First Dress Finished! :)

Well it took a while to complete but at last it's finished.  And as you see I didn't add arms, but instead used bits of fabric to face the insides of the arm holes.  I had thought these pieces were to make cap sleeves, but turns out I know nothing, and after much head-scratching I realised they were little unseen pieces!

I have learned a load of stuff on the way whilst doing this dress:  The zip was the first invisible zip I've attempted (and believe me it is far from invisible, but I think it's tolerably okay now that I've ironed it hard!).  I also had to wrestle with that curly hem foot thing... and with a little help from Utube and several yards of practice on fabric scraps, I finally got the hem done without too much stretching...

 And please ignore the funny faces - it is not easy to take photos in a mirror... and I thought I'd been so careful to avoid all the surrounding clutter!

 In the two photos below, I thought I'd try on a little poncho thing I bought in a sale years ago, but never wore.  I think it works with this dress okay... even though my face forgot to show it!

 Anyway,  I admit I'm pleased with the outcome of this dress, although to be honest the fabric disguises quite a few less than perfect joins.

I also love the fact I lined it - because it gives it a weight and warmth that the fabric alone would have been missing.  So I think I'll wear this....

Now, if you happen to be curious to read some of my ponderings along the way  - links to previous posts relating to the dress are given below.

And as you will see from the dates, the whole project took some time to come to fruition!

Aspiring Towards Dressmaking - Help!

Cutting out the Pieces for my Dress!!

A Little Progress on the Dress

Interim Dress Pictures - Add Sleeves or No?

Thanks for looking....  now I wonder what I'll try next.

Interim Dress pictures.... Add sleeves or no?

So here's my dress so far - kindly modelled by my eldest daughter.

I have full length arms cut out for the dress... but I'm thinking now I'll just change my mind and put on the cap sleeves for it instead.

Then I'll have to hem the skirt and do a few wee tidying bits - like attaching the lining to the zip on the inside.

As I'm writing this and looking at possibilities for my dress - the girls have that new sewing programme on Iplayer Sewing Bee... Did anyone else watch it?  I loved it.  Great fun! 

Sally's Sewing Corner

Up until now all my sewing has been at the kitchen table.  Which is all well and good, but means I need to clear everything away each evening ...

I thought I might get more done with a specialised sewing space.  SoI now have a new sewing corner in the kitchen.    TA DA!

A little re-arranging of the kitchen created a space:

Then a quick surf on the internet to find what I wanted from Ikea... 

Some assembly... (Thanks Tim and daughter Elaine.)

Nice wooden top - which I treated with wood oil...

And because the wood oil hadn't fully sunk in yet (and obviously I wanted to SEW), I put some surplus fabric over the work top so I could work on my dress..

Yes the dress IS still slowly progressing (that is it on the chair)... it's not perfect, but so far so good.  Hope to finish it by the end of the week!

Thanks to SewRuth - Blogger Awards!

This is a very long over due post!

Some time ago Ruth of Sew Ruth gave me a couple of blogging awards and put links to my blog up on her blog.... This action undoubtedly increased the traffic to my blog and inspired me to keep with it!

This was Ruth's post where she handed out her awards for inspiring blogs: Linky

And these are the lovely awards she sent me, and which I now have the pleasure of passing forward to some of the blogs I have found inspiring.

The rules of the awards are as follows: 

Thank the person who nominated you. 

Add The One Lovely Blog Award/Very Inspiring Blogger Award to your post. 

Share 7 things about yourself.  

Pass the award on to 10 nominees. 

Include this set of rules. 

Inform your nominees by posting a comment on their blogs.  

So first of all a big THANK YOU to SewRuth for generously giving me both awards!

Now to 7 things about me: 

1.  My family and I live in N.Ireland, in an old stone cottage that was originally restored by my Grandmother, and which we extended about 17 years ago.  I love this photo of a sunrise behind the house. (Sorry about the arrows - I couldn't find the original and this is copied from FB!)

2. We have 3 little terriers!  JackJack, Honey and Patsy.  Here modelling their Christmas attire!  

3.  We keep a few ponies here and this time last year Mollie had a foal.  The foal was finally named this week - Meet Duchess.

