sewing room part two: progress

Many months later, I haven't forgotten about this! It's taken a while because, frankly, it's been a tip since we moved in. We made everywhere else look nice and then had a load of boxes and other stuff left undealt with, so it all ended up in here until I randomly hyperfocused and cleared it all up at the beginning of August. 

We haven't done a huge amount to it, honestly. Patrick and I had very little furniture when we moved in and all our money went on things like a decent bed and sofas and dining set, so we've really not been able to afford any new kit for either of our halves of the room. (Patrick bought the cheapest desk that Argos had to offer for his half, on the understanding that when money was less tight he'd upgrade it, and it is truly wretched and he complains about it every time he looks at it. Do not buy the cheapest Argos desk, the ball bearings will somehow fall out of the drawer runners and you will be finding them FOREVER even though there weren't many in there to begin with.) And of course, we don't have any intention of redecorating and getting rid of the flamingos. But I have set everything up as I think I'll be wanting it, and here are a couple of pictures:

As it stands: iron and ironing board permanently set up by the window. I haven't yet bought a new ironing board - I assumed I would be getting the exact same one my mum has, as I mentioned in the first post, but not only does it not have a brand name or any other identifying marks on it, it's also apparently deleted itself from her purchase history. I'm still salty about it. My interim scraps bin (otherwise known as Patrick's old disintegrating laundry basket) is underneath it, and that will be replaced asap because it is literally falling to sharp spiky wicker pieces and I've injured myself multiple times already. Next to that are my notions drawers and a small basket for escaped pattern pieces, and my sewing desk itself is against the wall next to the door:

 This desk is also in line to be replaced when we can afford it - it's increasingly rickety and because of the drawer on the right side, doesn't really lend itself to sewing on two machines. It's not unworkable, so that will probably be one of the last things that happens. Ideally I would like a corner desk, so that I can switch between machines easily but also have drawer space, then I can repurpose the plastic ones. I'm really keen to get some art up in this corner so I'm not looking at a blank wall. I bought a print that I thought really encapsulated everything I wanted, but when it arrived the actual print wasn't very good (it was never meant to be that large and it looked wrong blown up) and now of course my brain has decided that all the art should be stuff I've made, so I have to either pick or take the right photo, and then possibly get into cross-stitch so there are some smaller things to hang up. Patrick has no such ideas for his half and has declared his intention to just have a Kraftwerk poster and a Carly Rae Jepsen poster.

The one thing I have bought is a full-length mirror, which was very difficult to photograph so this will have to do (it's a WIP shot of last week's dress I took a little while ago, so you can still see evidence of the Box Dump. The hat is a whole other story). I find it basically impossible to sew without a proper mirror and the house otherwise doesn't have one, so we prioritised this (after, y'know, the bed and the fridge and stuff). It's next to the desk, which is the best place I can find to put it for now. 

I've also acquired some storage boxes for my patterns and I've put them away categorised by frequency of use, as I planned. I thought about taking photos of the inside of my cupboard, but you wouldn't like it. Workable storage for me isn't very pretty and I'm certain it would upset people. If you are prone to your eye twitching when you see things that are a bit off, I assure you your eye would twitch. But it works, all my patterns are actually put away rather than randomly stuffed out of sight, I know where to find everything, and it's generally much easier to sew now. 

Updated list of possible changes and acquisitions, now in some sort of priority order:

- some art for the walls. I know this is an odd choice for highest priority, but I have everything that's actively and immediately necessary. What I think will make the biggest difference to my creativity and motivation to be in the sewing room is being able to see colour and joy rather than just blank cream walls when I'm sat at the desk. As I said above, I'm currently going through my past photography to see if I have anything that would suit. 

- a magnetic whiteboard to keep track of projects currently on the go, ideas I've had, and any supplies I'm running low on. That will probably go next to the window. 

- a replacement scraps bin for the wicker liability I'm currently using. (I made a small fabric basket for bits of thread and overlocker offcuts, which is on the drawers in the pictures above but is also dark grey so not especially visible.)

