Fastest Skirts in the West!

So fast, in fact, that I made two!

The pink flame skirt is a commission from Pink Weasel, and the skull one is for me.

The pattern is a really simple a-line skirt. The waist is drafted slightly larger than the hip measurement (so you can get it on and off!), and then gathered in again by the wide elastic at the top. This gives a lovely full swingy skirt, without having acres of excess fabric all bunched up around the middle.

Both skirts are just waiting to be edged with black cotton broderie anglais lace. This should balance out the waistband at the top, and add that extra little bit of girliness!

Now to investigate how many colours I can get hold of in the bomber jacket elastic, and then I can make some more...

Nothing to wear...

This afternoon I suddenly decided that I had nothing to wear to work tomorrow, so I'd better just ("just") make myself a little something.

That something turned out to be an a-line skirt, using up some leftover spotted cotton.
(Yes, this is how much I tend to overestimate my fabric needs. Two metres is considered "leftovers".)

The skirt isn't ankle-length, as my ridiculous mannequin-with-no-waist suggests - it's actually just below the knee. The finished length is 25".

The fabric's 100% cotton, and the lining is polycotton. I hate using that polyester anti-static lining - it isn't anti-static at all, and it makes you all sweaty. I suppose it's okay when you've got tights on, but I don't wear tights, and it's horrid on bare legs. Yuck.

And speaking of yuck, I don't know what chemicals had been used in the dyeing or the finishing of this cotton, but oh my goodness, when you iron it, it STINKS! I had an hour's break for dinner, came back out to the Shed, and the whole room just reeked of petrochemicals. Lovely. Goodness knows what horrors I've been inhaling as I was ironing that fabric.

As soon as my fabric stash has been used up (down?) to an acceptable level, it's recycled and organic fabrics only. No more stinky chemical-ridden fabric here, thank you very much.

The yellow dress is finished!

Yes, Bloomeenee's dress is finished, and ready to go in the post tomorrow.

Doesn't it look fantastic?

Well, actually, this photograph is out of focus, and the mannequin really isn't helping. So you're probably not getting the idea about how fabulous this dress really is.

In order to distract you from the terrible photograph, here is a detail of the hand-sewing on the lining, either side of the back zip.

Hopefully I'll be able to get hold of some nicer pictures from Bloomeenee.

Flea Market Fancy

I was hoping to be able to show you a finished object today, but I'd forgotten how long and fiddly a process it is to understitch a lined bodice. This means that the finished object isn't quite finished yet, so here are a few photos to give you the general idea of what I've been up to.

The first photo is of the pattern and the fabric - Butterick B4443, in Denise Schmidt's Flea Market Fancy. We've made a few modifications to view C (the one in the centre of the pattern envelope), partly for design reasons and partly for a better fit. The skirt's longer, now mid-calf length. The shoulder straps are also narrower than shown, mostly because there was so much excess fabric allowed in the bodice that we had to cut half of it away!

Note to Butterick: Ladies who happen to need a size 20+ pattern do not necessarily have shoulders like an American football player.

The fabric came from Cia's Palette, and as per usual I've ordered far too much. I wasn't sure whether I'd have to cut the skirt pieces singly, so I made sure that I'd have plenty of fabric, just in case. "Plenty" in this instance has turned out to mean approximately double what I actually needed. Oops.

The second photo shows the cursed understitching that I was muttering about. (It's the line of stitching you can see on the lining of the underarm, which doesn't appear on the outside.) Understitching is fiddly, and a nuisance. It takes ages. It's so tempting to leave it out, and go for topstitching instead. But it makes for such a lovely neat finish once all the seam allowances are trimmed, that it would be daft to do it any other way.

The last photo shows the almost-completed bodice. The last step is to sew the shoulder seams together, and then I can join it on to the skirt. Please excuse the fact that my mannequin is ridiculously small. As soon as I can afford it I'll be buying a larger one, and preferably one which can be adjusted a bit more easily than this.

There you go - a sneak preview of a pretty dress, waiting to be worn to a summer wedding.

Four vintage patterns...

Look at what my Mum found, when she was clearing out some things from my Grandma's house!

None of the envelopes have dates on them, but the style of the illustrations and the style of the clothes suggests late 1950s/early 1960s.

Even better - they're in a size which I can modify to actually fit me! They're sizes 18 and 20, which translates roughly to a modern size 14 and 16.

The dress that I'm most likely to make and wear is (surprise!) the Maudella a-line shift dress. I might leave out the hanging fabric for daily wear, but I do love the contrasting circles.

In fact, I might even take that envelope with me the next time I go to the hairdresser. I love everything about that outfit.

Oh dear, I am now fighting a terrible urge to make this dress from camouflage fabric, with elephants peeping through the holes! I've almost certainly got enough fabric left over from the elephant dress to do that...

New Toys, or I Love My Yarn Winder.

I have a new yarn winder! It arrived a couple of days ago from Texere. It was quite expensive for a little plastic gadget, but it's definitely going to be worth the money.



The first thing I did when it arrived was to immediately set to work winding balls from the odd skeins of Colinette from my stash. In fact I loved my yarn winder so much that I actually re-wound a couple of balls that I'd previously done by hand, as the little flat "cakes" of yarn that the winder produces are so much nicer! You pull the yarn out from the centre to knit with, so they keep their shape as you work and, they don't roll away across the floor! They also stack really nicely.

I'm working out a pattern for a jumper which I plan to knit using Colinette Cadenza. I really didn't fancy winding five hundred grams of wool into balls by hand, so I'm really pleased that the yarn winder works so well.

REM t-shirt - Before and After...

Before: 1 REM t-shirt, size XL. This is what happens when you're at the back of the merchandise queue.

After: 1 REM t-shirt, much smaller. This is what happens when you have a sister with a sewing machine. ;)

My sister bought this t-shirt when she went to see REM at the Milton Keynes Bowl, approximately one million years ago. She has kept the t-shirt all this time even though it in no way fitted her. In fact, her fiancé wore it when they went to see REM in Hyde Park, slightly more recently. Apparently it was also too big for him, and he's over six feet tall!

It's actually quite nerve-wracking, chopping up other people's precious t-shirts. All it takes is a snip in the wrong place and you've got a hole, or a t-shirt that's too tight. Band t-shirts in particular come with a lot of memories attached, which imbue them with greater significance than you might expect in a mere item of clothing. Being entrusted to refashion someone else's beloved t-shirt is actually quite an honour.

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