The Seamwork’s Savannah

All seems a bit familiar? 😉 Well, seeing as my last efforts turned out looking more like nightwear than outerwear, I thought I might as well have a go at making some deliberate nightwear. It was also a good excuse to use up some leftover fabric and attempt another Seamwork pattern at the same time- this time the Savannah.

Savannah is described as an ‘elegant camisole’ and is designed for ‘nearly any lightweight fabric’ from silk to Swiss dot. In the small print it also stated that you could even use it for knits, so a plan was hatched. I just about had enough fabric, but as you can see I had to cut the back piece in two halves. If I’d have had more fabric I also would have attempted to ‘match’ the dots a bit more evenly (dots aren’t a pattern I’d have thought you’d ever have to match up, so you always learn something). My husband printed this out on his computer at work, as ours was on the blink at the time, and luckily I checked the test square first. Sure enough it had come out too small, so I erred on the cautious side and opted for a size 4, which worked out well.

It was a fairly simple pattern and the main body came together easily as my overlocker and I have (probably temporarily) made up. However the instructions were not specifically designed for knits (except for the odd, additional, bracket-ed comment). I didn’t quite know how to hem the ‘pointed’ bits where the bodice met the straps. I got quite frustrated with myself, as this seemed like a relatively simple job, but the light-weight material made it pretty fiddly. I didn’t have any stretch lace either  to cover it up with. The lace I’d used on my Agnes was pretty stiff in fact, so rather than overlaying it, I simply attached it on top, with plenty of rows of machine stitching to keep it in place. In the end it didn’t look too bad at all 🙂

I don’t possess a loop turner, so I attempted to turn the straps inside out with the next best thing I had: a knitting needle. I really wouldn’t recommend this method though. It worked eventually, but I was left with a couple of holes in the fabric where it had poked through. It’s a good job I’m pretty short, so I was easily able to trim these bits off… I also found sewing the straps on pretty fiddly. In the end I attached them at their base on my regular machine to secure them, but then aligned them to the ‘pointed’ bits (is there a technical word for these bits?) by hand which worked well.

It’s a lovely, soft fabric, so ideal for nightwear, but it was pretty difficult to photograph well. These are the ‘best’ of a bad bunch. As I said in my last post, this colour does my complexion absolutely no favours…

And clearly the bra straps really aren’t helping… Next up I clearly need some pj bottoms to match and I’ve been dreaming of attempting underwear for a while, so maybe even a bed-bra? Seamworks did a lovely one recently, although they described it as a casual or yoga bra. Not supportive enough for daywear for me, but might just work for bed? I have some small pieces of this material left, but need to invest in some stretch lace and other lingerie paraphernalia. We’ll see…

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