Hello again! I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has messaged, sent love and thought about me in my absence. I'm pleased to say I'm currently doing well and looking forward to sewing {and blogging} more regularly again.  I'm really happy to introduce the Nottingham Top to you along with my Mountain View Jeans I made a few weeks ago.  The Nottingham is the newest pattern by Itch to Stitch and the Mountain View Jeans are a fairly recent one of theirs too.  Nottingham is a lovely quick sew for jersey fabrics, with just 4 pattern pieces ad looks far more complicated than it is to sew.  In the past week I've made 3 and I'm only sewing an hour or so a day at the moment!

Those of you who have been following me a while will certainly not be surprised to see the first one I made was in a floral fabric! I bought this pretty viscose lycra at Kingston Fabricland in March and love how it turned out for this. It has plenty of stretch, beautiful drape and good recovery and it was the first of my stash fabrics which called to me having seen this pattern and even better that it perfectly matched my new pink jeans! 

The pattern includes 3 sleeve options (elbow, long and butterfly flutter) a round neck and is relaxed in fit through the body but with slim sleeves.  I chose the elbow length for this one as I knew it would make a pretty summer top.

Like all Itch to Stitch patterns, the sizing is US 00-20 (31-46" bust, 33-48" hips) and is a printable PDF pattern.  An A0 version is included if you prefer to skip the taping and get a copy shop to print full size for you however the pages all went together perfectly when printed 100% on my laser printer and I'd already sewn my first one {bar hemming} within an hour from downloading the pattern!  

A tester call for a beautiful tailored style shorts pattern for stretch wovens from one of my favourite designers? count me in! I love the style of these and because they were from Wardrobe by Me, I knew the pattern was going to be perfectly finished too, and I wasn't wrong, the inside is super pretty! Here's my first pair, there were a few adjustments to the final pattern after these were made which I'll mention a little later.

When I set about my challenge of making ALL my clothes this year, jeans are one of the few garments I was hoping I wouldn't need.  They always looked so complicated and difficult to make that I never thought I'd be able to! Nevertheless, I bought some stretch denim from a shop in King's Lynn a few months ago "just incase".  Then, I saw a tester call for some lovely flared jeans and without even thinking filled in the form and applied!

A few days later, I had an email to ask me if I still wanted to test the pattern, I hesitated for a few minutes before excitedly and nervously accepting and less than a week later, amongst normal Mummy of two life, here are my jeans!