 Are you looking for a little bit of help, motivation, accountability, and a little bit more of a community when it comes to your sewing? If so, then you need to be participating in my Instagram sewing challenge called Sew Together. So I started Sew Together this time last year when a similar concept that had been going for years and years and years could not get someone to lead the effort anymore. And theirs was very complicated. It included giveaways. It included sew-alongs. It was like a lot. And so I knew I couldn't sign up for their version of what this was, but I knew I could make like a similar version that I could manage, that still gave everybody like the feeling of the previous version. So that's why I started Sew Together. It's very, very simple. Every single month I post a poll on my Instagram. People vote for a pattern within that poll. Whatever pattern wins is the one that everybody's gonna be sewing for that month. There is no deadline. When you get yours done, you post yours. Simple as that because I know myself and I'm the kind of person that, for example, I haven't sewn October's Sew Together pattern from last year. And that's okay. I don't want to add any stress to anyone's life. I don't want to add another line item to a to-do list. But what I want to do is if you're in the mood to sew and you're inspired and you like the pattern that was chosen, that you have something that you can make that makes you feel a little bit more connected. Before I get into January's Sew Together pattern, we're going to go through all the ins and outs of it today. The pattern, the fabric, the version I'm making, all of that. Before I get into that, I just want to remind you how helpful it is when you guys like the videos that you are watching. It helps YouTube know which ones to circulate and more people can find this video. Obviously, if you aren't already subscribed and if you're so inclined, you can click the bell. It just provides a little notification on the top of your screen. There's no emails, no major alerts. It's just a little notification like, hey, Lindsay posted a video. And if you're new here, welcome. Like I said, I am Lindsay. I sew clothes all the time and I love inspiring and teaching you guys to sew clothes too. So if you're so inclined, please leave a comment in the comment section below introducing yourself so I can kind of get familiar with you and start to learn more about you guys as well. Okay, so the pattern for January is the J. Lee or Jolly, am I being French Canadian enough? Jolly Emily. And January's Sew Together patterns will always be free. I feel like January is one of those months where we're all kind of just like reevaluating our finances a little bit. And so I don't want that to be a reason why you can't participate. So January's pattern completely free, FYI, all the other patterns are always $12 or less, but the J. Lee, Jolly Emily is free, completely free. I also like to encourage people and we'll talk about fabric a little bit more to shop your stash. I know we've all got stashes, so this is a great opportunity to like double up on the challenge. Sew a stash fabric that way it's pretty much completely free, like a whole free garment if you don't factor in the money that you spent to buy the fabric to begin with. Don't you like how our sewing math works? And because it's free, maybe this is the time when you splurge on having your pattern printed by a large format printer. If you've been watching my videos for a while, you know that I am team large format printer. I am team, send that off. Somebody else do it for me. I have a whole video explaining all the reasons why you should be having a large format printer print your patterns including but also outside of the fact of the actual labor involved in tiling all of the sheets. I'm going to include that up here. You guys can click this link. It opens in a new tab, so you will not lose your space here. But Sublime Graphics is my large format printer of choice. They are sewists and so I feel like they provide a service with the sewist in mind. Do you know what I mean? It's not like I could go down the street and get an engineering printer or an architectural printer to print my large format print patterns for me, but they aren't sewists so they don't know all the ins and outs and things that really make our lives easier. Sublime Graphics included in the price of your printing is color and the Jolly Emily is a color pattern. Like all their sizes are color coded. They will isolate a size for you for free. So the Jolly Emily, again we'll talk about this a lot more in a little bit, is a pattern where you used your full bus measurement as all the measurements. So you're most likely, even if you're a pear shaped like me, only going to sew one size. So you can isolate that size or a couple of them. If you are grading in between sizes, you just send them a little note with your order and say I want sizes X, Y, and Z printed and then that's all you will get because the Amelie pattern does have a lot of sizes to it and it can get a little bit kind of overwhelming to look at that. They also, and this was the biggest game changer for me and the reason why I was so excited to work with them is because they print on tissue paper you guys. Now it's not the tissue paper that you're used to with big four. To me that is almost too lightweight. It tears really easily and it's hard to make adjustments to. Their tissue paper looks a little bit more like this, a little bit more like very thin vellum if you're familiar with like cardstock and papers like that. It's not completely see-through but it is somewhat transparent. You can see it there on my pair and the flowers on my dress and it's still somewhat sturdy. So you can cut into this and tape it and make adjustments to it and not feel like every time you look at it it's going to rip. They also print on like a mid-weight paper and then they have your traditional copy shop paper as well. So there are options if you're someone that's just like no stay away from tissue paper at all costs. They do have other options for you as well and all of their patterns print for a flat fee so it doesn't matter how many sheets, how many pages it costs you the same. It just depends on the paper and all of those amazing little services are all included. I have a coupon code for Sublime Graphics ITH sublime25 that will get you 25% off your entire order. Check the link in the description box where you can kind of price it out and see how much it would cost to get that printed and shipped to wherever you are. So the pattern itself is a boxy oversized sweater and I want you guys to remember those two adjectives as we continue to talk about the pattern. It has a what do they call it like a roll top neck which is a little bit like a very slouchy um turtleneck. It has a drop shoulder and like a tube type sleeve and then the body of the top is a box. It's a straight line from your uh full bus down. So we are not aiming for anything fitted, anything structured, anything shapely at all. This is a loose draithy design that's meant to kind of hang on your body and just fall into it. It is not meant to like I said be fitted. It's not meant to stand away from the body. Um it's meant to be very very large and oversized. All of that in mind I'm going to share with you guys my fast fit worksheet. This is what I filled out for my body and even though I am very much a pair, I have a 