But it can't be from Dolly Clackett. She gave me an Easter egg!

Hello hello! What's happening, everyone? I'm not too bad - almost at the end of a ten-day stint at work (working over the weekend blows, jsyk) and I'm a wee bit tired with it. Needless to say, I'm being looked after by Nic and right now he's cooking dinner. I got a good one there.

Anyway, life lately has been a bit of a blur, but that's fine. My life is not as stressful as Alicia Florrick's life, so we're still watching a lot of The Good Wife because it's weirdly comforting for that reason. Also, I still love Chris Noth. Big forever.

Do you want to see a dress, though? Yeah, why not. Here's a dress I made a few weeks ago...

Charmed Life dress - Christine Haynes Emery dress bodice with a pleated skirt and Red or Dead 'Shirley' shoes

Another day, another Emery dress, right? But isn't this fabric just the best? It's Cloud 9 barkcloth, and the print is called 'Ripple'. It's by Jessica Jones and is from the 'Timewarp' collection, which obviously makes me smile because:

I watched this film so many times as a teenager, it was ridiculous. It was partly because I had loved The Crystal Maze so much as a child, but it ended up mostly being because I thought Magenta was the bomb. I'm not sure I could handle watching it now, though.

So anyway, yes, the fabric. Let's try to tear our minds away from Tim Curry and think about the fabric. I bought it from The Village Haberdashery at the end of April, and it had been simmering away in my stash ever since. I'm glad I bought it when I did, because I gather it's fairly difficult to find now. Anyway, it sat there until a few weeks ago, when I popped into Berylune on payday - mainly to gossip and scrounge a cup of coffee - and I bought some of these lace zips. Sometimes the perfect item of haberdashery is all it takes, and in this case that's what happened. So this happened...

Pretty exposed zip! I'm pretty pumped by how well this turned out and although it kind of limits me to accessorising this dress with red... well, it's navy and white. That was blatantly going to happen anyway. Inserting an exposed zip is a obviously a little different to a standard dress zip, and I used the instructions for the exposed zip on the Mortmain dress by Gather. I had to tweak things slightly as the Emery bodice is lined, but only slightly, and I'm really happy with how well it turned out.

This is my happy face.

The fabric was lovely to work with. The barkcloth is probably intended for furnishing, I don't know, but I think it works brilliantly as a garment and it wears really comfortably. I think that it probably would have been fine with the gathered skirt that is part of the Emery pattern, but I'm on a bit of a pleated skirt tip at the moment, so that's what I went for. I didn't line the skirt as, if I wear this dress with tights, it will only be in the winter and I will be wearing a slip - but you'd probably want to line it if you're more into wearing tights than I am.

It won't surprise you to learn that after the success of this dress, I went straight back to Berylune and bought more of the lace zips. You'll see a few more of them round here! I also bought some navy yarn to knit a cardigan. You know. For those days when I don't want to wear red. I like to be prepared.

Here's a close-up of the fabric so you can see the pretty print. This also gives you a good idea of the feel of the fabric - you can see the slight slubby-ness of the fabric. I did pre-wash this fabric before sewing my dress, and it washes fine. I think I want more barkcloth dresses in my life. Obviously that's totally necessary. Stop laughing, it is.

So there you go. Now I need to go, because Eddie Izzard just showed up in The Good Wife and it's pretty fucking weird. It needs my full attention. I'll leave you with a wee present though...

Make-up goals

Hello hello! It's a chilly Tuesday here and I have had a tiring day, but I am looking out of our living room window at a pretty pink sky and Nic is cooking something that smells delicious. So that's good.

I have had a mentally and emotionally exhausting couple of weeks. My ten-day work week finally came to an end with a two-day-long meeting (we really know how to have fun where I work) and on Thursday morning, Nic and I travelled down to Folkestone so that we could go to his grandfather's funeral, which was Friday. I was nervous in anticipation of the funeral and so was feeling a bit emotionally wobbly anyway, and then on Wednesday morning I received the very sad news that my cousin Angie had died the day before. This was very shocking and very sad as Angie was only 36. She had suffered from health problems in the past and was very seriously ill a few years ago, but nonetheless it was a horrible shock to lose a family member, and one so close in age. Angie and I weren't close - I have a large extended family and am not close to most of them - but we had been as children and, as I say, it was a very great shock to lose someone of my own age in that way. Funerals are arranged much more quickly in Northern Ireland than they are in England, and it turned out that Angie's funeral was also on Friday.

Nic's grandfather's funeral went very well and it was an oddly uplifting day - he was 92 and had had a very varied and satisfying life, and his funeral was a fitting tribute to the man he was. Nic, my dad and I were determined to make the rest of the weekend as positive as we could to help raise Nic's parents' spirits, and we ended up having a very lovely weekend. Friday was very rainy and grey, but on Saturday and Sunday the weather was glorious and we made the most of the beautiful Kent countryside and coastline with a trip to Rye followed by an evening on the Folkestone Harbour Arm on Saturday. We came home on Sunday feeling a bit overwhelmed and exhausted, and I spent yesterday feeling pretty out of sorts, but now September is almost behind us I feel like I'm getting onto more of an even keel.

