought some lovely open weave wool in a large scale plaid from The Fabric Store along with some lining with the intention of making the little version, the Oliver + S Forest Path cape for A.

Well, it's Autumn time and chilly and Kid's Clothes Week rolled around, and hey, the Forest Path pattern is almost on theme with Wild Things, right?! Obviously, it had to happen this week!

The cape is a nice simple sewing task for something that ends up looking quite "high end". It was finished last night and worn today and A received  quite a number of unprompted admiring comments from strangers on the street. You've got to love a pattern that's easy to sew but makes you look clever!

 



I would have loved for the plaid to have matched up along the shoulder seams, which are the only seams there are, so it felt like it should have been possible. But if I wanted the pattern centred then the back pattern piece was a fraction too small for matching with the front. I'm sure if I'd been making a larger size the scale of the plaid would have magically fit the pattern and it may have worked out.

I'd bought the pattern way back when I bought the fabric and I only had the small size range pattern. This is a size 4 which is the biggest in that size range.

We took a trip into the city to hit up Buttonmania for the perfect buttons. When we got there the sign on the door said they were closed and I was at a bit of a loss, until I read further and discovered it was "warehouse Monday" when Kate opens up the back of the shop and you buy great handfuls of buttons by weight. So, down the hallway we went and found these buttons and dozens of others and had a great shopping spree (for about half of what I would have paid for 5 buttons at Spotlight).

I've realised I didn't get a good picture of the lining, but it's the lovely acetate from The Fabric Shop that doesn't go all stringy like cheap lining does and it's exactly the same colour as those buttons. My buttonholes were looking a bit anaemic so after cutting them open I went over them again with a zig zag stitch.

The main wool fabric is quite an open weave. It looked like it may not be too warm, and it was threatening to unravel where I cut it. The solution to handling it, and adding some warmth, was underlining with bamboo quilt wadding. I had enough left overs to add a single layer of soft, fluffy warm bamboo between the wool and the lining.

So there you go, it's panda food too! Totally on topic with the Wild Things theme!
Hope you're all having a good Kid's Clothes Week so far.