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Monday 12 September 2011

A woman possessed

Hello. Are you still there? I have been in the cellar, where the sewing machine lives. I come up sporadically for cups of tea and to check that The Killing hasn't started a new series yet.

That dress I made? It kickstarted an obsession. I have spent the last couple of weeks sneaking off to the fabric shop to plunder their pattern sale. (I have to buy now! Before the sale ends! Must! Buy! More!)

My plans at the moment involve:

  • A summery dress in a pattern which looks so lovely on this lady.(Why am I making a summer dress in the tail end of a hurricane? There are complex reasons for this, none of which bear close scrutiny at all.)

  • A Vogue pattern which this lady makes again and again, so it must be good (we are ignoring for the moment the fact that both these women are substantially a) taller b) thinner and c) younger than I am. I will look just the same as they do. La la la. I can't hear you.)

  • A full-length off-road wheelchair cosy based on this pattern  for my miserable whining ten-year-old, who spends her entire time in the outdoors moaning about being cold. (I know. This is just one big rectangle with a hole in. I could have made this up myself. But a pattern for £1.70! And I do so love the little envelopes!)

  • A school pinafore dress for Littlest.

You people who always had several craft projects on the go at once, who constantly talked about your UFOs and your stash and your plans and your schemes? I never understood it. I read those posts, frowning, wondering why you weren't just drinking wine or reading a book or something. I'm sorry. So sorry. Please welcome me into your fold.

Here I am, with my armfuls of fabric, just waiting for your approval.

27 comments:

  1. I, too, would start making a summer dress in the tail end of a hurricane, because it might be finished in, oh, eight years or so.

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  2. I don't know which makes me laugh more- the post or the time at which you posted it- only because I was here at about that time this morning too! Oh those UFOs, maybe one day I'll see one too!!

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  3. This made me smile so much! I too have listened to my mum talk about sewing, laughed as she begged to go the the fabric shop AGAIN, and wondered why she was so obsessed. Then she gave me a sewing machine, a couple of months ago. WELL!! I've made cushions, many cushions; a skirt; a table runner; I have fabric for making Christmas presents; I have fabric 'just because I love it'; I find any excuse to go fabric shopping, and I sit up til the small hours sewing. It's a drug, I tell you (and now I'm off to check out that dress you've posted!)

    Hey, there are worse vices, much worse :)

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  4. I still have the wine (well, metaphorically at this time of day), and the book and sometimes I have pliers and clay-ish fingers. You have gone to wsewing land. Can you still hear me there?

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  5. I think I have to ban myself from making that dress. Otherwise I might end up with nothing but that dress in my wardrobe!

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  6. Of course we are still here, we are your loyal readers!

    Those dresses look good and so will they on you, you can be sure of it. Your patterns were real bargains.

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  7. Oh I like those dresses.. And I will bow to you in uttter admiration if you make them. How do you manage to deal with the patterns? Whenever I come near them the thin thin flimsy paper spontaneously unfolds into something that I can never get back in the envelope again, and when I cut the bits out they threaten to tear, or they get blown through the room in a child's slipstream, or get crumpled up, etc etc. Not relaxing.

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  8. Planetcoops - I'm suspending all vacuuming and ironing until the damn thing is finished.

    Jannette - it takes longer, but I trace the patterns onto baking paper because the pattern paper is so flimsy. I've made a few things for the children before and it's meant I can make two versions of the same pattern in different sizes.

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  9. I'd like a sewing machine cellar. Mine goes on the kitchen table and has to get packed up every few hours so we can eat.

    I'm a big believer in pattern recommendations from crafty bloggers. If those girls give ti the thumbs up, then I know it's a good thing. Put me in front of a Vogue patternbook in a fabric shop then I have a panic attack and leave empty handed.

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  10. I hope you take coffee down to the cellar, hate to think of you wasting away down there.....

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  11. We encouraged this and for that I apologize. Those patterns are incredibly cute but I loathe sewing. When my daughter was just 3 or 4 she had a hole in a Beanie Baby and I told her to put it on the mending pile. She burst into tears and cried "But it will just lay there forever and ever!"

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  12. Welcome to the gang!

    I have various projects on the go at any one time - best way to be so you don't get bored with them. Would be nice to finish the odd one though

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  13. It is a dangerous, slippery slope you've headed down. But there's no turning back now. Bwhahahaha!

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  14. Oh, I love that first dress. And the fabric in the second dress.
    Do you have slankets there? http://www.theslanket.com/ You might need one down in your cellar when the hurricane comes. (I didn't realize you had hurricanes!)

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  15. Hooray, crafty lady. There's nothing like having more projects to make than hours to make them in! The Killing is seriously disrupting my knitting, though. Knitting lace in front of subtitled TV is, I have discovered, a terrible idea. It's so good that it's worth sacrificing an hour's knitting time for, though. Show us some pics when you finish stitching... Laura x

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  16. Slippery slope, CL, slippery slope.

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  17. I've been there covered in bits of threads that have become so attached to me I look like a maypole! Enjoy! It is good fun and will produce some great things!

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  18. Sew envy.
    I'll stick to my wine as I don't even know how to hold a pin, let alone sew a dress ... I just learned how to BUY one!

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  19. Back to the cellar with you (it's a disease, you know, sewing....)

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  20. I'm Crayon - I have mending things that the children have outgrown whilst they have been waiting. They bore me.

    jfb57 - I love the idea of a human maypole.

    Paola - I have a lot of trouble buying clothes. I'm not a clothes shopper at all - all that standing up...

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  21. I see you have been bitten by the bug!

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  22. I knew we'd got you in the end. It was only a matter of time.

    You're welcome sista!

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  23. See, you DO this from time to time. I haven't forgotten the Great Ottoman Escapade, or whatever that piece of furniture was that you expertly reupholstered. Plus, I know about your knitting.

    You'll probably turn out to be Martha Stewart masquerading as a nice English lady.

    (And I'm still scared of those dresses with tummy pleats.)

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  24. oh dear, I love that Jorth dress. Lovely!

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  25. Sewing will become many more crafts...beware, it gets very expensive

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  26. you've changed ;)

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