Aaaah. So that's the craic with me. That was a massive emotional blob, and I know that lots of you are mostly here for the sewing. I do have some sewing to show you, finished a few weeks ago and before life all went a bit mad. This is a dress I made from some of the fabric I bought in Paris. I ended up going a bit wax cotton mad when I was there because I am powerless in the face of the amazing prints and because it's so lovely to sew with. I bought two lengths of Julius Holland wax cotton for myself from Toto Tissus on rue Clignancourt (and one length for my friend Lauren) and this dress came from one of them:

The Good Wife dress - By Hand London Anna bodice with a pleated skirt, worn with Swedish hasbeens lacy sandals

So, tell me. What do you see when you look at this print? I saw buildings, but Nic saw faces. I see faces now too, especially as I have a face on my upper chest! I promise, though, that this was deliberate. I spent as long cutting this dress out as I did sewing it, I think. The print actually runs with the chevron shapes more like L-shapes, so I cut this dress out on the crosswise, and I paid careful attention to where I wanted the chevrons to be. That might seem strange, but it seemed a waste of such a distinctive print not to showcase it on the most unbroken part of the bodice, so I ended up with a face on my bust. Hey, at least it's a smiling face though, right? And it's not like I haven't gone there before (*cough* stag boobs *cough*).

Because the print is so great, an Anna dress bodice seemed like the best way to show it off. I did wonder if there was too much going on with the bright green and yellow so close to my face, but all the same I thought that the slash neck variation would work better than the v-neck. I managed to achieve a little v-neck trompe l'oeil effect though with the print, though:

Because I was cutting on the crosswise grain and there is very little drape and no stretch to wax cotton, I used a slightly smaller seam allowance on the bodice side seams. It was a small amendment, but it made a nice difference - the bodice is close-fitting, but not overly tight. My preference is for the bodice of my dresses to be fit with minimal ease, and that's not to everyone's taste. Still, it's worth bearing in mind that you might need to give yourself a bit of extra breathing room if you're cutting a bodice on the crosswise grain.

Here's a massively awkward photo of my back to illustrate that I have a happy face there, too. You'll see some wrinkling across the back, which is partly due to the fact that the bodice is very fitted.

Other than the little bit of extra thinking that cutting this dress out took, this was a breeze to sew and a joy to wear. I think I could sew the Anna bodice in my sleep by now, probably!

I wore this dress for the first time a couple of weeks ago on a day when I was working from home. I had just got this pair of Swedish hasbeens in the post, bought in the final days of their summer sale for a ludicrous £49. It's a style I had been stalking all summer, so even though I could only wear them a few times before packing them away for the season, I didn't think twice about buying them. In real life, I think they're sort of ugly, but as I quite like ugly things (see also: this dress, almost everything else I have ever sewn) I was happy enough:

I don't think I'll be packing the dress away for the colder weather, though, as I think it'll look good with dark tights and shoes, or with my yellow shoe-boots.

Normally I really dread the onset of autumn and winter, but this year I don't feel that way. Don't get me wrong - I love the summer - but I see a lot of promise in the coming season, and that is a nice feeling. Having a few final days of summer this past weekend in Kent helped with that, I think.

On Saturday we went to Tenterden, and then on to Rye. Daddy took this photo of me with a stuffed bear outside some sort of sporting goods shop. Then after that, any time he saw a bear in a shop or even a photo of one, he tried to get me into a photo with it. He's an eccentric man, my dad. But I like this photo. It makes me want a DSLR.

I took this photo on Sunday, before we left Folkestone. On the left of the photo is Sunny Sands, The Warren and the Martello tower. On the right you can see the White Cliffs of Dover and, although I didn't catch it in the photo, further to the right you can see France. Apparently, dolphins live in the harbour in Folkestone, although we didn't manage to see any.

Folkestone's Harbour Arm opened to the public on the 8th August and it's a real asset to the town. It has been regenerated with places to eat and drink, and all sorts of activities. Nic and I were staying with our friends Dan and Vic on Saturday night, and we met them down at the harbour arm for drinks. This lighthouse is home to a champagne bar. When Folkestone Harbour closed as a passenger port in 2001, I think the lighthouse fell out of use too, so we were surprised and delighted to see it lit once again on Saturday night.

Nic took this photo

Saturday night was very special. We arrived at the Harbour Arm in time to see the sun setting, and spent a few hours drinking champagne with my dad and our very dear friends. It was oddly emotional to watch the beam from the lighthouse circling the harbour, and to see the lighthouses at Dover and Dungeness twinkling away in the distance. It was a very beautiful evening indeed.

Here's Nic at sunset on the harbour arm. Behind him you can see the Leas and Sandgate, and further round you can see some of the coastline of Kent and East Sussex.

Wow, that ended up being quite the random photo dump! Well done for sticking with it to the end there, guys. Thanks!

