I Lied..

Now I'm really, actually back. After my last post I sloped around for a couple of days feeling demoralised by the string of failures. I wasn't even cheered up by my fitting books, which only illustrated how hard it all was. I decided I needed to successfully complete something and not worry about fit, just make it so that it looks good. With this in mind, I dug out the hooded jumper that I had already discarded as a complete failure, as it was cut up and I had all the stuff to make it. I made it out of some cheap track suit material I found at the op-shop, so the fabirc cost less than the zip and the thread combined, even if it does look like a wet-suit. Here is the final product;

The seams are all straight (for the most part..) and the zip looks alright, so it fulfulled its purpose and made me feel better about sewing. Onwards and upwards maybe? I have two choices now, I think. Choice one, make the shorts again but this time make adjustments so that they actually fit. Choice two, make Simplicity 4111 out of a stretch knit that I bought a few weeks ago. The unmentioned choice three is to just make a t-shirt out of it, but I'm not sure I'm ready to run the t-shirt-with-no-pattern gauntlet again. That episode went totally unreported with good reason, as there are 4 red t-shirts stuffed at the very bottom of my supplies box.

I also really want to make this. After finding myself without a bag, I took to carrying all of my things in a calico shopping bag and I think it has finally convinced me that off the shoulder bags are the greatest thing ever. I refuse to call it a handbag though, because it's a watermelon. Very un-handbag like I think..

I also somehow managed to accomplish this;


I had a 10 dollar chipboard ironing board courtesy of K-mart for a few weeks (they wanted 50 for a real one!!) until I spotted one next to the skip at my brothers house. It turned out to be in excellent condition, with no rust and it doesn't scream when it's opened. The cover was pretty scummy though, so I needed a new one. Ruth did too, so we decided to make our own. Finding a print that we liked turned out to be a trek and a half but we found the right one in the end and had fun making them. It was pretty easy and now we have ironing board covers that fit perfectly and look awesome and only cost 6 dollars (excluding the ten dollar felt mat to go under it).

I love my free ironing board!

Back from the slump

As promised in my last entry, I abandoned the shirt projects in favour of some much easier ones. But as with any beginner, the inevitable complete and catastrophic failure caught up with me and I managed to ruin both a skirt and a loosely fitting jumper. That technically made 4 failures in a row (I counted the abandoned projects as failures) and I got a little sad and didn't want to think about sewing for a bit.

A couple of purchases buoyed my spirits though and I have a book on fitting techniques winging its way to me right now, courtesy of 5 dollars and ebay. Op-shopping is always good for the soul and yesterday was pretty successful. I got some ugly corduroy and flannel and Ruth got the most amazing purchase in the history of the universe; a knitting machine for 20 bucks. I didn't think my score of 7.5 metres of black drill for 3 dollars would be topped for some time..

This all ads up to a renewed sense of sewing-purpose and hopefully I will report back soon with some successfully completed projects!