I think lack of sun has given me delusions of grandeur

Oh my word, it seems like it's been ages since I've posted... It's not because I'm not doing anything, I've been busying around like a bumbler (honest!) but it's just too cold and dark to take photos to prove that I'm sewing!

It's effin' freezing!

I'm working on a dress at the moment which is in need of some tweaks (it's the "top secret" project I talked about in the last post so no more info I'm afraid...) which means photos will be a while yet. I've just finished another New Look 6843 skirt, this time in corduroy (yes, I'm in love with this fabric!). Photos to come soon, maybe even tomorrow if I can get my arse in gear. Oh, and I bought the best sewing invention ever - an invisible zip foot - it's AMAZEBALLS! The zip for the corduroy skirt went in like a dream and you can't even see it. It's like it's invisible or something...

Life saver

I'm just about to start on a top for work - New Look 6808. The fabric is soaking as I type. Wonder if I can get the whole thing sewed up tomorrow and then wear it to work with the cord skirt on Monday? Hmm, ambitious.

There's been a whole lot of discussion on ye olde sewing blogs (notably didyoumakethat and kraftykat) about lack of sewjo recently due to the horrid winter weather we've been having. Yep, it definitely has an effect hasn't it? I'm sewing less during the weekdays and more at weekends when it's lighter. Mr Sabs and I have started running in the evenings after work to perk ourselves up a bit and get rid of the winter blues - we've done 20k this week. It's working a treat, except for the fact that I'm falling asleep by 9pm on the sofa every night!

And last but not least, I've done something crazy. I've gone and bought a vintage 1950s dress pattern. It was 99p on ebay so I had to, right? I mean, it would be rude not to.

Except, and this is the crazy part, it's unprinted. UNPRINTED.

Oh. My. God.

What have I got myself into? I can barely follow modern, printed, let's-spoonfeed-sabs-cos-she's-a-bit-slow patterns so how on earth am I going to cope with this? Well, I just read a helpful post over at Lucky Lucille about non printed patterns so that will be my starting point. I may just have to make it up as I go along! Please wish me luck. And sanity.

Paper patterns and cat claws don't really go together, do they?

I haven't disappeared in a puff of smoke in case anyone was wondering (probably not, eh?!), I'm working on a top secret (in my mind) project at the moment, which I can't share just yet but all will be revealed soon...

Not that Merky is letting me work -
he's sitting on the pattern pieces, the rascal.

In the meantime, can anyone who has made a Sewaholic Cambie dress tell me what type of fabric you used for the lining? That's my next big project I think - my very first go at lining a dress and I've seen various things on t'interweb - cotton batiste  viscose, even cheesecloth but it's left me a bit confused. So any advice on here would be very gratefully received. My main fabric will be cotton if that makes any difference... I really need to start working with fabric that isn't cotton soon, expand my horizons a bit, but I have so much of it in my stash that I really need to use it up first!

New dresser for the kitchen - the Tinkers think it's for displaying them!

Is anyone doing anything for Valentine's? We've decided not to bother! Enjoy if you are... x

Get your pinny on

Does a photo ever stick in your mind and you just can't stop thinking about it? Well, that's how I felt when I saw Nette's "Autumn love" pinafore dress a few months ago. I knew I had to recreate it. Luckily, she has kindly made it into a free, downloadable pattern so it was fairly easy to do!

I don't know why I wanted (in fact, felt I needed) a pinny. Or that, just like Nette's, it had to be corduroy. I suppose I was just drawn to it in some way - I think it reminded me of a red cord pinafore dress that I had when I was very little. I really wanted to copy her gorgeous blue colour but I've made a few things in navy recently and recreating my red pinny may have not got as much wear so I thought so decided to go for black instead. Yes, a bit boring, I know!

No you can't do any work, I want a cuddle NOW

The pattern is really straight forward. Actually the most complicated thing was to figure out if Nette's measurements were similar enough to mine to make the same size...(picture lots of head scratching here)... Without doing any complicated maths, I reckoned adding 3cm around each piece but using a seam allowance of 1.5cm would do the trick - and did, just about. We are about the same bust size but I'm a bit bigger at the hips so I should really have graded the pattern a bit more accurately and not added any extra at the bust as it's a bit looser than I'd like here. Ho hum, who cares? It still looks quite cute.

Close up of the slightly wonky bodice

I love corduroy by the way! First time ever I've worked with it and it's brilliant. What I didn't like tho is that I had to spend ages hoovering up all the bits that fell off after cutting!

The only thing I changed about the construction of the pinny is the way the bodice lining is attached. Nette's instructions said to catch stitch and blind stitch and all sorts of other stuff - could I be bothered? Um, NO! I used the attachment of the bodice to hide the fact that I hadn't got the front and back pieces completely lined up...

Basically I just machine stitched it in place after folding over the bottom edge and now you can't see that the bodice pieces don't quite line up unless you look really closely while squinting. WIN!

Oh and I ran out of the lovely lining material so I used an almost matching plain blue for the patch pocket lining.

It took me only an afternoon to make this and it was lots of fun. I will now have to wear it with ponytails to make it look authentic... Thanks Nette!