Right now, I must go. I have another all-day meeting at work tomorrow (my life: what is it) and I need to put in some quality time with my knitting and my sofa and my TV. Oh, I know, ambitious, right? I'm going to leave you with one more photo of my dress though because, you know, sewing blog. Goodnight!

My face is smug in this photo because I was pure loving my hair. That happens pretty rarely!

Hello my little chickens, how is everyone? I'm sitting here, drinking gin, with half an eye on the first episode of that terrible mini-series The Kennedys. You know, with Katie Holmes as Jackie Kennedy? Nic bought me the DVDs as part of my birthday present. I wouldn't usually go in for watching something just because it is bad, but this is an honourable exception. You guys, it is so bad. I love it. Katie Holmes is pretty terrible (which is a shame, because I think she's not totally untalented) but she's trying her little heart out, you know? And I have just heard that they're making a follow-up called After Camelot, which, YES.

So, after a rollercoaster few weeks, life is starting to feel a lot more positive. It was my birthday on Friday, so I have just had a long weekend of birthday celebrations and spoiling. It was pretty great, not least because I was able to spend the day of my birthday with my dad and my sister Colleen, who had come over to England for the day. Daddy had to go to Manchester for a work errand and it proved easier to fly into Birmingham and drive up to Manchester, so Nic and I joined them. We only had a few hours in Manchester but mainly what was good was being able to spend the whole day with them. We had a lot of fun and I even managed to sneak in a quick trip to Abakhan to buy some fabric. I have been terribly spoiled all weekend by the people I love, and it's been just the tonic I needed after a difficult few weeks. Even Angry Baby got in on the action:

Photo by Angry Baby's caretaker, Amy

Thanks, Angry Baby! I did some sewing on Thursday afternoon and some on Saturday, and I cut out a dress today to try to sew in the next few days. It feels good to have the time and the mental energy to want to sew, you know?

This post tonight isn't about sewing though. It's about knitting! While I was knitting my Audrey in Unst cardigans, I realised that I had been incorrectly knitting into stitches that had been formed with a yarn over, and that this was why the holes in my lace stitches didn't look as good as I would like. It was a bit of a lightbulb moment, and also a moment of feeling profoundly daft - but then, this is one of the downsides of teaching yourself. Anyway, armed with this knowledge, I decided to have another go at knitting Andi Satterlund's Agatha cardigan. I was inspired by my friend Lauren, who is currently knitting a Chuck sweater in a lovely deep red yarn - Cascade 220 superwash in 'really red' - which is a great, blueish red shade.

I had knit my yellow Agatha in size medium, but it was too big across the shoulders, so this time around I decided to knit the size small. I was also knitting in a DK rather than aran weight yarn, so I used a smaller size needle to get gauge. Apart from that, I knitted this cardigan exactly to the pattern:

Andi Satterlund Agatha cardigan, Ruby Belle Owl dress and Irregular Choice No Place Like Home shoes

I think choosing the smaller size was a good idea for me personally, as I like my cardigans to hit my natural waist and to be pretty fitted. So I'm very happy with the fit of this cardigan, although I wish I had used a slightly stretchier cast-off for the waist ribbing than I did. I chose not to, because I wasn't sure I'd like how it looked, but then I did use a stretchy method for the cuffs and it looks fine. Ah well, live and learn, and this certainly won't be the last Agatha cardigan I knit.

Here it is, close up! Annoyingly, there's a little bobble of fluff at the waist that I didn't notice before we took the photos. Ah well. You can see the button band pulling at the bottom button, and I think that this would be less of an issue with a more flexible cast off there. But you can also see how lovely the lace design is! Hey, and check out the back...

I'm very happy with the fit through the back, although part of me wishes I had knit the last central repeat fully before moving onto the ribbing. I followed the pattern, and maybe if I had knitted a few rows more I'd be crabbing that I should have knitted it a few rows shorter! This is the thing I am finding with knitting - it is a lot of trial and error.

And here's how it looks unbuttoned! I have worn this cardigan a fair bit since I finished it - it's been nice, actually, because this brief indian summer we have been enjoying has meant that a thicker cardigan is the perfect layer without a coat. These photos were taken on Thursday, when I was working from home and going out for lunch with some friends. The dress is a shop-bought - or rather, ebay-bought dress from a number of years ago. I try not to feel guilty when I buy dresses in shops or even when I wear the small number of shop-bought dresses that I still have in my wardrobe, and the guilt is definitely assuaged when I am able to wear them with hand-knit cardigans!

I still feel that I have a long way to go with knitting, and that I really am learning something new with each project. That's satisfying and exciting and it means that I can take a lot of joy out of completing something even when it is far from perfect. You can't say fairer than that, really. I have cast on my next project, which is a navy Hetty cardigan. My thinking there is that my newly improved lace knitting skills will work well with the all-over lace pattern on Hetty. So watch this space for that!

Anyway, time to dander on here and do Sunday night up in style with another gin and tonic and maybe something slightly more edifying on the TV than that Kennedys thing. Goodnight!

