Wonderful Things Blog Tour

I’m sure that many of you know Bonnie Christine from the blog Going Home To Roost. Bonnie Christine was one of the first people I began to follow when I first began to be a part of the instagram sewing community. She designs fabrics for Art Gallery Fabrics and I always loved her sweet, calm and natural style. This voile from Bonnie’s Winged collection was one of the first fabrics I bought when I started to sew garments, and it’s still one of my favourite prints ever.

So when I saw that Bonnie Christine was looking for some participants in  a blog tour featuring her collection “Wonderful Things” I decided to hop on board, and Bonnie was so kind to send me whatever fabric I needed.

The Wonderful Things collection features quilting cotton, voile, knit and canvas. Most prints are only available in quilting cotton, among them some of the prints I liked best. Luckily for me I knew that Art Gallery quilting cotton is rather thin and soft, compared with other quilting cottons. I usually don’t buy quilting cottons to make garments, but I do make an exception for Art Gallery fabrics, as long as it’s for the right kind of patterns.

So I started to look for the right patterns that could work with quilting cottons, while I at the same time I tried to decide on the right prints for the patterns. In the end I decided to sew Wedgwood Skirt by Straight Stitch Designs and to pair it with a crop top. After asking some of my German sewing blogger friends the decision was clear: Splendid Oath Rain for the skirt and Aquarelle Study Wash for the crop top.

The Wedgwood Skirt is a high-waisted pleated skirt with a curved waistband, in-seam pockets and optional pocket flaps. The skirt is closed with a visible zipper in the back. I made a size 2, based on my waist measurements, and the fit was perfect, sitting right at the smallest part of my waist. The Wedgwood isn’t a complicated project and the instructions are easy to follow. The waistband is closed by stitching across the folded top of both the inner and the outer waistbands, saving you the trouble of trying to stitch in the ditch and catching the inner waistband.

Believe it or not, the crop top is actually a Beatrix Top by Made By Rae. When thinking of possible patterns, i remembered the Beatrix – you can see my previous version here. I really liked the fit of the top and it seemed to be easy enough to alter into a crop top. Here are the changes I made: I widened the shoulders by 1 cm / 3/8″, I shortened the bust darts, I cut the back on the fold, removing the extra fabric needed for the button placket. I wanted a really simple top, but decided to add a key hole opening at the back neck. I added it free-hand and altered the back neckline facing to fit the key hole opening.

I also shortened the top to make it into a crop top. I cut the top a little longer and decided about the length after finishing the Wedgwood skirt – that way I could make sure that the Beatrix (or what is left of it…) just covered half of the waistband of the Wedgwood. I wanted a really clean and nice finish for my top and my skirt, so I sewed both garments with French seams and finished the hems with bias binding.

I really wanted to make this a complete outfit, rather than two separate garments. That’s why I decided to use the respective other fabric for bias binding, the facings, the inner waistband, the inner pocket flaps and the pockets. I really love how the prints work together and how this ties the two garments together! Oh, and did you see the daisies on some of my pics? There’s a daisy print in the Wonderful Things collection, and I thought it would be a nice nod to the rest of the collection.

Make sure to check out the rest of the blog tour! Yesterday it was Elise’s day to share her project, and tomorrow there’s going to be a blog post on the Elizabeth Street Studio blog.

– I received the fabric for this blog tour and the Wedgwood Skirt pattern for free. However, all opinions are, as always, my own. This blog post is linked to the German link party RUMS.-