Completed: Gather Kits Mortmain

I will be honest - I did a happy dance when this pattern arrived through my letterbox as part of the pattern swap hosted by the monthly stitch - and not least because someone let the postman into the close!! I had been hankering after this pattern for the longest time and finally I could get to work. I had the perfect fabric sourced - a beautiful Amy Butler floral and a zip had been sent as a supplementary gift so I was all set to go on return from my holiday.

Then disaster struck and my plans were blown out of the water. As my grandmother has always been really enthusiastic about my sewing hobby I knew that I wanted to make a dress for the funeral and what better a plan than to make up the dress which has been the source of so much excitement for a woman who meant so much to me?

The fabric I purchased for this new vision of the dress was a dark blue with gold outlined flowers. I saw it and instantly knew that this would be the perfect fabric. It is a kind of hybrid between a lawn and a poplin. I cant decide which! It came in at around £6/m too so - bargain! I couldn't find a zip that I really wanted but I think my second choice works just fine. I had to stitch over the ends of the zipper as it was open ended.

For the bodice and as per my measurements (38:31.5) I made up the size 14. This size worked mostly well for me however for next time I have noted a few small changes.

• take around 1 inch of length out of the back - around 1/2 for a sway back and 1/2 for short back
• make a large bust adjustment of around 1 inch
• make the dress in a heavier fabric - I really want the pleats to stand out
• remember to add my standard pocket piece! (from the cambie)

For the skirt however I went a little off piste... As I was really limited for time I decided to make the pleats up and place them myself based on the width of fabric rather than the slightly narrower pattern pieces. I didn't want to copy off the skirt pieces and carefully copy over all the notches. So i aligned up the side seams and the centre back and front and then divided up the remaining fabric to give me the required number of pleats. I thought it worked well adn is an alteration that I think I will proceed with. I also cut the fabric to a custom length based on the length between my natural waist and knee. Unlike my kim however I remembered seam and hem allowances...

I really hope you like the dress I certainly do and it's one that I enjoy wearing for the sentimental reasons that I have noted. I have really enjoyed indie pattern month over at the monthly stitch and seeing everyones wonderful takes upon all the challenges however really disappointed that I havent been able to complete everything that I had planned. Also I realise that these pics are a bit awful however thats what a fortnight of stress and not sleeping does to you! after seing these I went and relaxed with a facemask and some tea for an hour!

Enjoy your weekend folks make sure to make the most of it!

Jenn xx

Completed: Sewing Dare!

Hello lovely people.

Thanks you so much for your kind words of support after my last post. Today I finally have the chance to share with you my sewing dare! Back in April I signed up for a dare over at craftingarainbow and was dared to make a maxi dress for the festival that I went to the other week. Well I made it! and it was finished before the original end-of-may deadline...but then life happened and I never got around to sticking it up on here :-(

Then the weather at the festival was so bad that I only managed to wear my dress for breakfast one morning :-( However I have what I think is a nice dress! On to the glorious details :-D

The fabric was this awesome yet slippery viscose purchased in Remnant Kings I bought around 4m because at the time of buying fabric I had no idea what form my maxi would take so went with more than I could need just in case. I pre-washed the fabric and think I even put it in the dryer because there was just so much of it and it was taking over the flat!

I eventually decided to go with the Anna bodice and the skirt was just a gathered rectangle. I really like the skirt for the Anna too but I was puched for time before the holiday and did not want the hassle of retracing the maxi length skirt. My only regrets on the skirt is that I didnt use more rectangles - the skirt is only WOF x1 so long steps are problematic. I think i'm going to go back and add a slit at the bottom to aide walking!

In terms of the bodice I made it up exactly as I did for my monthly stitch Anna - although as it was a slippier fabric didnt worry too much about getting the bodice too true to size as I wanted a looser dress for if we EVER get a summer here in Glasgow. I'm on the verge of buying some posters of a beach closing the curtains and ramping up the heating and pretending that I'm in spain! haha

The zip I chose was a lace zipper custom cut from mandors. I was really unsure of what zip would work best with this fabric, I initially bought an invisible zip however reckoned that it made the fabric a bit stiff and didn't flow as nicely as it should - I also considered a lapped zipper but then something in the back of my mind vetoed that idea. Retrospectively it should have been a lapped zip.

So I hope everyone is having a great weekend - John is off to Limavady in NI today so in his absence I have grand plans to tidy the flat! *Ahem*

Take care
Jenn xx

Some sad news and some holiday snaps

Hello world!

It has been a while.

It has been a little hard to work out where to start this post and in truth I binned the last two MMMay posts because I didn't have the heart to complete them and now its a bit past the event...

We were on holiday in Ireland the other week - from the 23rd May for a rock/blues festival in tribute to Rory Gallagher, the late blues guitarist. My grandmother sadly and somewhat unexpectedly died while we were away :-(. Unbeknown to me she had taken a turn for the worst the day before we went and my parents didn't want to ruin our holiday by letting us know. She finally passed on the morning that we returned. Her funeral was Monday and we gave her the warm send off that she deserved. To add to our shitty day someone broke into our car when we returned from a few drinks to commiserate. There wasn't even anything in the car worth stealing and he dropped the £2 cash we had there for our shopping trolleys. pfffffttttttt.

But for us the world keeps on turning and that means returning to the new norm. we did indeed have a great holiday and the festival was amazing. I stuck to my pledge and managed to wear at least one me made every day - however only managed to photo a few days. the set up of the festival was something which really appealed - small pub gigs throughout the town and a number of larger open air gigs in a giant marquee and a couple of pop up stages in the town. If you're interested the festival page can be found here.

so heres a few holiday snaps and the last few days of me made may.

I hope to have normal service resumed later this month. I have a few items made up that I'm excited to share.

Jenn