Hello! Or, no, I'm going to say guten abend, because Nic and I are just back from a few days in Germany. We were there as Nic had been invited to give a paper at a conference in Darmstadt, and we extended our stay for a few days so that we could visit Heidelberg as well. Neither of us had been to Germany before and we had a really great time - both Darmstadt and Heidelberg were beautiful and fun, and it was a lot of fun to have a few days away from it all. When I get my act together and get the photos off the camera, I'll share some of them here - because other people's holiday photos are always so fascinating, right - but to be totally honest, most of them are variations on this theme:

Here's me with a pint of weisse bier in Schnookeloch in Heidelberg. I have never been a beer drinker but I have been expanding my palate somewhat over the last few months, and while in Germany I managed to drink my first complete pint! This was not it - sadly, I didn't manage to commemorate that momentous occasion, which happened at the Ratskellar in Darmstadt - but, eh, you get the picture. It's just as well that I learned to appreciate beer because I was certainly in the place for it, although I did manage to also drink some gin while we were there. In fact, my holiday souvenirs took the form of three bottles of German gin. I did find some fabric shops and some yarn shops too, but I was much more in the mood for buying gin. Anyway, I have a few trips to London coming up this month so I thought that would be a wiser place for fabric shopping.

So, that's the most recent craic with me. After a stressful early September, the very end of the month turned out beautifully. As I mentioned in my last post, it was my birthday at the end of the month. It fell on a Friday this year, so I took the day off work and had initially planned to go for business lunch with my friends Amy and Barney. It turned out, though, that my dad was going to be in England for the day on the Friday, so I moved business lunch to the Thursday (working at home for the win) and on the Friday Nic and I went up to Manchester with my dad and my sister Colleen. They flew into Birmingham and we met them there, and we all travelled up together. It was great fun and a real treat to be able to spend the whole day with Colleen. As it was my birthday and we were in the Northern Quarter anyway, I was encouraged to pay a visit to Abakhan, where I bought two pieces of fabric:

Abakhan in Manchester is pretty overwhelming. The ground floor is full of fabric bins, and you can buy by weight. The herringbone print piece at the top was from one of those bins, but I didn't have the time or the energy to root too much in them for anything else, so I bought the bottom piece from the back room, where they cut it from the bolt. It's a Michael Miller fabric and it was £5 per metre. Bonus! I bought a metre and a half because I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it, and I did this the very next day...

Endeavour dress - By Hand London Kim bodice with a pleated skirt, worn with Swedish hasbeens braided sandals

Ahhh. The lovely Kim bodice. I love the shape of this bodice but I am still working on getting the fit of it right. I'm short-waisted and have a short measurement between my shoulders and my bust, so I have found that the straps on the Kim bodice are very long on me. I have had to go back to a number of the iterations of this dress I have made in the last year and shorten the straps considerably, so on this dress I decided to compare the pattern piece against them and transfer this adjustment. I had a bit of a fright when I cut the fabric because the straps looked so short, but I think that they did work out to basically the correct length. I think they could stand to be a fraction longer - I wasn't as exact as I could have been, I guess - but the main thing is that they stay up!

Here's a close-up of the bodice. I didn't adjust the height of the neckline because I'm always a little bit paranoid about showing too much décolletage. It's because I'm so short - I'm always very conscious that anyone taller than me (most people, in fairness) can see right down my top! With that said, I was perhaps a little bit too conservative here and could stand to drop the neckline down a wee bit.

I'm pretty pleased with this dress - I think it gets me one step closer to achieving the correct fit on the Kim bodice. I don't love it, but I must confess that this is partly because it doesn't look nearly as cute in these photographs as it did in real life! I've made better-fitting dresses, but making this satisfied a craving for sewing and so I'm very glad that I made it. I wore this on the Sunday after my birthday to go for a pub lunch and an unplanned pub crawl with some friends, and I did feel good in it. I didn't have a lot of time to take a variety of photos - we snapped these few on our way to the pub. You'll just have to believe me when I tell you it's cuter in real life!

In any case, it was a fun dress to wear on an unexpectedly sunshiny day spent with friends. Friends who bought me gin and records...

BIRTHDAY GIN! I have some very good friends.

Okay, now. My German gin is becoming warm as I write this and I must go and wash the henna out of my hair. My life is all glamour. Auf Wiedersehen!

Hello! It's been a little while, hasn't it? To tell the truth, I have been feeling somewhat melancholy recently. Nothing major, maybe it's just the ever-decreasing daylight hours or the fact that some unsettling things are happening at work. They're unsettling for both good reasons and otherwise, but yeah. I haven't felt much like communicating, although I have been sewing and knitting. Anyway, none of this is by way of an apology, I'm sure no-one had the search and rescue out... but, also it feels a bit weird to blog after weeks and not mention the fact that it has been weeks, you know?

