Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Misusu FREEkin' sewing challenge blog tour



A few days ago the Freekin' sewing challenge blog tour started. This means four weeks filled with inspiration on how to use the FREE patterns from Misusu. I have sewed a paid few patterns by Misusu, the Dia, the Louise and the Origami sweater, but I did not sew one of the free ones yet. To make up for this "bad" behavior I sewed up five garments  while using three free patterns and one of them got hacked.



The most straight forward forward and quickest sew that I did was the just released bigger Rowan shirt. This is an oversized unisex shirt which you can download from the Misusu Sew and Tell group. I made one for our eldest and it is clearly a very relaxed fit, but that is fine with the extremely warm weather that we are experiencing now. To make the shirt into an outfit I combined it with a culottes.



The culottes are not a pre-drawn pattern, you make it based on your own measurements. I have to admit that it scared me a bit. I had been planning to sew one when I sewed this Dia, but I chickened out. I somehow seem to have that more often with Misusu patterns, but after sewing them my fear turns out to have no ground. It really was not complicated to draw the culottes and like this I could make exactly the length and size that I wanted. I sewed the culottes with a linen type of fabric that I took from the free for all pile on our latest sewing weekend. The linen is a bit stiff which gives the culottes a lot of volume. I of course added pockets.



After sewing a standard culottes I hacked the pattern to support a full circle "skirt" in jersey. This was actually a super easy hack. The main thing that you change is the distance between 1 and 2 (as mentioned in the instructions). You use 1/4 of the measured waist instead of what the instructions tell you to use. You also use this adjusted distance between 1 and 2 for the waistband. Now, follow all the other steps until you reach the "modify the shape" step. Instead of cutting five strips, you cut strips of one centimeter wide (it does not have to be perfect, just make it rather narrow), and yes those might end up to be many strips, do not loose them. Now rearrange the strips such that the first strip is turned in a 90 degree angle from the base of the skirt and that the strips meet at the top (and still form a line which is 1/4 of the waist). The distribution does not have to be perfect, that is just to give you a sense of the curve. The waist length is important though. Draw the new skirt and continue with the rest of the tutorial.



With this hack I made the orange skirt for our youngest. I made a short sleeved Max to finish that outfit. I also made the Max because I wanted to check if our youngest could step through the neckline into the shirt, and she could! I decided to just add one button instead of three. This does mean that sometimes the neckline opens a bit, but it does not bother me.



The last garment that I made is a jumpsuit of a circle culottes and the Max, which is why I wanted to know if our little one could fit through the neckline. I cut off the Max pattern piece at the waist (just measure it on your child, the pattern itself does not have a visible waist). In my case the Max bottom width and the waist of the circle skirt were almost identical, and I did not have to make any adjustments to sew them together. If you would like to make something similar but would end up with a big difference between the Max and the culottes waist (because your daughter is for example much bigger and actually has a waist), than you can draw the Max a bit narrower towards the waist such that it will fit the top of the culottes.



If after reading my post, and browsing all the free Misusu patterns you feel inspired, than you are probably happy to hear that there is also a challenge for you.  If you sew up a free Misusu patterns and share it on Instagram or Facebook (the Misusu Sew & Tell facebook group totally counts) before August the 18 with the hashtag #misususewingchallenge you might win one of the three very cool prices. Visit the announcement blog post to read all the details about the competition. For the duration of the total challenge, you also get 15% off your total purchase with the code MISUSU15. If you want to win a Misusu pattern to complete your look, than visit my Instagram post!




Misusu Patterns FREEkin’ Sewing Challenge Inspirators

2 comments:

  1. I love love your hack of the culottes! I am also a bit scared by drawing the culottes, maybe I should give it a try at some point in time.

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    1. It really is not hard, I made the one for our youngest in illustrator, so if their waists match I can just send you my file ;)

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