Spotted: Fait main 3/2013

I don’t have any sewing to show yet. Not that I’m not sewing, but I do it on an irregular schedule and I find it hard to finish anything… Did my “boulet” skirt bring me bad luck? ^^; I’m not as enthousiastic about my current projects as I’d like now that I see how they will look like in the end, and I don’t have much motivation to work on the little finishing details. But I hope to have something new to share soon!

In the meantime I still go on buying new stuff for new projects, mainly sewing magazines. ^^; My husband isn’t so happy about it, and I know I should wait, but what can I do? The magazines won’t be for sale forever, and I like looking at inspiring pictures, especially when my own sewing doesn’t go so well. I like dreaming about new projects (which doesn’t help me being more efficient). Last week I saw the current “Fait main” (meaning “hand made”) magazine and decided to get it. It’s the first time I’m buying one of those, I thought I’d share the patterns I liked.

The two patterns for which I bought the magazine:

The description says this skirt is inspired by the 80′s. I’m far from being an 80′s fan (come on, I was a child then, most of the clothes were ugly!), but I find the skirt quite nice. I think it could also be made without the buttoned opening down the center, with a zipper at the side (and then look less 80′s).

A nice dress with an unusual shape which looks very comfortable (thanks to the knit fabric). I find myself wanting comfy clothes right now, so I like this.

Other patterns that I liked:

For my future children? I don’t like the gathered-bottom pants they show with the fox tunic, but the tunic itself is nice. And I really like the mouse dress and owl playsuit.

I’m not entirely fan of the cover outfit, but the tunic looks refreshing and the capri pants have some nice details, so who knows? I might make it one day (after I’ve made the ton of others projects I have in mind XD ).

Two pieces that could be nice if I knew how to knit:

The other pieces are somewhere between “I don’t really care” and “mmm, maybe one day”.

They are: a knitted coat, two felt sewing accessories, some patchwork accessories (bag, laptop sleeve, small pouch), a knitted baby blanket (I don’t like the colors or pictures very much), jackets, a very simple skirt, a jacket + skirt set for teens, two cross-stitch patterns, a tunic and a pair of pants for plus size women, a knitted cushion, a crochet granny plaid, a remote holder for the couch and the following outfit, with a pretty weird pair of pants:

There are also some reviews and a few articles about exhibitions or events, and creative people or companies, which are interesting. It costs 5,50€. Overall, there are fewer patterns than in the Burda magazine but maybe a tiny bit more articles, some patterns I really liked and thought were original, others that didn’t do much for me, but not that many “what the hell” pieces (as you can sometimes find in Burda magazines). Plus unlike Burda they don’t come up with stupid titles and descriptions for their pieces… In conclusion, here is the preview of the next issue, which comes out next Friday:

Puces de Saint Ouen: findings

Here is my last post about our flea market expedition. It’s time to share the lovelies I brought back home with me!

Even though I like many vintage styles, for various reasons I don’t really buy genuine vintage pieces of clothing. I don’t know many real vintage shops and don’t like to buy clothes online, the styles aren’t always what I’m looking for and the price tag often puts me off. In the end I prefer to look at vintage pieces online or in old magazines to get inspiration to sew my own interpretations of my favorite styles. I’m sharing this to describe my state of mind when I left for the flea market: I didn’t intend to spend a lot, especially not in clothes, maybe get some patterns, magazines or lace (I love lace).

While most of the clothes, as expected, didn’t really tempt me, I was surprised to find myself drawn to one type of clothing: lingerie. The pieces that really caught my eye were mostly cute petticoats and delicate slips, lace and ribbon adorned. I love those items that, to me, are expressions of feminity and and elegance, because they shown an attention to all details, even those you can’t see. They’re useful, sometimes essential for a successful outfit, but they’re more than that. They’re not just functional but also pretty and well made. I love that. You can’t find pieces like that easily nowadays, and I don’t feel confident enough to make them myself yet. So of course while I wasn’t the one who was looking for clothes at the beginning, I eventually gave in and came back with two petticoats from the 50s or 60s. To be honest I had been thinking of buying some petticoats for some time, so this wasn’t a complete surprise. And those two were my size and just the length I needed. They don’t have the same amount of puffyness, which will allow me to wear them for different occasions.

This one is the fullest. It’s a little less pretty but still nice with the lace insertion in the middle.

This one flares just a bit, it will be perfect to wear with simple outfits at work. The elastic needs to be changed, but the petticoat is beautiful.

What do you think? Isn’t it nice to wear such lovely undergarments? I wish we could wear nice clothes more often.

The rest of my findings were more typical of what I usually buy: no lace this time, but old magazines and patterns.

From a first shop I got some patterns from the 60s or 70s for room/nightwear (there are 4 outfits), a vintage magazine without any cover and a very nice special issue that focuses on blouses embroidery. All of those were found in an old box in a corner of a shop that wasn’t at all specialized in sewing or clothes. It was quite a lucky finding! The coverless magazine is full of wonderful houseclothes/nightgowns/blouses inspiration. It also has some embroidery motifs. How I wish I could still get the mail-order patterns from this! The motifs in the embroidery magazine are full-size with a text description of the stitches to use and, my favourite, sketches of blouses embellished with the motifs! It gives you ideas on how to use them. This magazine already inspired me some embroideries.

Lastly, I got 5 patterns from 50s or 60s magazines.

Now I regret not taking one or two more patterns. ^^; The patterns were published in magazine and are one-size only. I have no idea of what size I might be in 50′s France, so I will have to measure and probably alter them. The series Casey recently did on pattern grading will be useful! Since they were inside magazines there is more than just the outfit pattern and its instructions: instructions and measurements for other projects, embroidery motifs… It’s fun to discover.

Here you are! My Saint Ouen flea market report is now complete. It was a really fun and fruitful trip! I will surely go back now that I know the place a little, but not two often, that would be bad for my wallet. I’ll try to take more pictures next time.

Spotted: Pochée autumn 2009

The new Pochee is out! I’ve been haunting my bookstore for some time, waiting for it to appear. I really like that magazine. I don’t own any yet, but it’s only because I can’t choose which one to buy. I love reading it at the bookstore. They always have nice sewing ideas, cute clothes, explanations that seem very well detailed and the overall look is really nice. Very natural japanese. I also love the part where they show the workplace of some designers who (I think) work from home.

Here is the cover of the last issue which is still as nice looking as the previous ones.

Like the new “Pochée special” sewing book they just release (going to talk about that in a future post) the magazine concentrates on outer clothes. Which means dresses, something that they call “dress coat”, which can really be a coat if made in the appropriate fabric, and jackets. I think among those main patterns I saw 5 that looked definitely like coats/jackets to me. As usual those are offered by several “natural” designers and for each style you will find one basic pattern and one or two variations (which usually make a really different garment). Appart from those patterns you can find: small objects, bags (2 pages), leggings/arm warmer (1 pair)/leg warmer (1 pair) (2 pages), stoles/vests (2 pages), dresses and tunics for women and girls, skirts for women and skirts, two jackets/coats for children and a few bags for your children who go back to school. That’s all I can remember right now.

Edit from September 10th: thanks to lolo from Le grenier de Noélie we now have a link to scans of this magazine. There aren’t all the outfits, but it show those from the main theme. You can see them here (flash needed I think). They also show the leggings pages, the stole pages, two of the children pages (those with the coats) and two other adult outfits that I liked.

It’s funny, it seems that I see jackets and coats patterns everywhere lately. Is it me or are they really more present? I’m not sure. It might also be that more of them have interesting details/shapes. There was a lot of new releases since the beginning of September, I’ll try to talk about them in the next posts (at little at a time).