Summer Essentials Sew Along

Ali of the  wardrobe, reimagined has now officially announced the start of the summer sew-along. I, off course,  immediately started to think about what I should make, and I made a sketch early this morning. Ali has suggested five essential garments for us to sew:

• Something pool – friendly – perhaps some kind of swimwear, or some kind of cover-up
• Something with legs – pants, shorts or something in between
• Skirt – a nice and lovely item, perhaps to wear together with a:
• Top – blouse, tee – whatever makes you happy
• Sundress – a fantastic piece that can be up- or down- dressed and finally
• Some kind of jacket/cardi- something for the cool nights

I have to take into consideration that I will need some items for the autumn as well, because of  Self Stiched September, so I have decided that I will try to make a practical, yet chic jacket. This will be the biggest challenge for me, as I really just want to make pretty and unpractical stuff. I need to find a pattern for a jacket that is pretty and practical… As you can see from my sketches my first two ideas for outerwear is quite pretty, but will probably not stand up too well against neither rain nor wind.

As for the other items, I want to find a pattern for a bathing suit, and then actually try to make it.. .Hope it will be challenging and fun more than frustrating and character- breaking:-). This pattern from patternschool.com will definitely  fit well into my wardrobe. Although it´s not really exactly what I´m looking for, it might work for now.

The cover- up is already finished, I made it out of a sarong the other night, and it´s just hanging around in my closet waiting to be worn.

The shorts are soon to be finished as well, they are made out of thrifted bed sheets, and are from a Burda Magazine pattern.

Skirt number one is a pattern from the most recent issue of Patrones I fell in love with, I don´t read spanish, but I put all my faith in freetranslation.com. The other skirt is Beignet from Colette Patterns. I´m not sure which one will end up in the sew-along, though…

As for the dresses I really need to make two. One pretty little sun dress, and one retro- looking up-dressed piece. The latter is for a wedding I´m attending. The patterns I´m looking at are:

These two are my alternative sundresses.

And these two are my options for the other dress. Hm… So many choices to be made.

The tops are easy. I´ve been drooling over Colettes Sencha Pattern for a while now, and today I found the perfect fabric.

A light white rayon with black pin stripes. Lovely. I even found the buttons to match!

The other top is a copy of one I made for MMM. It´s from a 1976 Burda issue and I want to make it out of some scraps I got from my sister.

It´s this pattern:

Well, I have a thing or two to do, now so I´ll just snap to it, I suppose.  Wish me luck!