40 inch bust, 37 inch waist, 49 inch hip, boom boom boom, very pair right. I am still going to sew one straight size and when you do the fast fit worksheet it kind of explains to you how factoring in the body start body chart size that you are based on your body measurements as well as the design ease and wearing ease that are built into the pattern that the designer decides on how those two things work together to produce the size that you should actually cut. So in this pattern there's 12 inches of ease in the bust that is a foot, that is a lot of ease in the waist 15 and a half inches of ease and then in the hip only three and a half inches of ease. So you can see how the intention of this is to be very very baggy and loose and then as you get down to your hip it becomes semi-fitted. That can obviously be adjusted if you want it to be even more fitted but that's the intent of the designer to have it be very loose and very very very boxy and oversized very roomy right. Okay so now that we have that in mind when you guys go and fill out your fast fit worksheets and you were like oh my gosh how in the world am I this size or oh my gosh like look at that finished measurement like that doesn't match my body at all it does. If you don't have a copy of it yet I have my fast fit worksheet a link to it in the description box. I also have a workbook which is a whole bunch of worksheets bound together in like a paperback book. I will leave both of those for you in the description box so that you can grab the fast fit worksheet for yourself. It really does help you sort of conceptualize with facts and figures and numbers how a garment is supposed to fit. You'll feel a ton more confident picking your size and then cutting out your fabric. Now all that to be said about the pattern itself let's shift and start talking about the fabric because your fabric choice is almost just as important here as your the size that you cut. So because the top is meant to be so loose and so drapey you have to find a fabric that is equally as drapey otherwise it's going to stand away from your body and you're going to feel like a potato sack. You're going to have those 12 inches of ease 15 and a half in your waist and it's all going to stand away from your body and you're just going to be like um I'm not really feeling this. So when you go to pick your fabric you need to find something very lightweight and very drapey. So in addition to the drapeiness of the fabric you also need to pay a lot of attention to stretch and that might be like but wait you've been telling us this whole time that it's super oversized like stretch shouldn't matter at all except for the fact that there is that roll top neck. There is that funnel neck that turtleneck type of thing here that constricts being able to get that over your head. So the pattern recommends 40 percent stretch to make sure that you can get that over your head. On your pattern instructions there is a stretch calculator like there's a ruler. So you just follow the instructions cut out a little scrap of fabric see if it stretches you know to the point that it needs to stretch and if it does then you're good you can get over your head no big deal. Okay so I have three different types of fabrics to show you. First up is a lightweight either fully rayon or rayon blend jersey. Okay so first of all look at this look at this drape right it is basically completely 100 percent folded in on itself you know it's not standing away it's not creating an umbrella. Then when you go to the selvage and you are starting to measure stretch you should not have a lot going the length of the fabric but you should have a ton going the other way. Um but super super draping do you guys see how drapey that is? Okay here's another one. This is some kind of like polyester something or another kind of silky feeling um it might like be a hundred percent polyester in fact I got this in New York City so I don't really remember but again the drape on this super super drapey completely falling in on itself and then when you do the stretch test you've got a little bit going one way and that that way was parallel to the selvage edge and then this way you've got a ton and then you can see how it's bouncing back a little bit but the important thing is stir I mean drape drape and stretch together um but this one has like a little bit of a silky hand to it so it's kind of like a little bit fancy if you wanted a fancy one and then all of this is not to say you can't have a sweater knit you can totally have a sweater knit you just gotta make sure it's blended the right way so that it has drape um here is the stretch perpendicular to the um selvage so not as much as the other two but still enough to get it over your head all right in terms of my own inspiration I am using my brand new sewing planner helps you plan projects um there's a checklist in there to make sure you are you know staying on track with what you need to get done as well as a little journal um one page journal entry at the end of every project to help you remember like what did I like about this what are some things I want to change next time what are some ideas I have for hacks and stuff so I'm going to be telling you guys a lot more about this planner in an upcoming video there is this color version and I also have a black and white version I'm going to be showing you through both of those um but for the purpose of today's video I want to talk about my own inspiration this is how I filled out my own sewing inspo page so of course I go to Pinterest like anybody and I look up I think I looked up oversized lightweight sweater and here are some examples of some outfits that I saw that I thought would really encapsulate my current style um I love the idea of wearing it just over leggings with like a really cool sneaker maybe the one of those like wedge sneakers um obsessed with the idea of an oversized slouchy sweater half tucked into some like high-waisted trouser that I think that's super cool even if you were to wear it with sneakers and kind of like you know juxtapose it that way so these were some of the ideas that I really liked off of Pinterest I also am paying attention to the fabrics that are being used you can tell there's a lot of solid colors or maybe like a marled sweater knit I think the stripe designs are looking really cool so there's a lot of different options that you can see in terms of fabrication and print I don't see any like floral or any really big print I see mostly solids or very very subtle print so that's what I'm shopping for whenever I go into my stash that also probably means I'm going to eliminate this because this feels like a lot um and I'm going to choose between one of the two solids that I have left so that is everything that I have planned for my version plus literally everything I can possibly think of to tell you about this pattern so that you can make one for yourself that you love that looks as it is intended to look if you have any other questions about this pattern leave them in the comment section below otherwise I have linked to the sew together playlist you can always go back and sew a previous month's uh pattern um because there is no deadline you could even post it tomorrow and I would just be just as happy as if you posted it in the month that it was intended but that is going to do it for me today y'all thank you so much for watching I can't wait to see your jolly Emily's bye