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Stash busting failure :-(
Because I am having a problem with bottom halves I have bought itch to stitch sequoia cargo trousers and liana jeans, then of course I had to go to eBay and buy some cheap fabric to make them up in, I have also bought some beautiful purple jersey fabric for a love notions candence dress, I am starting to feel better, every night I think tomorrow, I’ll finish those two tops cut out on my table, I’ll take the photos of my sewing room – I’m planning to go to the knitting and stitching show this year the same as normal.
For some reason we thought, oh radiotherapy has finished we won’t have hospital appointments all week, wrong. Because the last week of radiotherapy/chemo my bone marrow stopped making Platelets (clotting) I have some beautiful purple bruises, this meant blood tests Monday /Thursday (check platelets) platelet transfusions Tuesday/Friday, finally my platelet count has started coming up, tomorrow’s blood test should confirm whether or not my marrow is now working, as long as the platelets come up from last week (no transfusion) hopefully the blood tests will no longer be needed.
I’m also having a MRI tomorrow, this is to confirm whether the left side weakness I am experiencing is being caused by swelling, which we are sure that is. The oncologist has upped my dexamethasone (steroid) for a week, left side weakness is resolving its self, we managed to take Charlie for a walk on the seafront today.
I wrote the first part of this post a week ago. My left side weakness is getting worse,the results of the mri is inconclusive, today is the first day in about 2 weeks that I’ve woken up with my brain thinking about working, the dexamethazone has been taken back down to 4 mg, my ankles and knees are swollen, still having regular blood tests no transfusions, this way we know if they are my platelets and not transfused platelets.
I have plans, next week Simon and I are going to blue water for shopping, gbk and Krispy cream donuts then the following week the knitting and stitching show at Olympia. I can’t wait.
Back in hospital more shopping will be done…
I have bought some patterns from deer and doe, I have had so much use out of the free Plantain pattern I recommend you rushing over and downloading it, to be honest I’m not too keen on the styling on the website too much eyeliner and silly poses but I have been eyeing up the azalea skirt
, bleuet dress 
and the givire dress 
ad I just realised I missed fumeterre skirt,
which I love, of course I can’t do this pose without falling over at the moment, i can dream 🙂
I have also been over to love notions for trendy tunic, 
candence top and dress 
and tidal dress and top.
I also suggest that Michael Powell, cross stitch copyright division get their arses over to Pinterest, up and down the garden path and a couple of others are available to down load which brings me to my other purchase, as you may have realised I have gone back to my other love, counted cross stitch and have picked, Michael Powell secret garden 1
to finish, I had it in the evenweave version purchased from the designer himself at a long ago knitting and stitching show, I picked this one of the many started as I thought it would be easy enough because of the fabric and blocks of colour but enough of a challenge because of the back stitching, so went over to amazon to buy the companion kit the secret garden 2
Rhapsody Blouse second attempt
Post from before the stroke.
I have my second attempt at the Rhapsody Blouse by Love Notions and I will say I like this one a lot better. I made it medium across the bust and shoulders and graded down to small for the waist and hips. The sleeve options I picked were Âľ length sleeves with a flare.
It is made from a peachy coloured crinkle cotton, I have just received some dress making supplies from relatives, this fabric was from Aunt number 1, it wasn’t really big enough for the options I wanted but I wasn’t going to let that stop me, all the main parts were in one piece it was just the flare on the sleeves that I had to piece together, that and the bias binding, I needed two meters and I don’t think that any bit was longer than 10 inches, also I had to cut the inside yoke piece out of a different fabric totally.
now it has been washed you can hardly see the joins. it went together just as easily as the first time
Update post – Rhapsody blouse and Lutterloh dress.
I have taken a couple of photos of me wearing the love notions Rhapsody blouse and the Lutterloh dress.
First up is the Rhapsody Blouse, I have given it a good iron, basically I ran it under  the tap and then ironed it wet, the fabric is a nightmare to get the creases out.
I difinitely should have made the next size up, you can see in the slightly blurry photo underneath this that the shoulder seam is quite away from my shoulder. This will be fixed by going up a size.
The rest of the fit doesn’t look too bad but I’m wondering if the whole garment might benefit from the extra fabric.
I’m still not keen on the sleeves, the next one I try will probably be the 3/4 sleeve with flared cuff.
Second, the Lutterloh Dress
It does appear to have a slight issue with sliding back, I know that there is a way to fix this, I just have to remember where I saw it.
The gathers at the bust line need to be more even and also look like they should be gathered in a slightly different place, as I said in the previous post the front is cut far too low. I also think that the top line of the skirt piece needs a bit of smoothing out as well.
I think that the drag lines are caused by the dress sliding backwards but maybe it could do with a small sway back adjustment.
The dress doesn’t look too bad in this side view, it does highlight the gathers need to be moved
The arrow is pointing at where the point where I didn’t transition the top into the skirt portion correctly, which means it doesn’t drape properly.
hopefully more soon….
Love Notions – Rhapsody Blouse
I have had a couple of failures the last month or so, you will have seen the Lutterloh dress and this one which is the Rhapsody Blouse from LoveNotions, I had high hopes of this pattern, I have a similar top and I was hoping to reproduce it.
https://www.lovenotions.com/product/rhapsody-blouse-xs-xxxl, it has 8 sleeve types, I’m very impressed with the website, the pattern pages also have lots of pictures of how it looks made up, I am quite sure that my issue is more to do with fabric choices rather than a problem with the pattern.
I loved the look of the top right up until I attached the sleeves and then it was uck I don’t like you at all.
I am going to give it a good iron before making any decisions on it, I could just take the sleeves off and have it sleeveless or I could just replace them with the ‘cap’ sleeve as the arm hole is slightly bigger for the sleeved version than the no sleeved version.
It has French seams and gathers at the shoulder and a tuck at the back, last time I tried it on I realised that I probably should have made the larger size it doesn’t quite fit on the shoulders, but I am happy enough with the rest of it.
I will be making another attempt at this probably with softer fabric with more drape….
Musings of a Craft Enthusiast 