Despite the melancholia, life has been actually pretty good. A few nice things have happened in recent weeks, I've had some fun days out and I bought a pair of silver brogues, so that was cool too. And hey, I have a dress to show you guys this evening. It's not such a new dress now - I made this at the beginning of October to bring on holiday to Germany, and managed to get some photos of it while we were in Heidelberg. It's another McCalls 6696 because I love that pattern, but also because I bought the fabric with that dress in mind.

So, the fabric in question is some cotton that I bought in La Droguerie when Nic and I were in Paris in August. Shopping in La Droguerie was a little bit intimidating because even though I could hear other customers speaking to the shop assistants in English, I really wanted to complete the transaction in French and then I became completely tongue-tied! I managed it though, and I also managed to get away with sneaking a photo in the store, which is apparently completely forbidden. I'M SUCH A REBEL. The fabric in question is this...

In the shop, they had a shirt-dress made from this fabric and, you know, once I had seen that combination I wanted it. So I bought what was left on the bolt - which I think was about 2.5m - and I scurried away out of the shop. I think it was €18 or €20 per metre and I'm afraid it didn't have any information on the selvedge. It's of a lovely quality and the next time I'm in Paris, I will be straight back to La Droguerie to buy more of their fabric. Well, providing I can talk to the people in the shop, of course.

It took me a while to get around to making this dress, mainly because I was pissing about trying to find the perfect yellow and black buttons. I didn't find those - I should have bought them in La Droguerie - but I did end up finding some nice black ones in Leamington instead. I sewed the dress over a few nights and had a grand old time doing it too. I love M6996. It's such a satisfying pattern to sew.

Chronic Town dress - McCall's 6696 in fabric from La Droguerie, worn with Bertie 'Pixie' boots

I'm a wee bit all over the map when it comes to this dress. In theory I love it, and I am very happy with the finish and the fit. In person, I'm not sure if sewing a version with sleeves was a mistake - maybe the sleeves are a bit too much? Like most of my dresses, I think I look better in it with heels, so there's that too. I wore it with these boots in the photos because they were perfect for a day of walking miles around Heidelberg, and actually I think they do look okay with it too.

I took time cutting the fabric out to match the stripes as best I could. I forgot to get a photo of it, but they match really nicely across the back yoke and the back bodice, and I'm happy with how they match from the bodice to the skirt. I'm also pretty fond of the way in which the stripes look running horizontally across the waistband. I sewed horizontal buttonholes this time, rather than the vertical ones marked on the pattern. I gave this some thought and did a little bit of reading around it. I do think it makes a positive difference on this pattern - there is no pulling or gaping across the bust, and I think that's partly down to the buttonholes. It didn't take noticeably longer, either, although it does take a little bit longer when I'm getting dressed because I'm so used to buttonholes going in a different direction!

All in all, I'm calling this a success. I've been drawn to more graphic prints like this recently when I have been fabric shopping, so I shouldn't really find it strange to see myself in them! I'm still on the fence about the sleeves, though. I'm going to live with them through the autumn but could always take them off in the spring if they continue to bother me.

Here's a closer look at my boots, too, for those of you who are interested in my shoes. I bought these in a random shop in Warwick at the end of August and they were a ridiculous £35. They're pretty cute but something about flat brown boots just screams middle-class mum in a White Stuff top and gilet at the school gates to me. Which, that's fine, but it's not really me. Anyway, I bought them because they're practical and I have a suspicion that we're in for a hallion of a winter. And they are cute, in fairness.

They were certainly practical. We did a lot of walking in Germany and they were a good companion throughout that. On the day we took these photos, Nic and I spent the morning at Heidelberg castle and the afternoon exploring the town. The castle was a lot of fun. It has a couple of very large wine barrels - one of which is rumoured to be the biggest one in the world. It IS pretty big, you guys.

That's me there on top of the wine barrel.

There are lots of vineyards in the area and in the castle vaults you can do local wine-tastings and you can also print up your own personalised wine labels, which was pretty cool.

Wine tasting.

No, I'm joking. That was a prop! I loved that they put props out so that people could take stupid photos with massive wine bottles in front of the giant wine vats. That's a classy move, you have to admit.

The best thing about the castle was the amazing views across the valley and of the river Neckar. We were very lucky to see the castle in two different aspects - on the day we arrived it was shrouded in mist, and on the day we visited it was sunny and clear.

Some of the castle is in ruins and we weren't able to see much of the inside of it. The courtyard and the grounds were more than enough to keep us entertained for a few hours, and we had lunch on the terrace. It was fab.

Directly in front of this building, there are some benches set up as a photo spot. It's actually pretty cool, and we were able to see lots of people having their holiday photos taken there. I think there was also a fashion blogger getting some outfit shots taken too, which was fun to watch. From a distance, of course.

Here's me and Nic, overlooking Heidelberg old town

After spending the morning at the castle (and having lunch there) Nic and I whiled away the afternoon exploring Heidelberg. I bought gin and records, and we drank beer and ate pretzels. It was a good holiday.

So, that's the craic there. Even if I feel a bit conflicted about my finished dress, it certainly has lots of very happy memories attached to it now.

