Tilly and The Buttons Agnes and Clemence

Last week I managed to sew and complete two garments: another Tilly and The Buttons Agnes top, and a gathered chambray skirt made using her Clemence pattern from Love at First Stitch as a starting point.

Agnes is so easy!

Making a second Agnes top was very quick and easy. Being able to sew it up with only a few checks of the instructions made the process so much faster and enjoyable. Have a look at my first Agnes top here. I used up some thin red jersey from my old sewing stash to make this. I think it will have been a remnant I picked up from Heathocoat’s, maybe four years ago?(!). Nice to finally get it used up. Because its quite thin, sewing the neckband in was a little tricky but fine in the end.

I love the fit and the look of this top – I don’t have any other red tops like this and I have already been wearing this straight from the sewing machine. Is there anything more satisfying than making something and getting to use it straight away?

I like to accessorize my makes with cats and novelty socks

I used the Clemence ‘recipe’ from Love at First Stitch to start making this gathered skirt, however, I found the instructions confusing, so I finished it off using what I have learned from making other gathered skirts in the past. I used the lovely soft chambray I picked up in Malbers Fabrics and I love how it looks – its exactly what I wanted.

A hat trick of firsts

I added pockets using the template in Love at First Stitch, and they are the perfect size. These were my first ever in-seam pockets. I also did my first ever invisible zipper (it could be a bit more invisible than what it is) and my first ever buttonholes!

Yes, the zip could be hidden better, but I am happy to have got it to work!

Buttonholes! Buttonholes! BUTTON. HOLES.

I’ve been scared of trying to sew button holes for as long as I can remember – it just looked like it was going to be so difficult to make them work, and my fear has been that I would mess up my final garment and ruin hours of work. I decided to knuckle down and try them with this skirt as I had my heart set on having some wooden buttons on it. It turned out to be totally OK! I need to learn from this, and just give things a go.

Some of my practice buttonholes – can you see where I realised I needed to change the width and it magically worked?

It took me a few YouTube videos to finally work out how my buttonhole foot worked and a bit of twiddling with the stitch width, then suddenly it magically worked and I was sewing buttonholes!

The chambray frays a lot. I’d have liked to have French seamed it, however because I added the pockets, I had no idea how to do that with pockets and my little brain couldn’t work it out. I’ve folded the seams inside and zig-zagged them to try and keep the fraying under control, but I’m expecting a lot of bits once it goes through the washing machine. I need to do some research into French seams and pockets before I make another one of these.