Marfy Catalogue

Recently I ordered the Marfy Catalogue for autumn/winter 2007-2008. Unlike most magazines which make you wait 15 weeks for their editions by which time they would be completely out of season (although perhaps it makes sense for Australians) they actually shipped it by airmail and it arrived in a week or so.

Included in the catalogue are 6 actual patterns as well as lots of piccies of other patterns. Although they are multi-size the included patterns cover different ranges and actually only 3 of them include my size, a skirt, a top and an odd cape thing. When you order the individual patterns they come in only one size I think the idea is probably supposed to be that you test out your size on the included patterns and then order with confidence.

I started with the skirt pattern since I had some cheap heavy denim hanging around waiting to be used up. The mistake I made was that I cut a 44 instead of a 42, although I didn't realise this until the end. Having worked this out I now feel quite confident that 42 is the best size for my lower half at least. The pattern has 8 quite small pattern pieces which makes for easy work cutting out, since I don't really have room on my little kitchen floor for laying out huge amounts of fabric all at once.

Since the denim was quite thick and the start of the catalogue swore that frayed edges are way-cool :-o , I adopted flat construction techniques and so with the aid of some fancy stitches on my machine to stop fraying beyond the decorative I slapped the skirt together in a day. Even though I had to take it in rather a lot (due to cutting the wrong size) I really like the shaping of the skirt. James thinks the details (like the pocket and my top-stitching) are weird but I quite like them, even though people do keep telling me they are "cute".

The really cool thing about Marfy patterns is that they have no instructions beyond a few labels written on the pattern. I thought this might be a hindrance to construction but turns out that it enabled me to make a skirt in only a day! No pattern instructions would ever have allowed me to make this skirt the way I did. Maybe it will fall apart in a year but by then frayed edges will probably be well-uncool so it will probably be for the best... The word "couture" is all over the Marfy website, which is quite funny - I don't think this skirt could have been made any less couture...

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