Okay now, I need to go. I am really hungry and dinner is ready. And it's finally Wednesday night, which is good, because this week is going SO SLOWLY. Ugh.

Thanks to Lauren, who sent me this gif when I made this exact same complaint to her last week.

Hello folks! I'm coming to you feeling a lot brighter and cheerier than in my last post. I'm not entirely sure why, but I am grateful. Maybe my brain has adjusted to the shift to autumn and the clock change.

It's been a few weeks of intense activity. I have been down to London a few times to see friends, done a fair bit of socialising in Leamington and I have even done some of whatever the autumnal equivalent of spring cleaning is. Nic and I spent the weekend before last building Ikea shelves and doing a bit of an overhaul of the furniture and storage in the flat. As a result, I have a whole set of shelves just for shoes and I have more storage for bags and accessories and stuff. Everything just looks a lot neater and prettier. Of course, it means that I have more space for more stuff and I am valiantly trying to resist the urge to BUY ALL THE SHOES. So far I'm not succeeding (I bought some ankle boots today) so it's business as usual, really.

I have been doing my best to fit sewing in around everything else, and it hasn't been the easiest as work has been pretty busy as well. However, I found myself with a free evening a few weeks ago as Nic was out at a gig. I had been working from home that day, and the beauty of this is that with no commuting time, I can just switch my computer off at the end of the work day and switch my sewing machine on. Sometimes I am even able to cut fabric out during my lunch break, although I wasn't able to on this particular day. Even so, I had a new dress by bedtime, and what's not fun about that?

The dress in question is New Look 6776, which seems to now be out of print. I made this dress because how could I not when I saw how beautiful it looked on the pattern envelope:

LOOK AT HOW SASSY SHE IS IN THAT LILAC THING. I'm generally a fan of New Look patterns - they're excellent value for money and I have never had any issues with their quality and a lot of their patterns really are very lovely. But MAN, do you have to look past the photography. I'm halfway tempted to actually frame this envelope because her face is cracking me up so much.

I think the worst thing is the sash, though, and I think that's what her face is trying to tell us. Why would you do this to someone?

Admittedly, I have a prejudice against sashes. THIS IS WHY.

All of that said, the line drawings of this dress revealed its potential and I had the pattern in my stash. I have no memory of buying it so maybe two other New Look patterns reproduced, or I got it at a swap or something. I don't know. I was a little bit sceptical about whether this pattern would work on me because of the wide midriff - I'm still not convinced that they work on me. However, I liked the potential for playing with directional prints, so it seemed like a good match for this fabric, which I had bought in Abakhan on my birthday:

'Singin' the Blues' by Camelot Fabrics

I decided to go for view D of the dress but obviously without the sash. I also decided to wing it without sewing a toile. I didn't super love the fabric so I knew that in the unlikely event that it was a total disaster, I wouldn't be completely gutted.

I followed the instructions and the order for construction wasn't quite as I would have expected it but it worked out well. I had to do a little bit of unpicking because of the way the bodice is constructed, but even with that it all came together really nicely.

Ball and Chain dress - New Look 6776 worn with Red or Dead shoes

There are a couple of things that I really like about this pattern. Although I am not sure about the midriff band on me, I do love the way it's cut on the bias, as it gives you an opportunity to have fun with prints.

Here's a weird close-up of my bust and waist so you can see. I think it actually looks cooler from a bit further away, but there you go.

For view D, there is an extra pattern piece for you to cut some interfacing for the v-neck. It keeps it really nice and crisp. It sounds like such an obvious thing to do, but I've never seen it in another sewing pattern and I thought it was such a good idea! I love the skirt, which is a very pretty shape with essentially perfect pleats.

The pattern calls for a lapped zip, which I think is kind of unusual to see in sewing patterns now. I sewed a concealed zip because it's what I felt like doing. I like the way the herringbone design makes pattern matching pointless, but also effortless. Also, my god. No-one should have to see their own back. I look so fat from the back!

I didn't make any adjustments to the pattern with the exception of sewing the shoulder straps a bit shorter to accommodate my short torso. Straps constantly sliding down is not the one. I thought I might need to shorten the bodice slightly and I did that on a subsequent iteration of this dress, but I think it might be better as it is. I've worn this dress a few times since I finished it - in fact, I wore it to work today - and I like it a lot. I think I need to tinker with the pattern a bit - it feels like there's a bit more fabric around my stomach than I would like so I might take out a bit of ease there - but on the whole I think this is a winner. I put it on and thought it really looked like a dress you might buy in Monsoon, so I think that's quite a good thing. Not that I'm a massive fan of them (and wouldn't be shopping there anyway given recent news stories) but, you know. I think it looks well-made and professional.

AND OH YES SHOES:

More sparkly shoes and I'm not even sorry. Woo-hoo!

I'm still deeply into listening to my Nashville CDs on repeat - Nic would be at the point of banning them, only I think he finds my terrible singing-along too tragic to be that cruel - and I had them cranked up loudly while I was sewing this dress. My current favourite is the duet between Rayna Jaymes and Luke Wheeler - Ball and Chain - hence the name of the dress.

