Sewcial Bee, Part Deux

We had another Sewcial Bee! This time the Challenge was laid out by Gida Studio: To sew something inspired by food! 

My first thought was to sew a Parfait Maxi, which I was #sewingdared to do months ago… but that’s a lot of little pieces…

Oh yeah, that’s more like it! Now for fabric…

I got this tissue knit online, and the stripes are really wide… which I think might not be the most flattering! I wonder if I can pleats some of the stripes to add some interest?Hmm… 

Watching the Great Australian Bake-Off on Youtube for foodie inspiration!

Got some pleats in, time to cut! Single layer, so the stripes match. I’m extending the shoulders in hope of making a flutter sleeve kinda thing…

Sew it up, then unpick the pleats at the shoulders. Hmmm. Not bad, but didn’t make the fluttery sleeves I was picturing! Oh well. 

This fabric was my actual inspiration: cute Japanese double gauze with red and yellow watermelon *and* horned stag beetles, which are a bizarre obsession of Japanese boys in the summer!

I only bought .5m though… What could I make? To instagram and twitter for suggestions! 

Oh wait, I’m lazy. I’ll just PRETEND that I made it into something! Voila! My watermelon-inspired Sewcial Bee Project! 

We had some new people join in on this round of the Sewcial Bee, and some great projects made! You can see what the others made in the Flickr Group. Feel free to join in next round if you are interested!

Summer is really winding down here… getting down to 10*c at night sometimes! I’m starting to think ahead to fall, and wondering what to make! Are you shifting into the next season’s sewing yet? DO you plan ahead what you’ll make, or take it project by project?

Almost time for the next Sewcial Bee!

It’s back, baby!

Take the best parts of Project Runway and the Great British Sewing Bee, and mix them together with the cooperative, supportive atmosphere of the #sewcialists, and you’ve got the Sewcial Bee! We had our first challenge in July just to see how the idea worked out. We’ve made a few changes to the “rules”, and we’re ready for another challenge!

Here’s the deal (in the words of Heather, because I’m too lazy to retype in my own!)

1. This rounds challenge will be provided by GidaStudio and will be posted 12am GMT August 10th on her website and on twitter.
2. We encourage you to pick a project that will take between 4-7 hours to sew.  So you can get a little crazy but not bat-shit insane. ;)
3. You have 48 hours to complete your challenge garment and post it to the Sewical Bee Flickr group. Then we will all aww and ooooo over it.
4. Again there is no judging or prizes…other than that sweet new garment on your back.
5. It’s an open event so tell a friend, tell a neighbor, tell your spouse to take the kids and get the hell out.

And that’s it! Basically, we all get a surprise challenge, dig through our stash, and see what we can come up with! This time we’ve got all of Sunday and Monday to sew, so hopefully it works out for more people’s schedules. Within that time frame though, we’re spendingup to 7 hours on the project. I like short projects, so mine will likely take far less than 7 hours… but for those who really like a perfect finish or a complicated pattern, we hope that 7 hours lets you end up with something you are proud of. 

(Here are our finished projects from July’s challenge to “make a top inspired by a shawl or scarf”! Added bonus: Spot my Dad dressed up in a tye-dyed tee made by my sister at age 6, accessorized with a block-printed tie she sewed him in school! Proud parents make great enablers!)

If you are interested in playing along, just join the Flickr group! And if the dates/time don’t work for you this month, there’s always another challenge next month!

Sewcial Bee!

Oh, the things that happen on Twitter! One minute you are applying to a  certain online sewing match, the next you are planning your own all-fun, all-inclusive sewing challenge! No winner, no loser, no judges… just a challenge, a time frame, and some inspiring sewists from around the world! 

Allow me to present: the SEWCIAL BEE!

Here’s the deal: 

• At a set time, my dear sister Anne indulged us with a challenge: This time, to sew a top to wear with a favourite scarf! (Anne is a knitter, not a sewer, and even released her own triangle shawl pattern this spring!)


• We all had 24 hours to sew something and post pics to our Flickr group. (SInce eating and sleeping and caring for kids *may* be important to some sewists, we all limited ourself to just 4 hours of sewing within that 24 period!) 


• Wait and see what awesome things were made! (Wanna see how each one of us answered the challenge? Click over to our Flickr group!) 

And that’s it! It sounds dull when I type it out, but wow, it was fun! Adrenaline was pumping, tweets were flying back and forth, design choices were being made with advice from Instagram… it truly felt like a collaborative challenge! We all sewed from our stash, and it was the perfect motivation to make something a little new, a little different. I loved it! 

Here’s how it all went down! 

3pm: Read the challenge. Reread it, wake up my husband and read it to him. Pull out my massive collection of scarves and shawls. (It’s cold in Canada, what can I say?)  Eeek! Which to choose? 

3:15: Ok, I’ve narrowed it down to 4 scarf choices… Too bad I already made and blogged a top designed specifically to go with my favourite shawl! 

3:25: Ok, picked a scarf! I bought this one in japan at a folk festival on a remote island, so I want to make something to pick up on that hippie vibe… The print is pretty crazy, so I pull out monocromatic knits. Coral or teal? Ask Instagram!

3:45: Look through my patterns, poke through Pinterest… Eeek! Why is it taking so long to decide what to make? (Ok, it’s partly because I came home from the gym just minutes before the challenge started, and I’m still eating and trying to stop my hands from shaking! :P)

OK, finally decided: It’s going to be a Mission Maxi! I just made one the day before, so I should be able to knock this out in no time… (famous last words!) 

4:00: One hour in, and I’m just starting to cut? Yikes! My arms are totally wobbly post-gym, and cutting this cheep jersey is a nightmare! It’s a tissue-weight burnout print, so I’m lining it with a coffee-brown knit to a) make it opaque and b) bring out the contrast in the burnout areas! Both fabrics stick to themselves and each other like velcro though… this is gong to take a while!

4:30: All cut out. Use spray glue (for quilting) to glue the upper bodice of the teal and brown layers together. Check in on everyone else’s program on Twitter! Start sewing! 

5:00: Ask Instagram - contrast or matching binding? Cut out contrast binding, fight to iron a fold… decide to use matching binding instead! 

6:30: Time to live on the edge! It’s high-low hem time! (‘cause there’s nothing like taking a finished item and free-hand cutting a new hem!)

6:55: 5 minutes left and I’m DONE! Remember when I thought this was going to be a quick make? The way the jersey clung to itself really slowed things down! 3h55m! 

Voila! My Sewcial Bee dress, completed! It’s exactly what I would want to wear to a music festival in the summer, and works well with my shawl, as per the challenge! 

So, would you like to join the Sewcial Bee next time? We did this round with just a handful of people who happened to be on Twitter as we discussed it, but we had so much fun that we’d like to do it again. Maybe August 10th? There’ll be a new challenge and a time frame that’s hopefully flexible enough to work for everyone. (And if it doesn’t work for you, you could always choose your own day and sew it later!) We’ll post more info in August!