- a smart speaker. This is Patrick's insistence - I like to listen to music while I sew and it doesn't bother me to use my phone for that, but the inferior sound quality stresses him out whenever he comes into the room (music nerds gonna music nerd). We have Sonos speakers downstairs - we're not into digital assistant or voice-activated ones - and we'd get the same again for this room. 

- a new ironing board when I can find one that meets my particular specifications.

- a small table for whatever my current work-in-progress is, so that it doesn't live on the ironing board and set a dangerous precedent. 

- corner desk and office chair, which are some way off but I'm looking forward to them. 

There are other, bigger things I also want, but they won't fit in the room while we're sharing it and I don't want to start planning for them until I know if and when we're getting Patrick's garden office. Basically I want a large fold-out cutting table and a dress form in my measurements, the latter especially. It would make a huge difference to my amateurish attempts to learn to fit things if I could experiment on a replica me, and I would definitely hate hemming less if I could hang the garment on something my shape while I pinned it. Also there's a part of me that's convinced the acquisition of a Jen-shaped dress form would open up a whole new world of creativity and I'd be making all sorts of cool shit. This will almost certainly not happen, but I have been enjoying watching YouTube videos of garment draping and pretending I could totally do that too if only I had the equipment. 

My plan is to do another post in this series in the winter, when all the things are on the walls, possibly one when the whole list is done if the room looks appreciably different, and if/when I take over the whole room I'll do another couple of posts about plans and acquisitions for the extra space. I don't want to beat this succession of posts into the ground but I do think it'll be useful - mostly for me, but hopefully also others, especially those with neurodivergence to accommodate - to have a record of what I thought I needed vs what it turns out I actually need once I've been working in this space for a while. 

Up next will either be my autumn sewing plan or a a pair of trousers, depending on whether or not I'm able to make it to Walthamstow this week. I think it's going to be a bit of a stressful one, and it's 50/50 whether my stress manifests as extravagant fabric purchases or hiding inside with a pint of ice cream. We shall see! 

an Anna dress and some feelings

 I'll be frank here: this dress makes me a bit sad. 

This is a By Hand London Anna dress that I made to wear as a bridesmaid's dress to the wedding of one of my oldest friends. On the week of the wedding, I finished the dress on the Tuesday... and the following day got pinged by bloody Test and Trace and had to self-isolate until the Friday after the wedding. I had to FaceTime into the wedding, which was half an hour down the road from me, feeling absolutely physically fine (PCR tests confirmed no Covid for me) and it made me so, so sad. I took these photos on the day of her wedding in the hope of being awkwardly photoshopped into the actual wedding photos later on, so fair warning they are mostly very stupid. And now I have this dress, and I really don't know if I'll be able to wear it. It's not that I don't like it, it's just that it's got feelings stuck to it now. 

The fabric is a viscose I ordered from The Textile Centre (she'd asked us to wear blue and suddenly I could not find blue fabric anywhere) and it worked really well for the pattern. Not super thin, plenty of drape, none of that weird plastic-type feel you can sometimes get with cheap stuff labelled viscose. I used my original Anna pattern with FBA rather than the newer one with the built-in D cup because the shoulders of the largest size were too big for me. I went up 1.5 sizes in the waist on the assumption I'd be eating a big dinner and drinking a lot, and put some ties in at the side seams so that it would be somewhat adjustable depending on what portion of the day we were in. If I decide I can get over my feelings and wear this again, I'll probably take it in a bit because it's not massively flattering when not cinched. The neckline is finished with a bias facing because we all know I hate the facing that comes with this pattern. 

Honestly, that's about as much as I have to say about the dress itself. This is the kind of thing that under normal circumstances I either would not bother blogging or shove in at the bottom of a different post as a bonus. But I have not made much recently, and I have a bunch of photos of me being a dork and pretending I'm at a wedding, so I'm going to put some of them here and chat for a bit instead. 

(I would not have worn these yellow suede heels to the actual wedding, despite them being the shoes I most often wear to weddings, because it was chucking it down for most of the day and they would not have survived. You'd think you'd be fairly free from that sort of thing booking your wedding for early August, but NOPE.)