I'm off to Glasgow tomorrow for a few days for work, so poor old Nic will get a bit of a break from the Nashville CDs this week!

Anyway, that's the craic from me this evening. Nic has just come home and he's looking some attention - talk about a ball and chain (lololololololol) so I'm wheels up and out. See you later!

Hello everyone! What's happening? Everything is grand with me, if a little bit on the busy side. It's okay, though. I kind of like it being busy on these dark autumn days, mainly because it stops me from feeling too blue about the cold weather. I had a very busy week last week, as I was in Glasgow for work for most of it. I was at a conference, which was interesting and exhausting, and in the evenings I made sure to try to get out and see some of Glasgow, as that wasn't possible during the day. I spent Wednesday evening with my friends Hattie and Lauren, and on Thursday evening I went to a gin bar with some lovely sewing bloggers. It was a lot of fun - the bar (Gin 71) was beautiful and the company was fabulous.

Gin 71 - thank you to Amy, Nuala, Elise and Elaine for coming out to meet me and for being such wonderful company, and to Kerry for organising!

I hope to make it back to Glasgow in the not-too-distant future. There are lots more gins on that menu that I want to try, and you can't beat the friendliness of the locals. It was a really good trip and I even managed to get some knitting done on the train journey. Happy days!

So that's the craic there. It's been a great few weeks and I've finished some cracking sewing and knitting projects. I just need to get organised to blog them. So here's one of them and - surprise surprise - it's a dress!

The craic with this is that I found some more lovely Cath Kidston fabric on eBay. The design is called 'Oxford Rose', I think, and they have a dress made out of it that looks like this:

So, that's pretty nice. It's £75 though, and after getting stuck in a Cath Kidston dress the week before last, I am giving this one the side-eye. It wasn't this dress - it was a shift dress - but it was the sleeves that caught me as they were SUPER tight. It was seriously not my best moment, because I had to get the girl working behind the counter to help me out of the dress, which didn't have a zip. NO. BUENO.

Anyway, the fabric. It's beautiful. I think the print is gorgeous and the fabric is a high-quality medium-weight cotton. Also, I bought it on eBay and it was only £12 per metre. Boom. Naturally enough, I wanted to make an Emery dress with it.

Copenhagen dress - Christine Haynes Emery dress with a pleated skirt, worn with Swedish hasbeens peep-toe sandals

I bought two metres of the fabric, which is 157cm wide. I had enough to make the dress with sleeves if I wanted to, but I didn't. I did self-line the bodice though, because I think it looks really nice when you can do that. Also it made it a little bit easier to use the lace zip that I happened to have in my stash...

This is the same sort of zip as the one I sewed in my Charmed Life dress, and I got it at Berylune. I still have quite a few of them, as I bought one in every colour, so you'll probably see a few more around here before too long.

As the fabric is reasonably weighty, I opted to pleat the skirt rather than gather it. I think it looks really elegant and although clearly I am a massive derp, I love the dress a ridiculous amount and think that it looks very mid-century stylish. Maybe I am deluded, but fuck it. I love my dress.

I have so little now to say about the Emery pattern, it's ridiculous, but I think it's the perfect pattern to show off a beautiful fabric. It does this admirably with this dress. I wore it a few weeks ago, when I had the pleasure of spending the day with Tasha and her spouse, Mel, Jane, Emmie, Karen and Marie in London. It was a really lovely day with good friends, and my dress got lots of compliments. So that was cool!

With Tasha and Jane... photo shamlessly robbed from Marie's instagram. Thanks, Marie!

By an amazing stroke of luck, my sister Kelly was also in London that day, and we managed to sneak in a few cocktails in central London before I had to take the train back up to Leamington.

Kelly would want me to tell you that she doesn't normally look as creepy as this.

So, yeah. I do form emotional connections with my clothes and this dress has lots of happy memories already. That's always a good feeling. And I did not get stuck in this dress and that's a good feeling, too. Because Cath seriously, you have some great prints and all, but those sleeves are ridiculous. My arms are perfectly proportionate. But yeah thanks for giving the girl in the shop the chance to see me in my pants. Thanks.

Right, so thats the craic there. I'm going to head off now and do a little bit of sewing. Here's one more picture of the dress - I had to ditch today's first photo location because I was being attacked by the wind. DAMN THE WIND. DAMN ALL THE WIND.

I may be smiling, but I'm raging inside.

CLACKETT OUT.

Hello everyone! Well, it has been a while, hasn't it? It has been a particularly busy few weeks at work and socially. It felt like I had only been back from Glasgow a nanosecond before Nic and I were on a flight to Belfast, and after that I was in London for the best part of a week for work as it is All-Day Basement Meeting season again. This year there's been a new twist - we had one day above ground, but it wasn't much better. It was like sky prison. So, that's a thing.

