//LINEN TWO PIECE SET-ACULAR

Hi everyone!

May I present to you my VISUALLY LOUD TWO-PIECE.

I was totally enamoured with Sophie’s two piece outfits last year as well as all the fab ones she inspired. So here’s my addition to the Two-Piece Set-Acular club! Better late than never, right?!

Fabric

This fabric is amazing. It’s a thick-ish textured linen-cotton mix from the Fabric Store.  It’s incredibly comfortable to wear and just the right combination of soft and thick. The cotton content has more or less eliminated crinkles.

Then there’s the fabric’s  pattern - which can speak for itself (and in quite a loud voice!). My favourite twin-sets to come out of Sophie’s campaign were the patterned, bright ones. (I made another twin-set a few weeks ago from a plain navy linen but it’s just not as effective - it’s missing some ‘oomph’.) 

I got this particular linen about a month ago in some mail samples for another project, but it wasn’t right for that project. The idea of a twin set recently re-entered my consciousness and, hey presto, it was perfect.

In hindsight  - perfect twin-set fabric . Now all I want is this weight and texture in solid colours .

Pattern matching

I was wary of being swamped by the busy pattern, so from the outset decided to position my pattern symmetrically to add a focal point to the garments . I ensured that I cut each piece of the front and back of the shorts as a mirror image of the other front or back piece – that way when I sewed the pleat in the middle of the culottes it would match! However, had I been concentrating a bit more carefully I would have matched the side seams. I got distracted by the whole mirror image thing and didn’t realise that I could easily have cut the front and back identically so it matched at the sides as well! 

Ahh well, I guess pattern matching does that to you.

Pattern

The top pattern is Grainline Studio’s scout tee. I’ve made heaps of these and haven’t made any major adjustments to the pattern. For this I just cropped it and raised the neckline by 1cm.

The bottoms are a pair of culottes of my own pattern. It’s based on a culottes pattern in Winifred Aldrich’s book Metric Pattern Cutting which turns the skirt block into shorts and adds fullness to the front of the pattern - which is pleated to hide the short legs and make it look like a skirt. I’ve made this pattern a few times over summer and I’m quite fond of it. I’m not much of a shorts girl and culottes are a good compromise for me. I’m still quite unsure whether or not it’s a flattering shape for me but I’ve entered a culottes phase and there’s no turning back!

Sewing

This was lovely fabric to work with. I’ve made both the top and culottes before so whizzed through the sewing of them. I think all up it took me around a day of sewing to put together.

Yay vs nay

Yay

• The fabric! Say no more
• I think my pattern matching/making it symmetric worked well and draws the eye
• I can wear both pieces with other (plain) garments without it looking strange – I can either go full pattern or wear it by halves.

Nay

• There's been no real negatives in my wearing so far!

Wearability

This is a fun outfit to wear!

I lived in it for the first week after I made it, until I realised that the loud nature of the fabric made it pretty obvious to people the frequency I was wearing it! It’s super comfortable, and the fabric holds its shape nicely without being stiff. It is relatively warm given its thickness but it’s a nice fabric to have against the skin - yay for natural fibres!

It is a bit of a change for me to wear such a bold pattern, particularly a whole outfit of it, but I’m finding black and white a good place to start. I’ve just finished another twin-set - a pastel floral number - and I keep visualising what else I can turn into a twin-set from my stash.

Twin-set ideas

I delved deep into the world of twin-sets (and by that I mean Pintrest) when I was looking for ideas re pattern and shape, and here's some of my favourites:

How good is that Kirsten Dunst one?!?
Source: all from Pintrest

So many great ideas!
Source: all from Pintrest

More over on my Pintrest

I'm now scheming about all the different variations I could do - winter, summer, pastel, trimmed, tailored, a blazer - so I guess have the twin-set bug!