4.  I've been sewing up a few ponies too... This little herd went over to England before Christmas to be sold on a Craft Stall raising funds for Biomedical Research into ME.  This illness has now affected me for over a year and prevented me from working or indeed being physically active in any way.  Much more research and funding is needed.  (More detail here: PDF Describing ME and here: Invest in ME )

5.  I enjoy taking photos especially of moody skies.  This one is just outside the kitchen patio doors...  

...... and this one looking down from the garden over a winter sunrise.

6.  I now follow a Paleo Diet as I have heard that it helps with ME.  So that's: No grains, no dairy and as little sugar as possible.  (In ascending order of difficulty!)

 7. My daughters also enjoy sewing and have encouraged me along the way....

So now to my Nominees for these awards... and it's not an easy choice! 

So in no particular order - here they are:

Cation Designs One of the first blogs I started to follow, and although this blog has loads of well deserved awards already I couldn't resist sending another!  ;)

Tumble Weeds in the Wind  Plenty of inspiration here...

Bundana Begins  Always something colourful going on ...

Weekend Crafting Check out the quilt in the post from 2 March.

A Good Talking To...  Lots of lovely ideas here... 

Craft Sanctury  in her own words "confessions of a happy crafter"... need I say more.

By Gaenor  Sewing inspiration and more....

Edit to add:

Sarah Liz Sew Style Knew I'd missed one... and I know she's just got another award.. but her post regarding that award was the trigger that reminded me I'd forgotten to do my list...  :)

So that's my list for now... I keep feeling I've forgotten a blog or two I enjoy... so watch this space as I may add a couple more in a bit.

So now I've to head off to each of these blogs to let them know about their awards...  Well okay that will be tomorrow!  (Edit now done ;) )

Getting Organised......

So it's been a hectic couple of weeks and the sewing machine hasn't left the cupboard!  I've also neglected my blog and indeed I've still to follow up on the lovely awards that SewRuth sent me before Christmas!

So I'll get organised now to update you all on our trip to Crufts and our recent Boiler mishaps. Then  I'll do another post to follow up on The Award SewRuth gave me, and my selection of my favourite blogs!

Crufts!  Great fun all round.  Honey didn't take stage fright, although she was a little cautious on her first round.  Second competition was a different story and she seemed to cope with the crowds and the noise and   to our delight the team they were part of came 4th - so we came home with a beautiful Crufts rossette and lots of smiles!

Boiler Chaos!

Friday morning last week and we had no heating.  Tim investigated and as he did so the boiler blew out and covered the boiler room and kitchen in a fine layer of soot!  Then the electricity went out and a look outside told us we were snowed in!  Hectic! 

Luckily we have a generator in the shed, and Tim has  "Little Devil" gas fired blower thing which was drafted in to warm the kitchen.  We remained snowed in and without mains electricity until Sunday evening, and all did a lot of mopping.  I didn't look in the boiler room 'til this week - because of course it is also our laundry room!

This week I've spent all week washing towels, sheets and clothes that were clean before the boiler mishap!  We're still finding soot in unexpected places....  but I think we're winning now!

Oh and guess who had a birthday!

So more sewing soon......

A Little Progress on The Dress

I finally got all the pieces cut out.  I also decided to try and line the dress, and so cut out all the bits again in the lining material.   Well except the arms.... I'm not sure lining the arms is a good idea.....

I managed to sew up the top half in the lining and put it onto our "Suzie".  My middle daughter chose the name - she also made Suzie the same size as my dimensions..... which I was disappointed to note required more expansion round the bum than the bust!

I sewed up this section with the real fabric as well, and managed to insert the zip, but then forgot to take another picture......  

And at this point the project will have to go on hold again for a bit....  Honey our JR Terrier is going to Crufts to compete in the YKC Agility classes on Thursday and Saturday - So I'll finish with a couple of Sunday's club practice session.

Her show name is "A Taste of Honey"  

Patchwork Paintbrush Roll :)

This is probably another diversionary tactic... ("the dress" is now all cut out  and ready for sewing).  However the notion to do a little quilting with some odds and ends hit me this morning, and I decided to make myself a paintbrush roll.  

I didn't measure anything, but just kept stitching bits together.  Added some left over fleece for batting and then folded into shape, sewed the pockets and finished with bias binding.

Looks the part I think.  

Oh and it's another stashbusting project as everything was from the cupboard!