I love winter.

I freeze in the winter.

But the cold air is so much easy to breathe and the sunlight is crisper than in summer, somehow.

So I love winter.

Crave winter.

I usually wear cashmere turtlenecks with down vests in my house during the winter.  We keep the house deliberately cool – around 19C – which means that it feels cold in my double-brick constructed insulation-free 1950s build of a house.  So imagine my pleasant surprise when my local Fabricland, of all places, had bolts of wool/tencel jersey.  IN SHADES OF CHOCOLATE BROWN!!!  I bought enough for three tops, but ended up with enough to make four. I’m so in love with this fabric I’ll probably buy more when it goes back on sale….  😀

First up, the Sewaholic Renfrew.  I must be the last person in the sewing world to make up this pattern. As it turns out, I really like it. I didn’t at first try-on.  I thought it was shapeless and completely unflattering.  But it has grown on me.  It’s comfortable and has a lot of room in its rather straight cut, and that is just perfect for me these days.  This is a beautiful rusty orange.

Oh! Before I forget, remember those made-a-few-years-ago-worn-almost-every-day brown jeans I mentioned in my Jalie jeans post? Well, they feature in all these photos despite their front fitting issues.

I made no changes to the pattern other than making the back in a double layer of the jersey, as it is rather lightweight. It washes and dries beautifully, too, although the Tencel in it tends to make it a bit prone to wrinkling.

The next pattern was Burda 6838 I love draped tops.  This replaces an old RTW version that got worn and washed so much it started to look ratty.

I made no changes whatsoever to this pattern.  WYSIWYG straight out of the envelope. Surprising.

Next up: Burda 11/2014 #114 in a lighter brown. I love the back yoke with the integrated draped front.

I made two changes: shortened the sleeve and, instead of doing an FBA, I lowered the attachment points of the drape at the side seams by 8cm so they fell under my bust instead of above it. And I left all the edges raw. The sleeves on this needed to be shortened by a whopping 8cm. Seriously.  I’m not 100% in love with this.  The dropped shoulders aren’t particularly flattering, and it could be taken in a little through the waist/hips, but I’m shying away from snug-fitting clothing these days.  And I think shortening it about 2cm would be a good plan.

So!  Make, wear, photograph and learn.  It’s cozy for living in my house in the winter, and that was the point!  And it’s also getting a lot of wear these days…

And lastly, this bi-coloured two-layer top from Burda 7/2010 #137. It’s a plus-sized pattern (44-52), which I can use because I make up size 44 in Burda.   Lucky me – I can choose regular or plus size patterns in their issues.  😉

This is my second BurdaPlus knit top pattern, and as flattering as they are in pictures, they are not fun or easy to wear.  It’s a very flattering look through the shoulders – which is probably the point in a plus-sized garment… drawing the eyes up and away from the goods… but keeping those shoulders in place is a nightmare.

I ended up running elastic through the neckline to the CB and CF points to snug it up a bit and stitching layers together the below the centre points to keep the shoulders from sliding off, and the CF and CB settling into a lower meeting place.  Of course this is just lazy non-fitting, but after seeing this in photos, I’m not crazy about the use of the different browns, anyways. And it’s not very warm, which was the point of the wool jersey, precisely because the neckline is so wide and open.  So, like this earlier BurdaPlus make, it’s been donated.