Royal Wedding Skirts

Lurking in the remnant bin at John Lewis I found a piece of fabric to commemorate the Royal Wedding.  It cost about £5 and looked to be just enough to run up a couple of skirts for two little princesses to wear to the street party today.

These were such easy skirts to make, and light and comfortable to wear.  It is a very simple rectangle of fabric, joined at the short edges to make a tube.  I then turned over a narrow hem at the top, and did several (6/7) lines of shirring, using the edge of the presser foot as a guide.  I dampened the shirring and pressed, to shrink it up, then hemmed the bottom, adding on a band of organza to trim, and it's done!

Overcoming my dressmaking fears II

With the pattern spread out in front of me, the theory started to become clearer.

I carefully took my measurements, and, after initially swallowing my pride at suddenly gaining a couple of dress sizes (!), I traced around the size 12. I am basically an hourglass shape, but the pattern allows for the hip measurement to be a couple of inchs larger than the bust, so I traced around the size 10 from the hips down, and "blended" the outlines together between the hips and waist.

I know I am short waisted, so after holding the cut out tissue pattern up to my body, I estimated a 1" adjustment to the waist, which was made by folding and taping the pattern at the appropriate line.

So far so good.

Now came the difficult part. Being bothered to make a toile to test my pattern. I'm usually more of a jump right in kind of a person, but feeling acutely aware of how out of my depth I am, I dug out some spare bed sheets and got on with the task at hand.

Overcoming my dressmaking fears

I've always loved making stuff. I'm usually keen to give anything a go, but my creative focus always returns to sewing in the end.

The one thing I have always shied away from, however, is making clothes for myself, which in a way seems ridiculous as I am mildly obsessed with clothes.

I think I have previously been deterred because I always assumed that a handmade dress wouldn't suit or fit me well enough. I am the kind of person who slip stitches trouser pockets closed to give a better line, or takes up a skirt hem by just 1" for a better proportion. And the older I get, the pickier I become about the fit of my clothes.

What hadn't occurred to me is that this pickiness is precisely the reason why I should be making my own clothes.

I knew that it was possible to adjust commercial patterns, but it all seemed a bit hit and miss, not to mention intimidating. Spurred on by my latest fabric purchase though, along with a healthy dose of curiosity I have unearthed my easy New Look 6643 pattern (purchased some months ago and promptly filed under "D" for "Don't even think about it"), ready for some serious action, more on which in the next post.

I won!

I'm currently experiencing that heady mix of excitement and guilt that often accompanies a purchase. A big one.

I have just won an eBay auction for....a Bernina 830 sewing machine...whoop whoop, etc!!

I've been lusting after one for ages, but made a pact with myself that I had to earn enough money in my PayPal account to pay for it. After weeks of furiously decluttering and eBaying I was pretty much there, so with a racing pulse I put in my bid 10 seconds before the auction end, and won!

Now I have to play the waiting game, and hope that it arrives safe and sound.

Meanwhile I will be planning some lovely new sewing projects to put it through its paces. And enjoying my newly decluttered wardrobe. I think I might love eBay a little bit too much.