Adrienne

These are the hands of my wonderful friend Adrienne. Since I have started sewing again, she has helped me so much with all the mistakes I've made. I've led her into temptation - a new sewing machine (where is that evil grin icon?); and she has helped me work out where I'm going wrong with my patterns. So, with these hands comes a wonderful, patient sewing brain. She's holding the Ottobre tunic I've been working on for over a week, and she's scrutinising the non-sensical Ottobre instructions below it. Who knew that when you add seam allowances, you don't add them to the hem? Yep, that would be me.

Adrienne is also very understanding when despite her counsel, I still managed to sew the lady beetle skirt (see previous post) too big and have resigned it to the cupboard until Ruby is bigger next winter (it kept falling down at kinder today), and have managed to lose my way with this current Ottobre pattern.

Although our main purpose tends to be sewing, or knitting or helping others in Adrienne's case, we meander and philosophise through all manner of topics. I'm lucky to have Adrienne in my life. Thanks Adrienne it's wonderful sharing this sewing journey with you.

Sewing Day

Today was our sewing day and I finally took some photos of things I have made.

The second item I have made in the recent past is these pants as modelled by Alice.

They are meant to be 3/4 pants but she's a little bit of a shorty, and I figured they're great as longer pants in winter.

This skirt is the never ending skirt that took ages because I had trouble with feeling confident about cutting off a zip and whip stitching it, and then using it shorter than it was made. Who knew you could do that??

I'm also making my first ever Ottobre item at the moment and am using a cheaper material to practise with. Yes, I've got lots of things wrong. I've learnt that when you add seams to a pattern piece, only add them where seams would go. (Now that sounds pretty obvious, why didn't I work that out before I sewed bits together!) I've also learnt that when using elastic thread always have extra long threads so they can stretch with the material when you are sewing near it. I have now 'lost' my elastic threads on these cute little sleeves twice!! Oh, I've also learnt what to use as tracing paper, and that you don't need to have the patterns sticky taped to the window to trace them. See, lots of learning going on here.