It’s fair to say that sewing, knitting and craft in general has boomed over the last few years. It’s an amazing thing to be able to create your own clothes, accessories and homeware, but it’s not the cheapest hobby to access. Particularly as a beginner, you don’t want to cut in to some fabric that cost £20 per metre only for it to go tits up. So, that’s where this blog comes in. I’m going to share my tips, tricks and hacks to get make the most of your patterns! Enough waffling, let’s get down to it…
Let’s start with a round up of free patterns I’ve come across recently. Sew magazine’s October issue comes with New Look 6471. It’s not massively my style but I’m going to try a hack of version C without sleeves. I think the other views could turn out nicely but fabric will be a key swayer of whether it turns out granny-fied!
What’s really great with this issue is the free pattern downloads! There’s the really versatile Sophia dress, which needs 1.8m of medium weight double knit jersey or stretch fabric. I’m going to be keeping an eye out for some bargainous jersey so will share when I find some, or if you do, please comment below! Having a quick search, Minerva Crafts has some good jersey in their sale, but I’ll still keep searching!
There’s also the Shauna coatigan which requires 2.5m of bouclé. On eBay there is bouclé for £6.95 upwards per metre, so it would end up about £18 for an autumn coat, which is pretty good! I’m liking this rainbow stripe boucle, the different colours should go with loads of different outfits.
My other favourite is the Victoria midi (very similar to La Maison Victor’s Dolores skirt). This skirt is gorgeous and looks really comfy. I look horrendous in floaty midi skirts but this is so lovely I’m tempted to give it a go anyway and if it doesn’t suit I can gift it to one of my lovely chums.
The website has free downloads for the patterns but the instructions are actually in the magazine itself, but for £5.99 it’s really not that bad! There are loads of other good projects in there too like kiddies’ dungarees and updates like ‘Indie Pattern News’, my favourite is the Birdie Bomber Jacket – awesome init?
aliceirvine.com 
After my own heart. I share the same thoughts about the cost of sewing and was going to write about it but then I found your post. I’m definitely all about tryingto do this sewing thing without breaking the bank.
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