I also FaceTimed into the toasts. We tend to keep half-bottles of fizz for when we want to celebrate something but aren't up for ploughing our way through a full bottle, which was especially fortunate that day because Patrick, though he was also confirmed Covid-negative, was sick as the proverbial and absolutely not up for joining me in a glass of mediocre Cremant. I also had a tiny wedding disco, all by myself. Spotify wedding party playlists are atrocious, by the way. I know the party isn't the first dance and it's not particularly important that lyrics be wedding-appropriate and such, but who is playing Pony by Ginuwine at their wedding? And is there footage of it? 

[general representation of me at a wedding. I hope they just photoshop this into the background of every single crowd shot]

All of which is to say, it's been a weird time inside of a weird time, ten days of not leaving the house was NOT good for me and the fate of this dress remains uncertain. For now I've put it away, and maybe in a month or two I'll have a look at it again. If summer suddenly happens in September like it did a few years ago, I might even try to wear it. I hope I can make peace with it, because I do think it's very pretty. We shall see. 

[also general representation of me at a wedding]

I'm extremely looking forward to my family coming to visit this weekend (and also terrified that it will be prevented by threatened or actual Covid). We've booked Sunday lunch for my mum's birthday but otherwise keeping things fairly low-key, staying away from London's biggest crowds and having a good time with the wine cabinet. Before that happens I'm hoping to get some sewing done; I have a bright red Sallie jumpsuit cut out that I'd really like to complete this week. Not that we'll have the weather for it, but I would still like to own that jumpsuit now. 

Up next: finally an update on the sewing room! What's done, what's to come, general fantasies about owning a dress form and becoming some kind of draping genius running away with me! 

re-emerging from the darkness with an Elodie dress

Four months later, I'm back. I've learned my lesson about stating definitively that I'm totally back for real this time you guys - I'm still not well, I can't rely on my health or motivation, and making promises about things I don't end up being able to deliver stresses me right out. But I have actually completed several garments that don't suck, and I have multiple posts written and ready to go, so this is a much more sensible attempt at a return to regular blogging than the previous ones. So with that in mind, here's a dress!

I've been thinking about the Closet Core Patterns Elodie dress since it was released, trying to decide if I wanted to make it or not. My recollection is that they released it at the very end of summer last year, and I didn't buy it then because I wouldn't get any use out of it for the best part of a year. I'd bought some fabric that I thought would be an amazing full-length wrap dress, and I went back and forth for months wondering whether it would work with the Elodie pattern. That fabric continues to sit in my cupboard (it's one I'm very keen to actually wear and I do not want to mess it up by pairing it incorrectly), but I did, finally, get round to a test run of the pattern itself. 

Here it is! The fabric is a viscose from Fabric Land; it was part of a small haul my mum gave me as a belated birthday present. (The rest of said haul is cut out but not sewn yet and I hope you'll be seeing it over the next month or two.) I picked this piece specifically to be a test run of the Elodie, because I liked it and would be happy to wear it but wouldn't feel the need to be precious about it, and I knew the pattern would work in this type of light, drapey fabric. I thought a functional version would help me decide whether my intended fabric would be too thick. 

First off, I like this fabric so much more as a dress than I did on the roll. It makes a really amazing - and very me - dramatic summer wrap dress that I honestly wasn't expecting to be as taken by as I am. It's not remotely outside of my comfort zone or current style arena, but also I don't really have anything else like this, which is exactly what I need at a point when I'm struggling a fair bit. It's an unexpectedly vintage sort of vibe, which I haven't dabbled with in a while and I'm rather enjoying. Shame it's been raining all summer, eh. This dress has had exactly three outings, one of which barely counts because I wore it downstairs to dinner at the hotel I was staying in while a storm raged on outside. 

Construction was fairly simple, and I was pleased that the hole for the wrap was in the middle of the waistband so it didn't get in the way of me French seaming everything. I cut a size 12 in the shoulders and a 16 everywhere else (the skirt is sufficiently flared that I didn't need to bother sizing up in the hips). I didn't put the patch pockets on because frankly I have zero use for a viscose patch pocket, but I otherwise made the pattern up entirely as directed. 

