Vanessa Pouzet Wanted t-shirt and some stash busting skirts

Hello again! I have been optimistic about the weather turning sunny and spent some rainy days trying out a t-shirt pattern by Vanessa Pouzet that I have been eyeing for a while. Wanted is a form fitting t-shirt with a square neckline. The pattern is unfortunately only in French and I don’t understand French. Luckily there were lots of explanatory pictures that were enough for me to understand the instructions. Not that there is much instructions needed for a t-shirt. The only French I finally needed was to understand “Les marges de couture sont comprises” that means that the “seam allowances are included”.

I made two versions using two different kinds of jerseys. The light orange one is lightweight viscose jersey and the stripy one is cotton jersey. There is certainly a lot of difference in fit because the fabrics have a different amount of stretchiness. I made the size 38 and the orange t-shirt is slightly loose whereas the stripy one is a bit tight. However in the future I know to size up with the cotton jerseys. I also noticed that the back neckline edging was a bit too long for my fabrics and it is a bit too loose in the orange t-shirt. With the stripy one I cut it a little shorter that makes it sit a bit nicer.

The orange patterned skirt I made last summer to use up a piece of colourful viscose that somehow had ended up in my fabric stash. I am not a big fan of it. It is just two rectangular pieces gathered to a waistband with an elastic. However, it is a skirt I can wear when it is very hot or when I want to wear something super easy.

Here is the whole outfit from the back. You can see how the back of the neckline hangs a bit even though I tried to press it in a bit.

This next outfit I like. The t-shirt could be a size bigger since the sleeves tend to hike up when I move my arms but I like the stripy fabric.

The skirt is again an older make. I found some interesting lace fabric in the factory discounts and it had been laying in my stash for a long time until I got this idea. I cut the waistband and pleated the rest of the fabric using boxed pleats to the waistband. Then I added a white lining. I did not had to hem the skirt because it was enough to cut it straight following the lace pattern. After sewing in the zip and the hook and eye something was missing, so I added a huge bow that I sewed in place.

The place where we took the pictures lies less than 100 metres where I live. The weirdly shaped concrete blocks are what remains of a WW1 machine gun and rifle station built by the Russians to fortify Helsinki region which was again done for the defence of St. Petersburg. It was later blown up probably to get access to the metal in the structures. The vegetation has overtaken the site and it now resembles some ancient jungle ruins.

I am fascinated by all the remains of the fortifications even though they were never really used for their intended purposes. When I feel like it, I walk around the edges of old trenches and peek inside damp bunkers. The local histories tell that thousands of Chinese men (probably not volunteers) were brought by the Russians to help built the defences. One of the bunkers under the closest hill nearby has some iron beds inside of it. These must be from the time of the WWII when the hill had a women controlled searchlight station. I imagine the women taking naps in the relative shelter of the damp bunker while waiting for their turn to man the searchlight station.