I pledged for
Me Made May 2013 that I would make two new items during the month with no panic sewing. Well, I am happy to report, that I have finished my first one. Yay!
The Tessuti New York Cape. And here I am styling it with my new Mothers Day Ugg Boots!
I introduced the idea of making a cape way back in
January and quickly purchased the New York Cape pattern by Tessuti and then let it sit in the cupboard until last week, when I found this super cute tartan from
Addicted to Fabric with a blue in it that really pops and I knew that I had to have a cape in it. (Oh I also bought the pink colour way for something else..pants, a skirt.. tartan on tartan.. very Bay City Rollers) .
While there was no panic sewing per se, there were a few anxious moments with the binding on this little baby and I was always nervous about matching the tartan. I think the matching is ok, probably not perfect, but good enough not to annoy me. I had to recut one of the hood pieces because that WOULD have annoyed me.
The real killer was the binding around the cape with (On my original post I said 8 metres of wool binding.. while it may have felt like 8 metres it was only 4) wool binding. I had to unpick quite bit of binding (both inside on the seams and a little bit on the outside. Urrrgh). But that was all user error! I probably should have hand stitched the binding on. I can't fault the pattern which is excellent and comes with a lot of instructions and photos. I am constantly amazed though by those people that I've seen on the internet who have made one of these and then straight after, another one for their child. Not me. I don't want to see binding for quite some time.
The pattern is one size fits all which I was also a bit worried about as I'm quite small, so I took 2 inches off the length and about 1 inch of the width. Of course, with removing the width, I kind of stuffed the front for the button holes, but in the end I didn't really want the buttons on the front anyway. In fact I was just going to have it hang open, but finally just put a little press stud on the top inside until I work out a better option... or maybe it will just stay like that forever as I'm really loving the look without the buttons. I did include buttons under the arms as per the instructions, but I forgot to photograph them.
Overall I'm pretty happy with this make. I think my New York Cape will get a whole lot of wear this Canberra Autumn.