My one complaint with this pattern is the neckline finishing. I will freely admit to being biased against facings in general, but I especially hate them on wrap styles. The wrap on this is high enough that things are basically fine when standing, but it does gape noticeably when I sit down unless I'm keeping a very close eye on things. Woven wraps are tricky in general, I think, and the only finishing method I've ever really liked is the Victory Patterns Trina, which is finished with bias binding and all three of my versions stay very firmly put whenever I wear them. 

I find that the skirt fronts overlap sufficiently as to be pretty secure unless there's a serious wind blowing (which did happen!) and in taking these photos I had to do a full runway stomp towards the camera to get my lower leg to show. I feel very covered up in this dress. While talking about the skirt it's probably worth mentioned that there was a ton of bias drop and I would strongly recommend hanging it up for a couple of days before hemming it. 

I don't think I will be making another using my originally intended fabric - having worn this version around a bit, I do think it would be too thick. What I do plan to try is a shorter version, to see if I like it. This full length version is incredibly fabric-hungry (it has to be cut on a single layer because the skirt pieces are super wide) and so I won't want to make it that often if I need to buy five metres every time. I haven't historically liked a shorter, fuller skirt on me, but I do want to give it a try and see what I think. For a long time now I've been missing a "dinner dress", something relatively non-restrictive that I can wear when Patrick and I go out that's not something I wear day-to-day (so that I can feel like I'm dressing up) but also isn't particularly OTT (so I don't feel self-conscious), and this is exactly the kind of style that might work, so I'm keen for a test run. On any future versions I'm going to swap out the neckline finishing, probably for the Trina's bias binding method. 

(For these photos I went for the "literally just standing on the deck" view of our garden, which is basically the only way to get OK light when it's sunny. You'll observe a ton of greenery behind me, and there's actually a secret extra part of the garden behind that, which will be an excellent photo location when I can get to it again. The previous owners had planted a load of insidious bamboo, and Patrick spent a full day chopping it down then promptly had a massive health crash, so there's currently giant piles of dead bamboo blocking the path. I tried to clamber over it to take some pictures once, and I fell over and cut my hands in three places, so I'm not doing that again until the dead bamboo is gone.)

I'm glad to have written and posted again. This blog is incredibly important for me because writing things down is the only way I can remember what I've done and what I'm intending to do and the fact that I haven't been blogging is a huge part of the reason I haven't been sewing, but this year has been hard. Fingers crossed that this autumn will bring some proper medication and a slightly easier-to-navigate world. 

Next week's post is already scheduled, so I'll see you then! 

Closet Core Patterns Elodie dress

Fabric: Tropical print viscose from Fabric Land
Cost: £30
Pattern details: Woven wrap dress in three skirt lengths and two sleeve lengths, with waistband, faced neckline, and optional patch pockets
Size: 12 in the shoulders, 16 everywhere else
Alterations: None
Would make again/would recommend: Yes/Yes

a fabric haul

 Hey, I got to go fabric shopping! Walthamstow Market opened again last week so I swallowed my nerves and dragged my half-vaccinated ass onto the tube. The dude was there, unbothered as ever, and he had lots of pretty shiny new things for me. I got a lot of stuff (surprise) and I'd like to share it before I start cutting into it with wild abandon. 

Most of what I have is solid coloured, and most of the colours are slightly off when photographed. I think I'm going to try and acquire myself a proper light; everywhere in this house is either extra sunny or too dark to take any photos at all. 

First we have a fairly standard crepe, dusty blue-violet in person, that I want to make into a pair of trousers. I want to try out the Gertie/Charm Patterns Lucille trousers, which seem to be wide leg and swishy without being quite as enormous as these (no shade to these, they're still one of my most worn items). Historically Gertie's drafting has worked well for me but I haven't ever tried her trousers. This one may not work and I'm OK with that. 

