easily distracted by shiny things…
Posted in re-enactment, sewing, tops on May 22nd, 2012
This is Paul at Chepstow Castle, part of Waltz on the Wye 2012. Despite being May, the weather was absolutely freezing, so he hijacked my new Clapotis for most of the weekend. But what was he hunting with his camera, high up in the remains of the castle? Why, the Kraken, of course! When he [...]
Posted in crafty things, sewing, tops on Mar 19th, 2012
This morning I rediscovered the gathering foot for my sewing machine, and combined it with Pretty Jane’s continuous bias tape tutorial. Half a metre of fabric turned into around twelve metres of tape, which I then ran through the gathering foot. This resulted in about four and a half metres of pretty ruffled trim! It’s about [...]
Without wishing to put anyone off the idea of buying my organic cotton fabric, this is what it looks like when it comes out of the washing machine. In these days of synthetic fibres and “easy-iron” fabrics, this might come as a bit of a shock. Thankfully, a few minutes with a nice hot iron can [...]
I’ve been saving my pennies for ages, and last week my copy of the Cochenille Garment Designer software arrived. I haven’t said too much about it yet because I’m still on the steep part of the learning curve. This means that anything I might have wanted to say was probably unprintable anyway. The first pattern [...]
This is Vogue 1202, a designer Donna Karan pattern. I’ve had it in my stash for about a year. I kept unfolding it, looking at the size of the pattern pieces, folding it up and putting it away again. The piece above is the front, and it measures 140cm wide by 160cm long. Which is [...]
This is a little tunic dress, from one of my own patterns. The main body of the dress is blue organic cotton from Bishopston Trading. The yoke and assorted other parts are also organic cotton, from Kaffe Fassett’s collection for Rowan a few years ago. The pockets are set into the side seams, because it [...]
I don’t think I showed you the finished blouse that I was making for Aldbrickham Clog & Step Dancers. It took much longer than I was expecting, because I ended up having to make all of the buttonholes by hand. The body and collar of the blouse are from Simplicity 3623, with pintucks instead of gathering at [...]
I was supposed to be at a barbeque on this gloriously sunny Sunday afternoon, celebrating the success of the Witt Studio Chorus Summer Showcase. Unfortunately my kind husband decided to share his filthy germs with me, and now we’re both too ill to go. Bah. I’ve spent most of the day sitting on the sofa [...]
This is Vogue 8434, a pattern I added to my stash recently – partly because I was thinking about shirts for the summer, and partly because Vogue were having a sale. In my giant fabric mountain I have nine metres of linen – three metres each of black, white and purple. I also have three [...]
(Sorry about the terrible picture, trying to take photos of black lace is a nightmare.) Today I have finally finished all the hand-sewing on this Regency-ish dress based on Simplicity 4055. Some of it was of my own making – I had to bind the edges of the armholes to stop the seams of the [...]