Winners and a loser (or at least not a winner)

I have been sewing a lot over the last week. In addition to the shorts for the middle grandson, I also pulled together my second make of this Simplicity dress.

It's all but done, all I need to do is hem the outside layer. I faced a different (for me) sort of challenge with this dress because although I'd made it before, I'm enough smaller now that the previous size was/is too big. But patterns come bundled in sizes and the size I needed for this make was not included in my pattern. That meant I needed to buy a second pattern, which annoyed me but resulted in a better fit.

I used a fabric that's quite drapey which sort of goes against the retro vibe of the dress. To overcome how much the fabric wanted to drape, I lined it with white cotton. This solved a couple of potential problems: it's not see-through, the dress has more body and skims better and it's also really soft and comfy to wear.

It's too damn cold to put the dress on for anything other than a nanosecond of fitting so I will get a picture next weekend when we are someplace warm. Yes, we are going away for an extended weekend so we can thaw out.

I also made myself a bag. If I'm not careful, I'll be known as both the crazy cat lady and a bag lady . . . Anyway, here's another version of the Birdie Sling Bag but this time it's for me.

Finally I had enough scraps of this material on hand that I thought I could get another top out of it. I'd already made a dress, which I like a lot. Normally I wouldn't go for multiple items from the same fabric but you have to admit this is some neat cloth. Unfortunately, it's a bit too soft to work in the pattern I made. I may be able to salvage it but I'm out of energy for that top right now.

Next up is possibly a coat. We'll see. My upper back is scolding me for all the hunching over I've done the last few days.

What I did yesterday

I made this Amy Butler birdie sling bag. It’s pretty large, and as you can see it’s quite colorful. I think this bag will work very nicely when Kent and I go to Jamaica at the end of January.

I changed some things when I made this bag. The directions call for it to be fully lined with a very lightweight fleece and also to be reinforced with interfacing. I nixed both of those because I wanted a bag, not a blanket. I also decided not to add top stitching. The materials are plenty busy and I didn't think the top stitching would add anything in terms of looks or stability. It sews up quickly; I started sewing late yesterday morning and was done by mid-afternoon.


Here's a picture of the lining plus one of the two pockets plus you can see one of my sewing tags.