I didn't ask what this was exactly, I was too taken by the colour (it's much more turquoise in person). It's a mid-weight woven with a small amount of stretch. This is the only one I bought without a plan - I got four metres thinking I could maybe get two things out of it, but now that I'm home with four metres of it there's a little goblin whispering "make a massive fancy dress despite zero occasions to wear it, you know you want to".

This is a microfibre crepe (which I've never encountered before) and I bought it basically because the dude recommended it to me. It's a very brick red in person and light bounces off it in a very interesting way. This might become my second attempt at the Simplicity jacket, but I want to play around with it a bit more first and make sure it'll actually work for that. When I was folding it after pre-wash it seemed to produce a ton of static, and I don't yet know if that's the fabric or just our oddly static-conducting new house. I might need to find an alternative pattern with a full lining. 

Two pontes next. One of them is destined to be the crossover hoodie view of the Closet Core Mile End sweatshirt, and I'm not sure about the other yet. When I bought them I was intending for the grey to become the hoodie and the burgundy to become trousers or joggers, but when I got back from the market and showed them to Patrick he said "ah, you've bought something to camouflage my trousers" and that's when I remembered that Patrick literally only owns burgundy trousers. I have made a pair in the past and I ended up not wearing them very much because of how odd we looked together. So either I'll switch them round or I'll use the second piece to make T--shirts. 

This one is a bit of a punt. It's not really me at all, and I have a huge amount of it (he was nearing the end of the roll, I ordered four metres, he asked me if I'd pay for five in exchange for six, so I did). It feels lovely, and it's a really beautiful weight. Part of this may become the spring maxi I mentioned in my plan, and the rest will become a dress to wear to my friend's wedding in August. 

Today I finally ordered my cheap laser printer, which is hopefully going to make everything a lot easier. Once it arrives I'm going to start working on the trousers and the hoodie. My last couple of projects haven't turned out an end product I'm happy to share, but hopefully one of the two will come good and I'll have a proper finished garment post within the next week or so. And if not... I'll probably go right back to the market, tbh. 

just make something: Wanted top

 Two weeks in a row! And they're both actually things I've made! 

Today is Patrick's birthday (his second lockdown birthday, poor guy) and it marks only one remaining week of waiting until a) our bed arrives and b) restrictions are lifted sufficiently to allow us to have other humans in our garden. I cannot wait. Sleeping on the floor is ruining both of us and extreme introvert though I might be, I really miss people. I think it'll take me a while to remember how to socialise, and it'll be a long while yet before I'm prepared to deal with a crowd again, but one or two humans? Yes please. 

On to the thing I made! It's a top which wouldn't ordinarily be something I'd bother to post. There's rarely much to be gained by writing about the same knit top pattern more than twice and if I were making things at a normal rate, you'd see this in a month's time being photographed with whatever new pair of trousers I'd made with a short single-paragraph aside of "oh, also I made this."

But I am not making things at my usual rate. This is the first thing I've made in months. So we're going to talk about it. 

As you almost certainly know, this is the Vanessa Pouzet Wanted top. I've made this many times and used it as the bodice for a summer maxi dress many times more. It's a particular favourite of mine because it's both a very simple knit top and a bit more interesting than a basic T-shirt, and I thought making it now would let it serve as a good transitional piece between "I'm inside all day, nobody is going to see me" and "oh, humans again" without too much culture shock. 

The fabric is a piece of sweater knit from the Abakhan bins that my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas in 2019. I've been hoarding it mostly because of the sheer novelty of someone else giving me fabric I didn't pick. But when March rolled around and I decided this whole no-sewing thing had outlived its welcome, this fabric was a no-brainer to start me going again. It's knit, it's nice quality, it's a good colour, it can become a simple top and get worn regularly and immediately. And so it was. For a while I was considering trying to make a dress out of it, but seeing how clingy it is I'm very glad I didn't! It did not enjoy being hemmed, and there's a chance I might try to piece together enough scraps to make bands so I can unpick the twin needle stitching. 

