So another three months have gone past, and it doesn’t feel like I’ve had all that much time to spend at my sewing table. I have been busy recently doing other things; work has been busy, I’m trying to do more work on our house, spend more time with the kids and get more exercise. I’ve never been all that keen on exercise, but I’ve always liked to do a bit, but I’m getting more focused – I am really enjoying challenging myself to run that bit further or faster. As a consequence, I am losing weight, which is also having an impact on my sewing; after all, I don’t want to sew something for me if it’s not going to fit me at the end of the process, and I think we are all aware by now that I’m not one of those sewers who can rattle something off in an afternoon.
So, now the excuses are out of the way, let’s just have a quick update on progress on my Use 5 2017 challenge:
- Navy Ponte Roma- made up into a skirt – now I just need to work out what to do with the rather sizeable remnant – I don’t need to do that to save it from the fire, but I really love the fabric and don’t want to waste it. I am thinking I can use some of the teal ponte in combination with the navy remnant somehow. Any ideas?!
Lindy Petal Skirt from the Front - Purple Jersey: Three months ago I was telling you that I had started the process, and since then I have blogged the final result. This was being worn a lot during the cooler weather, but I have put it away until autumn now that the sun is here. I am looking forward to wearing it again though. Again, I have some remnants – I’m considering making some undies out of this if any of the pieces are large enough.
New Look 6150 in purple jersey - Multi-Spot Jersey: At the time of the last Use 5 update I had decided that this would be a summer dress for my little girl. That dress caused me some issues; should I say it was a learning experience?! It is now finished, and being worn and loved – I’ll blog about it soon hopefully!
Final stitches on the dress - Monochrome Floral: I am now pretty set on this being a shift dress for me. Because I want the flowers to creep up from the hem and drape over the shoulders this will need to have a waist seam, and so I’m planning on using the GBSB Shift dress from the Sew Your Own Wardrobe Book. I will need to do an FBA on this pattern, and I also really need my weight to settle down, as I currently have no idea what size to make. I also want to drape this material over my dress form for a bit to check that it is actually going to look as I want if I have the flowers positioned where I plan. I don’t really like the idea of the flowers coming out from the waist, I want them on the bodice and skirt, but most monochrome RTW dresses have the darker shade at the waist so I am slightly concerned that my dream may not be the most flattering! If you’re the sort of person that knows about this, please help!
Grey Floral Border Dress Material, Prewashed on the Line - Pink cotton lawn: I had started this walkaway dress, but was actually quite a way from completing it, or at least so I thought – I had hung it on my dressform to allow the circle skirt to do its thing before I went ahead and finished the bias binding, and hemmed the skirt. After a while though it dawned on me that there’s not a lot of point, nor entertainment in hemming a circle skirt if I’m just going to unpick it – I also didn’t want to trim any more off the pieces than necessary in case that impacted on my future makes for my daughter. As such, there will be a post coming soon about this not really completed garment!
Finished Walkaway Dress on Mimi So, out of the five that I set myself, I have cut into 4, and got 4 completed (enough) items…I’m happy enough to not have cut into the 5th, especially with my weight changing. At times it’s easy enough to give excuses for not cutting into that piece of fabric, but realistically I’m expecting my weight to settle down in about 3 months, so I will be able to get on and cut it at that point. It would be easy to use my varied sizing as an excuse, but I have already lost over an inch from my waist and I have a record of my measurements so that I can easily tell when the change is plateauing. All in all though, I have tackled 4 of 5 pieces of fabric I was avoiding last year, and I am already looking at my stash thinking about which ones should be on the list for 2018! In between now and then though I have a few other things I need to be getting on with; I’m trying to finish up a load of my UFO’s, and I’ve got a couple of other projects that I want to work on – oh yes, and there’s that blogging backlog to deal with too!
