something new, something old, something blue, something blah....

I've come to the conclusion that work is a hazard to my health. Not only has it taken nearly two weeks to recover from a little cold and sore throat, on Tuesday I found myself eating a chocolate bar out of a vending machine because the 3pm low hit me and it was there. Lucky I'm only there three days a week.......

The things I sewed for my friends have been well received - I had a lovely lunch with my friend whose husband I sewed the viking outfits for and she gave me an awesome reprinted 1950s book by Christian Dior on the A-Z of Fashion. And the friend who I sewed the little shirt for has promised to take some photos of Anna for me in exchange (she's a professional photographer) so both were worth all the frustrations in the end!

In the last two days I've finished not one, but two things for myself. First up I made a boatneck top from BWOF 2/09 pattern 108 from a white textured knit that I had in my stash because I wanted to test out how my newly repaired overlocker works. It turns out the overlocker works fine now, but my skills in sewing knit fabrics are still woeful! I used clear elastic along the neckline instead of just turning it under and sewing as suggested by BWOF, but still it is a bit ripply. Same for the hems, even though I used a twin stretch needle to topstitch it is still a bit wavy. But it looks ok for a test garment, and I have worn it so I guess it passes muster. I shortened the sleeves a bit but didn't make any other changes to the pattern.


I also made the skirt I'm wearing in the above photo too. Only it was meant to be a dress! It's a UFO from about 4 years ago, abandoned for the good reason that I tried to morph together two seperate patterns and it just didn't work out. Mainly because as usual I was impatient to get started and didn't make any effort to trace the patterns and make adjustments so the bodice and skirt would join together. Noooo, I just sort of creased the patterns a little and hoped for the best. And to make matters worse instead of doing a muslin (which would have been wise!) I just cut straight into the fabric which is a beautiful linen bought from Tessuti's York St store.

Anyway, I couldn't get the bodice and the skirt to fit together at all, mainly because both skirt and bodice had too many panels and the linen has no ease at all. I didn't want to give up on the fabric because it's a gorgeous natural coloured background with duck egg blue and grey spots. The only problem I have now is what to wear with it, I might have to make another top now especially for it!

The skirt is an inverted pleat skirt from Style 3643, which is a vintage pattern picked up from an op shop some time ago. I've used this pattern once before which ironically was also a UFO for quite some time too! And it is indeed "sew "simple to sew - I bet someone in the Style creative department thought they were pretty clever putting that on the front of the pattern. The skirt is very long, way longer than the pattern illustration suggests (again beware patterns with only illustrations on the envelope) so I've had to shorten it quite dramatically to sit above my knee. It's also a little high waisted, which isn't really my style, but is only really noticeable if I wear the skirt with something tucked in like this:


But I doubt I will wear it like that! I also left out the rear inverted pleat because I find that just gets creased and looks bad after wearing it for a while, and the front pleat is enough for walking ease anyway. And speaking of the back of the skirt, I put in an invisible zip so the join of the spots wouldn't be interrupted, but look at what I did with matching the spots (excuse the creases, this was taken after I'd been wearing it a while):

Sooo annoying, especially since I didn't have any extra fabric at all to recut it. So all in all I'm glad I finished this UFO and the beautiful fabric is out of the box and into my wardrobe. I wore it out today and am happy with it, but I think it's a bit blah though. I just need to find a perfect colour match for a top to go with it. I wonder what my chances are in finding something in the stash!?!