What's on my sewing table

I have a few things that I have in the pile to work on.  Time just hasn't worked in my favour for the last few weeks and the fact that I managed a few handmade gifts was truly a miracle. Hopefully I will find a bit of time to progress some of these this week... fingers crossed.

First up, my sewing dare!

I have had incredible support from Colette at Tessuti over the last couple of weeks where she helped me with the fabric planning around my sewing dare dress, sending me 3 lovely sequins fabrics to choose from and two jersey. I really couldn't have asked for better service.  All this over the email too!

This afternoon I snuck in an hour of 'sew time' so cut out the 'top' part of the dress, using the Briar as my basis. I was very tempted to cut the curve out at the bottom but decided not to as it wouldn't work for the dress ... But I'm worried.  I think the sequins will be too heavy for the material and might pull the whole thingt down. I plan to stabilise the shoulder seams but I don't think it will be enough.  The easy way out will be to make separates.  A sequins skirt and a jersey top.  This of course will increase the wearability of both pieces.. proabably something I should seriously consider.  I have also noticed that there are a number of 'easy sequins skirt' tutorials out there so this could definitely be a solution.

Second up is the Cami dress. I learnt a lot from sewing my muslin last week....about the brain space that we need to be in to sew well. My mum thinks that this dress doesn't look good and that I shouldn't make it, but I'm taking the advice from so many of you that commented and also from a part of my stubborn nature and will forge on with this.  Pauline is doing a sewalong at a nice easy pace so, today I also cut out the Liberty for this dress and am on track again for the sewalong.  

Are any of you doing Inna's the Little French Jacket sewalong? I'm so keen but just need to find some time.  Anyone know where I can buy some? Inna is taking a nice slow pace, so I might even be able to catch up. There was a great post on colour theory the other day so even though I'm not yet sewing along, I'm loving the posts.

Oh and don't forget Red October - but that's a little way away! First things first.

So, what are you working on?

Is it worth making sewing plans for the weekend?

I am hopeful of getting in a lot of good sewing this weekend, not confident, but hopeful.  October is school fete(s) month so I always find my selfish sewing falls by the way side as I open the sweat shop so I need to get cracking in September.

Yes there was supposed to be snow on those hills!

We were away last weekend 'skiing' - partly to ski and partly to get away from the new floor boards that were being layed in our house, so no sewing was done. The snow wasn't great after an unseasonably warm spell in the mountains but we did get two days in, but had to go up high, balancing ski's in our arms whild holding tightly onto the kids to do it.  I admire parents who seem to have it all together and who aren't stressed out on ski holidays.  It just seems to require such an enormous amount of organisation and energy and patience.  Especially as the 4 year old started skiing off piste down an embankment shouting out at me - "I just want to have fun Mummy... I just want to see what's down here". Fun?  Not so muc for me as I carried him back up an embankment. Sadly, I still need to do some organisation and putting away this weekend as much of our stuff is still in boxes squashed into the bedrooms and it also seems like a good time to sort throug some other boxes... or not.

But here's one thing I'd really like to start on. Did you see the release of the Cami dress last week by Pauline Alice!?  It was fate as I had been searching out patterns for that exact same style of dress the night before  I bought some Liberty from Shaukat the other day so I'm just hoping that I will have enough of it. The pattern on the fabric turned out much smaller than I had anticipated so a dress like this might work well. There are so many cute versions from the pattern testers of this dress and Pauline Alice as been showcasing them. Otherwise I plan to head to my local haunt Addicted to Fabric to do a bit of stash creation.  I received an email the other day to say that until consumer confidence increases post the election they will be closed Sundays and Mondays.  Urgh.  Not Sundays!  I am determined to go in and spend tomorrow and single handedly (well not exactly but I hope to help) get them back on track. Anyway, I'm still tossing up whether to do a muslin or just launch right in to this dress.

In other news, Colette from Tessuti has been super helpful with my fabric for my sewing dare. I hope to have the fabric finalised next week (I was hoping to buy it today but got horribly caught up at work).  I still need to work out a pattern to use...

 

Oh and of course I still need to get on with those zipper purses from a couple of weeks ago... mmmm I wonder how much I'll actually get done.  Ok, off to see if I can squeeze the Cami onto my Liberty. What are you working on?