It's like the Elves and the Shoemaker over here

I don't mind anyone reading my blog. I don't. But if you happen to share the same father as me, please look away now - at least for a couple of days.

Normally, I get annoyed in the face of endless pretty tutorials to make cute things for babies. It's easy to make small things look cute. I'd like to see the same kind of attention lavished on the older, poutier, youngster.

But since I've collected a couple of  very tiny new female relatives recently, it seemed a good idea to have a go at the couple of projects in December's Mollie Makes, bought for me by a friend while I was in hospital with Eldest. Some little boots - which will probably end up ripped off and lobbed from the pram, if they even fit on the feet to start with (in my humble experience).

I cut down on the ridiculous amount of embroidery suggested for the boots. Less is more, especially with my humble skillz.

Also a couple of teddy bears from the same issue. I hope their faces do not alarm the girls; especially since Eldest's visiting friend took one look at them and pronounced them to be 'weird'.

The last of the Christmas making - a Kindle cover for my mother from this tutorial - was finished last night. Nothing to make now but merry.

This is nothing you couldn't have learned from Fred and Ginger*

The Internet is a wonderful thing (does it still have a capital 'I'? I don't know. When change happens in any area of society, how can I be sure that anyone will tell me?). For example, when I liked a dress pattern, a few years ago there would have been no Jorth with a blog showing me umpteen different versions. There would have been no Flickr to search. It would have been like throwing my money into a deep, dark cave.

But no! The evidence was solid - Vogue 8511 was infallible. New levels of sophistication would be reached! Grown men would faint at the sight of my elegant box pleats!

(Sorry. I just had to break off there due to a fit of hysterical sobbing. No, no, I'll be fine. I'll just wipe my eyes on this piece of bitterly scrunched-up lining fabric. Oh God. I'd even lined it.)

I'm not going to show you the fabric. I could Google it; I could even go upstairs and photograph the scraps, but the truth is - it's just too painful. My dress was hideous. I've spent a lot of time trying to think of hilariously witty ways to describe my dress, but 'hideous' is the only one that covers it.

That, and 'like a big brown sack'.

I tried everything to save it. I cut the sleeves off. I tried a belt. Whatever I tried, it just looked more and more like a costume I had bought to re-enact something historical. It cried out for accessories: a muddy field, some kind of head-covering, a few wicker baskets full of cabbage.

I cut the top off and made it into a skirt. I cut the hem off to make it into a shorter skirt. Apart from cutting it into tiny tiny bits and using it to mulch the flowerbeds, there was nothing I could cut off which would make it any better.

I flew into a rage, which lasted all the way to the fabric shop where I saw this pattern. I mean, look at the state of it. Who would buy that without a single piece of research? That jacket! What is this, 1985?

  

I'd show them. I'd show these people with their patterns, ruining women's lives like that.  I set about it in a complete frenzy, first checking the pattern for bits that I could miss out. Stay-stitching? Pah! Pressing the darts flat as I went along? Yeah, right. This wasn't sewing. This was running away from failure. I even tried it on with all the pins still in the sides and nearly had to take myself to Accident and Emergency.

And so, with a very muted fanfare which celebrates success whilst containing subtle echoes of past tragedies of which we cannot easily speak, I give you New Look 6013, in Liberty cord.

Let's get this out in the open right now: the facing at the top was too big and it stuck out and threatened to hit me in the ears. I sewed dirty great chunks out of it on completion and chopped the rest off with my scissors. I have shown it to enough people now to be assured that no-one will ever notice, and I am happy enough. We carry little imperfections on our shoulders all our lives; why should dress-making be any different?

*Fred and Ginger. Of course.

The sun has got his hat on

I made a summer dress. In the north of England, as October approaches, this was not the wisest of moves.

However. I'd had my eye on Simplicity 2444, and wanted to know if it would fit me, if it would suit me, and if I could make it without weeping. The recognised thing to do in this situation is to make a muslin, and the close proximity of one of the best factory shops in the world resulted in a muslin made of a Liberty cotton lawn.

£2.50 a metre. Am I trying to make you jealous? You know I am.

They say this week will be an Indian summer. I'm not holding out much hope. At least, not as much as I am for Simplicity 2444, which is my new Best Friend Forever. It goes in where I go in and out where I go out - a Very Good Thing - and though I could have done with an extra half inch at the bottom so I had more choice with the length, I'm very happy with it. I may make it a friendship bracelet from Littlest's big bag of ribbons. I may skip down the street with it, admiring the Autumn leaves. As long as I'm wearing thick tights and a woolly cardi.

 

 I bring my own sunshine wherever I go. 

(Anyone who knows me will be snorting

with derision right now.)

Time for a little bit of housekeeping

There are a whole list of things I've failed to blog about this summer, and a whole list of reasons for not doing so. I haven't blogged out of idleness (ooh look, the wine is open, and a film is on); I haven't blogged because the USB port on the computer isn't working so the photos have to be loaded onto the laptop which is kept upstairs, and the stairs are tiring and the laptop runs much slower than the PC and my life is so hard; and I haven't blogged because my children have spent the whole summer beating one another to a pulp. I can't turn my back. I'm telling you.

So. I've done a few star jumps. I've found Eye of the Tiger on Youtube. Let's do this thing.

(For example, back in June (JUNE!) a woman from Douwe Egberts sent me some chocolates in a jar to mark the fact that the company had now started selling refill packs to cut down on packaging. I was supposed to eat the chocolates, fill the jar with something interesting and take a picture of it to share with you. I ate the chocolates. I had great plans for what I would put in the jar, but I ended up forgetting all about them and just putting coffee in it. Anyway. Douwe Egberts make coffee which goes in nice refillable jars. I think that was the gist of it. (There was a competition, but I've told you about it far too late for you to enter. What can I tell you. I'm only human.))

Many, many moons ago - and this is even before the Douwe Egberts Fail - we went to the Lakeland Wildlife Oasis for a very fine day out to see their new snow leopard. (Mr Coffee and I believe that 'snow leopard' is a worthy alternative to the term 'silver fox', by the way.)

I failed to take any decent pictures of the snow leopard, but here is a very attractive-looking, erm, birdish thing.

It is utterly fine to blog about this even though it was months ago, because the children revisited with The Grandmother this week. This makes it a Current Event, I'm sure you'll agree. If you're in the area, go visit! There's a snow leopard! For heaven's sake!

There's more to come. I haven't even told you about my new vacuum cleaner yet. Really. I need to tell you.

I'll finish off for today with a picture of the Portfolio dress, because so many of you asked to see it. (I'd like to throw my weight behind Duyvken's Operation Pinterest project - this is my contribution.) I like the dress; I don't like the dress. It's a very beautiful item - right up until the moment that I try to put my boobs into it, and then it begins to look slightly as if I have tried to dress myself in a large blue bag.

It has to be said, the full-length picture isn't the best photograph. I tried to take self-timed ones out in the garden, but you don't even want to know what they looked like.

I made it in a cotton dobby fabric, with a flat check from the exact same range as the contrast. Though I did look at picking up one of the bold colours in the fabric itself, it could have easily looked very alarming - I liked the slight contrast much better.


Mostly I like the pockets.

More housekeeping to come. Stay tuned.