Last night was the turn of itch to stitch to have my money, I appear to have missed the sale, I had been looking at some of the patterns for a little while, we can just hope that left hand starts doing what it should do we have the Bonn shirt and dress, chai shirt and dress, mila shirt, Idyllwild top and dress and the Vienna Tank I had been eyeing up the chai dress and Idyllwild dress for sometime.

I am now researching into large format pdf printing, I have a couple of local places to contact.

Hi, every one if you thought posting has been sporadic this year it is about to get worse, Wednesday evening last week 26th July after experiencing a sharp headache at about 8pm I went up stairs to work on my new dress, pictures to follow, while trying un successfully to step over Charlie (dog) a few time and being unable to make my left hand cooperate with undoing my trousers I realised there was something wrong..

Simon called an ambulance which arrived about midnight after doing some tests the paramedics notified Southend Hospital they had a potential stroke victim on the way in. This meant that I was assessed as soon as I got on hospital property. I was given a CT straight away which showed a small bleed on the brain which was restricted to one small area, unfortunately that one small area affects the use of my left arm and left leg.

Friday they moved me off the acute stroke ward and on to the ‘normal’stroke ward which means instead of hourly obs and having a bright light shone in my eyes at all hours of the day and night there is no bright lights just blood pressure temperature and blood oxegen taken twice a day. I have started physio therapy which has been complicated by my left bicep deciding not to co-operate with the tricep 

I seem to have full functunality in my left hand but the wrist forearm, upper arm and shoulder not so much 😦 my left leg is starting to take some of my weight when my foot decides to co-operate

You don’t realise how much you take for granted that both arms and legs will do what you want them to do when you want them to do it.

Hi, well we are back from Florida so I thought I would show you the Summer Dress I made to take with us, I only managed to get it finished just before we left, I suppose you could say it is a self drafted frankenpattern.

I had a idea of what I wanted, and although the dress didn’t end up quite as expected it sort of evolved over the couple of weeks I worked on it.

I wanted a floaty boho type of dress, I also had just the fabric in mind.

As soon as the fabric arrived the end of last summer I realised that it would need at least the skirt lining so luckily I had already bought some white lawn to go under it.

Originally I was just going to cut the strips for the skirt straight of grain each one twice as long as the previous, then I checked out the pattern peices in this pattern

and discovered that they were curved. I’m not sure if it would have made much difference to the final dress, but I used the pattern peices I had, carefully shortening them, so now I had the skirt how was I going to sort the top, I tried draping and sort of got the look I wanted but, then couldn’t work out how to reproduce the effect.

I did actually get as far as this

before deciding I didn’t have time to mess around with the pattern. So I went back to this, which is a trial for the top of a different dress, I knew that the fit was fine it was just that the ‘band’ wasn’t long enough, I did cheat a bit, I cut it in half and cut across the centre of the top where I thought it should come.

I also wanted wider shoulders and a different neckline, I had a dress I had quickly made up from a Lutterloh pattern, which was totally the wrong size, but I liked the neckline so I superimposed the Lutterloh pattern on to the other pattern and cut out the top half of the bodice freehand.

this is not something that I would recommend, especially if you decide the line the dress after putting it together..lol.

I had the neckline and the length but not much else.

I did have an issue with he arm holes but a lot of pinning and patience got them looking smooth.

the dress does look fantastic, but the downside is I won’t be able to duplicate it perfectly.

The last Florida post is coming up soon.

The four challenges for March are:-

Number 1 A dress out of this fabric

I think it is going to be the same as this one

Number 2 make some fitting adjustment on this pattern

Number 3 is another dress  basic bodice and a box pleat circle skirt, similar to this one out of either 

or this one

I’m not sure if the pink it too light for this but we will see.

I’m also in the middle of making a Plantain for Liz, but that isn’t part of my challenge for this month.

UPDATE:

This post didn’t get published when it should have so here is the update

Numbers 1 and 2 got done but not finished in March due to the building work and training course, number 3 didn’t even get looked at. 😦 I did however finish Liz’s Plaintain T-shirt which she is very happy with.

I have been stitching up a storm this month, I have managed to get all my goals finished and a couple of bonuses, after finally finishing off the the white plantain, I got the urge to make another two, still with short sleeves and no elbow patches.

I did make a couple of errors on these because all the t-shirt related items I make this month were all on the overlocker and with a 3/8 seam allowance, I didn’t bother checking  the instructions, if I had I would have realised it had a 5/8 seam so they are slightly too big.

They have wider neck bands than the previous one as I used the instructions from the raglan t-shirt but I’m quite pleased with them.

so february I managed

Two Monetas

Two Plantains and a Plantain finish

I finished a skirt

the 70s halter neck and shorts

Hey June Lane Raglan

and last of all the vintage shirt dress