The first time I made this top I did so out of jersey with basically no recovery, and it started falling off my shoulders pretty quickly. I made the assumption that the neckband was too long and so not holding everything where it should, and for my next several attempts I shortened the band considerably. This time I went back to the original length and I have to say I prefer it. So far it hasn't threatened to fall off my shoulders at all. I also made the decision not to adjust for my quarantine boobs or quarantine biceps, in hopes that I can continue to wear it when all returns to normal. I'm fine with it being a bit tight, but it is quite noticeable in these photos. 

I cannot imagine how irritated Past Jen would be if she found out that she did all that work to whittle down and clear out her stash only to have Present Jen whine that now she didn't know what to make and this is why people have a stash. (Past Jen was correct, I don't like a big stash, but we are in very particular times right now.) 

I'm happy enough with this as a project to get things moving again. There are things I would, in better times, have paid more attention to, but the most important job this top has is reminding me that sewing is good and fun, I can make things I like and I should do it more often. Though I still might replace that bottom hem with a band if remnants allow,

Since Walthamstow is still a little while away, I've ordered myself a McCalls maxi dress pattern (8174) to try out with one of my experimental pieces of jersey. It's yet another triumph-or-disaster sort of project, so you may or may not be seeing that within the next week or two. The test jersey I've picked is bright red because I absolutely intend to overcompensate for the past lost year by showing up to everything bigger and louder and brighter and fancier than anyone has any right to be. 

Back soon, with a new dress and another background option! 

toile talk: the never ending leather jacket quest

Last week was rougher than I'd anticipated. Partly for good reasons - I got a last-minute appointment for my first dose of the Covid vaccine and spent the following couple of days cycling through extremes of temperature and trying to sleep it off. I am incredibly grateful and relieved to have some protection for my asthmatic self and hope it'll ease some of the anxiety about the world opening up again. But the latter half of the week... I've tried several times over the past few days to write something about Sarah Everard's murder and the horrifying range of responses to it, and I just can't. It makes me too sad. But I will say that she was kidnapped fifteen minutes from my house, and the proximity of it all has made everything hit me a little harder than it should. 

All of which is to say, I did not have it in me to take any photos last week. But now I have! What I'm about to show you is one of the items from my autumn plan six months ago (I am Good at Things), and it is yet another attempt at having a stupid biker jacket. This one is McCalls 8121, the Nicole Miller pattern from last year. I did in fact make this last year, in an attempt to use up some stuff before moving. I didn't photograph it at the time, thinking it hadn't worked that well, but coming back to it three months later I like it a lot more and I have a lot to say about it. 

New garden! No more palm tree! I don't know if this snail wall here is going to be my new permanent photo background (I'm going to try a few different things), but it has the distinct advantage of being right next to the kitchen door and affording much less interaction with the cold and wet and drizzle that is March. 

This toile is made out of one of the first fabrics I ever bought. I'm not exactly sure what it is - it's cotton, but it's also been treated with something to make it stiffer and and possibly slightly water-resistant. When I bought it I had only made one dress pattern ever, bought this to make it again, and quickly realised it wasn't going to work. It sat in my cupboard until Patrick and I moved to a flat that had no fabric cupboard and I began using it to line the wooden box I stored my fabric in. When we planned to move again and regain a Jen cupboard, I thought I might as well use it up. I think it photographs much better than it looks in person; it has gold butterflies on it that very much have the look of "five-year-old doing potato prints", which will absolutely stop me wearing it, but they're not so noticeable in the photos and just blend into a general impression of colourful and shiny. I think it looks particularly nice in the photo below and I will probably keep an eye out for sunset-evocative fabric that I could use to remake this in a wearable way.

First off, the design of the jacket is really great. It has all the biker jacket details I've been coveting: asymmetric front, collar, zipped sleeves. It also has welt pockets, which I didn't put in the toile but would in a real version. It's lined, and the design is such that you have hidden pops of lining fabric on the outside - the under collar is cut from the lining fabric, and my personal favourite detail, a lined back shoulder tuck which is almost entirely hidden but gave me a tremendous sense of satisfaction. I got super excited when I discovered it and I really wish it was more common for patterns to include things like this. A patch pocket does NOT count as a "beautiful detail", please try harder.

