Just a few more...

I know, I know....I hadn't intended to post pictures of any more clothes...but there were some that I made before Christmas that I'd meant to blog about, and then there's the whole problem of me becoming absolutely addicted to making myself skirts, not to mention the fact that your commenty goodness is only encouraging me and it's so much fun to have others to talk to who are equally obsessed...so somehow here I am with just a few more skirts and dresses.

First is this skirt that I made for Zebra-girl in December - these colourful corduroys were in my local fabric shop and on seeing them I had that heady moment where you can't breathe for loving something so much. Luckily she is only a small thing and so my craving for the corduroy could be satisfied with just a mere soupcon of fabric...which was a good thing as it was so very expensive. At home I had some wonderfully strokeable velvet ribbon that my sister had bought for me a couple of years ago, and that went with the rich red perfectly and pulled the the two fabric colours together. Luckily, Zebra-girl loved it and has worn it a lot.

This is the yoke as a work-in-progress for the dress that I made for my sister's Christmas present. Planning this dress turned my head inside out...it took me so long to work out what order to do things in as I'm not used to working with concealed zips with linings.

Anyway, this hanger (which is a baby's hanger) is far too small for displaying adult clothes on (hence the fact that it looks a little odd), but here it was before I sewed the central buttons on and hemmed it - I never took a photograph of the finished dress as December was a little busy, but I was pleased with the way that the lining had gone in, even though I feel like I've since learnt so much about drafting patterns (see last post), that I may not necessarily have cut it in quite the way that I did.

So that's last year's garmenty goodness...now what I got up to on Friday night (yes, I am thrilling company for my husband, but fear not, we had fun on Saturday instead). In winter, when I wear boots and thick tights, I prefer my skirts to be short, but in summer I prefer them to cover my knees (due to my finding my own to be exceptionally ugly ones) so I'm keeping the denim skirt from my last post the length that it is and saving it for summer wear. Which left me with such a winter-skirt craving that I simply had to rustle something up. I had a fraction less than half a metre of this lovely blue corduroy and it was just enough to make an A-line skirt. I ended up completely redrafting my pattern as I decided to take a couple of inches out so that it sat a fraction higher on the waist, and so that the A had hit it's widest point at my new shorter length (rather than several inches of invisible skirt below it).

Two hours later a skirt was born. Once again, I had fun adding a contrast fabric to the insides of the waistbands and hem line. Mr Teacakes chose the fabric for me, as he could see that my two hour project was threatening to turn into a ten hour one if I continued to spend any more time hovering over the fabric drawers winneting about what print to use.

It feels unbelievable to me that something that didn't exist at 8.30pm on Friday night can have materialised and be ready to wear by Saturday morning. But it was, and I was so excited that I completely forgot to take any pictures of it until that evening when I was making a cheese sauce. So just like any normal person making something that will catch on the bottom of the pan easily, I grabbed my camera and took some right there and then before it got covered in flour.

Hurrah for multi-tasking...the cheese sauce didn't burn and was tea was ready ten minutes later.

What has pleased me most about these skirts is that I'm rapidly feeling like making my own wardrobe is the most appealing option. I have always loved clothes shopping with an absolute passion and thought that making my own clothes could be fun, but that really I'd want them in addition to my shop bought lovelies, not instead of. However, I've had a skirt from Gap that was (almost) perfectly acceptable sat in a bag for a week. It was a little too long for me and would have needed shortening and I would have needed to have moved some of the buttons at the front to take it in at the waist (due to Gap no longer stocking their smallest size...grrr, but for those shorties who have been similarly enraged by this, Boden have gone some way to making things lovely again by introducing a size 6 across their entire range) and the pleats in it didn't sit in quite the right way at the back, but I did really like it. However, suddenly these things felt like one compromise too many, so it has been returned to the shop and I am one step closer to being able to do cartwheels (I'm thinking that elation may propel me in a way that no amount of tips and advice from Zebra-girl thus far has been able to) due to the fact that making my own skirt that is just perfect for me cost me only £3.50.

Anyway, going back to my last post - if you commented then I've (hopefully) responded in the commenty section, however, a couple of things came up that I thought I'd mention here:

Jody asked whether I thought it would be any use for making maternity clothes with...hmm, I wouldn't want to send lots of pregnant women on a clothes-making goose chase, but I can only imagine that it would. As you use so many measurements (ie. true waist, low waist, high hip, low hip etc), then I would have thought it would be perfect for making allowances for all the places that you go in and out during pregnancy. You don't use every measurement for every pattern, but once you've learnt how to draft a pattern from some of your measurements, then I'm guessing that throwing a couple of extra reference points in wouldn't be too difficult. However, Cal Patch, the author of the book, has a blog and a Flickr group...so perhaps she might be able to tell you how many leaps on maternity pattern drafting really is..

Anita (of whom I'm having severe shoe jealousy) mentioned the author Simon Henry in my comments - he looks to have three books out, all of which I'm interested in, although I'm wondering how easily applicable to the 'everyday' his work is. Has anyone ventured inside these books and found out to what extent one has to be a full-time party girl to find these useful?

Additionally, a few people commented or emailed about a book called Sew What! Skirts - I'd seen this on Amazon, but had never realised that it was about making skirts from scratch rather than someone else's patterns, and it sounded too good to miss - thank you so much for the recommendations. It has now arrived, but I'm yet to have a chance to look through it (due to my working on a custom order very slowly today - really, it was like watching a baboon trying to sew and what should have taken an hour, took me five - yes, five! - hours to get perfect), but will report back once I have finished reading.

Also, Sarah emailed me and asked if I might mention a Pattern Challenge that she is hosting on her blog. Her hope is to create a pattern library of reviews for different shop-bought patterns...which could be a really useful thing to avoid mishaps like those that I had when making my blancmange dress from a troublesome Simplicity pattern.

I know that I have proved myself to be utterly untrustworthy now, but I absolutely promise that my next post will not be about making clothes, thinking about making clothes, or even dreaming about making clothes...it will be about quilted things of the non-garment variety.

Florence x