third time is a charm

I've managed to finish another UFO - yay for me! Of course if I didn't have so many UFOs in the first place I wouldn't have so many to finish, but that's another story altogether.

This is the third time I've used the shell top pattern from the now OOP Vogue 1826, and each one has turned out brilliantly. This one is made from a polished cotton which I purchased a few years ago from The Silk Shop in Sydney which has now sadly closed down but used to sell the most beautiful fabrics. Unfortunately the fabrics were too beautiful and too expensive (my eyes goggled at fabrics that were $100 - $300 per metre!)for my sewing skills at the time, and this was the only fabric I purchased. It is a Swiss cotton, and even as a remnant of 1m it cost over $20.

No reason for not finishing this one other pure laziness. I purchased this fabric at least 3 years ago, cut it out and sewed the pieces together, but I hadn't cut out a lining and so it sat in the UFO pile for no good reason at all!

I made the same changes to the pattern as I did for the previous ones - used buttons down the back instead of a zipper, mainly because I liked the look of the buttons and didn't have a suitably coloured zipper, and I also made it using the technique for sewing a lined sheath dress (from this tutorial). I don't particularly like how some sewing patterns for sleeveless lined dresses/tops require the arms and necks to be sewn up leaving the shoulder seams open, and then hand finishing the shoulder seams after turning inside out - mine always looks wonky and just wrong. This method in the tutorial is far better - it requires leaving open the side seams, sewing all other edges, turning inside out and then sewing the side seams of the lining and fabric in one long seam.

I don't know if I'll be wearing this one anytime soon, as the fabric is white with brown spots which matches too closely to my pale freckly arms to wear sleeveless! Plus it is still winter in these parts and this fabric isn't stiff enough to wear vest style as the black one in my previous post. But it does wear nicely under my favourite RTW suit (which still fits thank god), and since I'm not back at work until next February this top may hang in my wardrobe for a while. But the point is that I have finished another UFO and it has moved from the 'to do' pile to the 'done' pile.

Well it has been an absolute crazy week for me last week and this week is shaping up the same: my in laws have decided after 7 months it is time to visit us again - next week! So it's been a mad scramble to empty out the guest bedroom which had become a junk room and get things ready for their visit. I've also started sewing a viking costume for a friend of mine who has started fighting in mediaevel re-enactments, making some curtains and cushion covers and re-arranging furniture since our new dining table finally arrived. It doesn't rain it pours around here that's for sure