What I liked less were some of the construction methods. To construct this jacket, the directions have you completely finish the body before you even start on the sleeves. Lining and hem and everything. You then sew each sleeve and lining up as one piece. It's very weird and I'm not at all sure why they do it that way. At first I thought it might be to eliminate the need for slipstitching the sleeve lining to the zip tape, but nope, you still have to do that. There is a baffling amount of slipstitching in general given that a jacket should be a pretty hard-wearing item and faux leather is an explicitly recommended fabric. The hem is slipstitched (despite the fact that the armholes are still open and the jacket could be turned through them), and then the sleeve lining is slipstitched to the armhole as a final step. I had this on a coat pattern once before, years ago, and it was the worst idea. I swore I would never do it again. If I were to remake this properly I would want to change all of this to eliminate as much of the hand sewing as possible, but I haven't yet worked out what I would do instead. 

As this was a toile I made it up as is, and we're going to look at some of my fit issues:

First and most obvious: FBA very much needed. I knew this was going to be a thing but after so many failed jackets I wasn't prepared to put the work into something I might have hated. I don't think I need masses of room but an extra couple of centimetres would go a long way. It's a princess seam jacket so that should, I hope, be fairly simple. I also think I could do with a little more room in the bicep.

Second and also fairly obviously: the back doesn't fit properly when the jacket is zipped. I either need to shorten it so it stops before it meets the Butt Shelf or widen it so it hangs straight down, and I'm leaning towards the former. I think that will look a little more even overall. Also I apologise for the quality of this particular photo - I only realised later that I was standing mostly out of shot every time I turned around. I miss having a very specific stone to stand on under the tree (that is the only thing I miss; in every other way my living conditions have upgraded substantially. Well, apart from the lack of doodle puppy living next door, but at some point in the next couple of years we will get a dog of our very own to remedy that).

In conclusion: not bad! Promising! Best result so far! I might even allow myself a tiny sliver of optimism! I will probably attempt another test run with fitting adjustments/pockets/different construction method before going anywhere near another piece of faux leather, but since I'll soon be able to go to the markets again and get decent quality fabric for cheap I'm going to aim for a test that I can and will wear. This one is too potato-print (and the wrinkles look so much worse and more obvious because of whatever the stiffening treatment is), but the fact that it photographs well means I can look back at this post and feel encouraged, which is more than any previous jacket has given me. 

Up next will be the first and only thing I've made this year! Yes, it's a basic knit top I've already made several times, but it's a thing and I made it, which for a little while there I was worried would never happen again. It might be a literal year to the day since I first went into quarantine and I might be full of feelings about that (most of them are exhaustion), but things are moving, I made a thing, and I've remembered how to write. It's okay. 

sewing plan: spring 2021

 I was absolutely certain that this season was going to be a great one for sewing. I didn't make a winter plan so wouldn't be rushing to finish anything, and I would have lots of time to plan and workshop and come up with a dozen or so projects that would really work for me and my wardrobe. Finally, I would succeed at spring. I even wrote a whole introductory paragraph in advance for this post about how great the plan I hadn't yet come up with was. 

Obviously that hasn't been the case. Partly that's because of life and the world; I'm struggling way more with the tail end of lockdown than I anticipated, we still don't have a bed (the ten week lead time has turned into four months and we still have a month left to go), the previous owners did something weird with the boiler meaning we had only lukewarm water during the cold snap, all of which has left me in a mini-depression that will hopefully start to clear up come April. But it's also because I don't know how to plan three months' sewing without being able to see and touch fabric in person. I don't mind buying a small amount of fabric online when I know exactly what I'm doing or see something that particularly inspires me, but that doesn't work for a whole season. 

I've also spent the past several months working on projects for Minerva almost exclusively, which hasn't been great for me, and as of last week I'm no longer working with them. The partnership was great for me when I was just writing blog posts for them, but their format has changed and the last thing I need right now is another social media account, particularly one I'm obligated to update and engage on. 

All of which means I don't have a complete plan yet, and I don't even have a first completed make of 2021 yet. I got most of the way through making a birthday Magnolia dress, but the fabric just isn't working for it (ordered online, wouldn't have bought it in person) and I'm not sure I can persuade myself to finish something I know I'm not going to like. Beyond that the only sewing I've done this year has been mending existing stuff and whipping up a couple of basic tote bags, and honestly it's making me quite sad. I'm really hoping inspiration strikes soon. 

On with my vague semblance of a plan:

Curtains

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm planning to make all of the curtains for the new house and I want to start this as soon as possible. We haven't yet started buying fabric but we've agreed on the ones we want for three out of four of the rooms (I have something very specific in mind for the fourth and it appears to not exist, so I'm going to need some time to get over that and move on). In order of priority this is what we're looking at: 

Living room (velvet)

Bedroom (chenille)

Sewing room (cotton)

We are not subtle people. 

I have never made curtains before in my life but am assuming that with a basic tutorial it won't be too difficult. I want to do these well because my mother-in-law will be inspecting them (not because she's awful, she just really likes curtains. And makes all hers on her hand-cranked 1896 Singer, so puts a lot of stock in precision). 

For actual garments, I have no firm plans right now. I'm dividing my thoughts into two categories: fabric I already own (that you'll have seen before if you've been reading here a while) and would like to do something with; and garments I'd like but depend on me having seen the colour/drape/feel of a fabric in person. 

From the stash

This one is driving me crazy. I've had it for so long and I'm dying for it to become something I can wear, but nothing seems right. A jacket is still uppermost in my mind, but I'm having trouble figuring out something that won't be redundant. I have a lot of jackets.

I thought I was going to use this for another trial run at modifying the Ruska dress into a cowl neck, but I've now come to the conclusion that it's too thick and not drapey enough. Plan B is a sweater of some kind, and I'm on the lookout for one that won't require a neckband (the fabric unravels easily and produces a lot of long tails). 

This one would have been the centrepiece of my whole plan had I been able to go shopping properly, and will probably be what I think of when I am allowed to return to the market. I have five metres of this and haven't decided whether I use it all for a maxi dress or divide it between two garments. If I were to make it a maxi, it would need to be one I could wear in spring/autumn without looking out of place. If I were to make two pieces, it would most likely be either a shorter dress and jacket or a maxi skirt and crop top. 

Ideas I need fabric for

A light knee-length coat

I want to try Simplicity 8554 again, but in a lighter material with more drape and with welt pockets instead of side seam pockets. This is something I would absolutely need to see in person; the colour, the weight, and the drape all need to be right. 

A pair of trousers

I have been having so much trouble with trousers. I live in my 7726s because they're the only pair of actual trousers that don't pull tight on the thighs or sit in under my belly, and I honestly just don't want to be wearing such a wide leg so often. I think my best bet here is to return to the idea of working on my block and make a few pairs in the same fabric until I get the fit down. I'm hoping this will be easier now that I have a sewing cupboard and my drafting stuff is more easily accessible to me. 

A maxi dress for spring

Regardless of what I end up doing with the linen mix above, I want to have a go at the Cashmerette Upton expansion pack and make a maxi with longer sleeves that I can reasonably wear in April. I'm most concerned with finding the right colour and print for this one; casual non-summery fabric that also fits my style has historically been a pretty tough one for me. 

Because I've had to temporarily lift my rules on planning (i.e. I need to have both the fabric and the pattern for the majority of my plans when I make them) a lot of this will be subject to change. When I can finally go fabric shopping in person again I might be inspired to make a completely different set of things, though the final three projects are legit wardrobe gaps and I will make all of them at some point when I find the right stuff. The most important thing is that I find a project I'm excited about and get things flowing again. 

I have a few posts planned for the next month: a couple of toiles (one of which is a very small dress, so I'm really hoping it warms up a bit!) and a first update on my sewing room progress. That should take us through to April when hopefully things will start to look up a bit. If anyone has any advice on how to get out of a can't-touch-fabric slump, I would be very grateful!