In truth, it's been a weird couple of weeks. Nic and I had an amazing weekend in Belfast - we had gone back to see The Divine Comedy playing a gig, and we were joined by my parents, my best and oldest friend and her friend Mary. The weekend was wonderful - full of laughter and fun, but it was exhausting and getting home from it only to have to go straight to London was pretty hard. On Tuesday, my granny Muldoon died and on Wednesday my four-year-old nephew Eoghan broke his thigh and was taken to hospital. He'll be fine and apparently it's a relatively common injury in someone his age - there are three other little boys in his ward with the same injury - but it's still been a tough week. I was on my own in London when I heard that Granny had died and it was a very strange experience. We haven't had a relationship at all for the last eight years or so and weren't close at all before that, so it's not the case that I have lost a dear relative. But, in its own way, that's just as complicated and rubbish a situation, you know? I'm glad that I had spent the weekend previously with my dad and I'll be seeing him again in a few weeks.

So, that's what's new with me! After all of that, I took Friday off work and spent it mooching around with Nic and by sewing. I spent today sewing, too. It's been good to be back at my sewing machine and it's very soothing and healing to make things, isn't it? I have an ever-growing backlog of sewing projects to share with you, but I also have a growing backlog of knitting to blog about too! I'm going to do this slightly out-of-order though, just because.

My lovely friend Lauren has got the knitting bug in a bad way too, and she made herself an amazing red Andi Satterlund Chuck sweater recently. It's the same shade of red as my red Agatha cardigan and it's totally awesome. So, monkey see monkey do. I decided to have a crack at it myself. Not in red, though, because we'd look like twats if we were out and about in them at the same time. I wanted a green one. So, I ordered myself some Cascade 220 in Christmas green, and off I went.

Chuck sweater in progress

So, Chuck is a cropped jumper. It's seamless, knit from the top down and it is mostly in stocking stitch apart from a cabled panel down the front. I wanted to give cables a try after the failure of my Marion cardigan earlier this year, and I'm glad that I did. This cardigan was so fun to knit and I really loved the cabling.

Andi Satterlund Chuck sweater, worn with Emily and Fin dress and Hard Hearted Harlot boots

I knit the size small and made no alterations to the pattern and I am really pleased with the fit. It is pretty cropped, and I think that some people may need to add a few rows of length to it, but I have a high waist and I find it hits me exactly where I like knitwear to.

I really love everything about this jumper and I have worn it loads since I finished it. This surprised me a little bit - I mean, obviously I thought I would like it or why else knit it, but I've never really been much of a one for wearing jumpers (outside of the house, that is, I have an amazing jumper that I wear at home when it is very cold). The fact that it is cropped makes it easy to wear over dresses and I think it is just as cute as a cardigan.

I think that this jumper does look quite obviously hand-knit. I know that, for a lot of people, wearing something that looks obviously handmade is undesirable. I sort of feel that way about sewing, but I also feel like the rules are slightly different with knitting. Maybe they're not, and I'm only kidding myself because I am so proud of my jumper. Maybe I'll look back on this in a year's time and cringe at it. Who the fuck knows. Right now I am very happy with it. I'm wearing it right now, in fact!

Here's the back view - I really like the way this jumper fits through the back.

As with all of Andi Satterlund's patterns, the Chuck pattern is easy to follow and it was really enjoyable to knit. You don't get time to memorise the cabling repeat because it's so large, and you only do it twice, but that's not a problem. I think I prefer lace knitting to cable knitting, but it was very satisfying to see the pattern coming together.

I've bought some gorgeous blue malabrigo worsted yarn for another Chuck but I must admit that now that I am into jumpers, I am tempted by the Aiken pattern. Yes, I know that there are other knitwear designers out there but I'm not even sorry - I love these Andi Satterlund patterns!

Anyway lads, I'm going to wrap this up here because I need to go and make the dinner and I have today's dress waiting for a hem as well. And gin - I have gin to drink! Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

Hello hello! I hope that everyone is having a good week. Mine is definitely showing an improvement on last week - which, in fairness, it really needed to! Last week wasn't finished with me when I last wrote: on Sunday I heard that my great-aunt Kathleen had died. She was my maternal grandma's younger sister and I didn't know her personally, but of course my granny has taken it very hard, so that was very sad. I can only hope that's going to be the end of it for a while.

That aside, my week has been more restful so far, so that's good. I've been able to work from home and, after such a manic few weeks, this has been really good for my mental health. Today Nic was here too so we were able to go out for a walk at lunchtime and another one at the end of the working day. This evening I'm making soup and we're going to watch a film. It's a wild life, but these simple pleasures are really important to me right now. I'm going to crack on with the second sleeve of the cardigan I'm working on at the moment (a purple Agatha cardigan) and maybe even have a gin and tonic.

I have a bit of sewing to show you this evening - as I said in my last post, I have a bit of a backlog of finished sewing projects to share. This one came about after Mrs C gave me some fitting advice on a previous post - basically, if Mrs C gives me advice, I listen. After I posted the Endeavour dress, she suggested adding a few darts into the neckline to bring the shoulder straps in, as she thought they were too wide-set for me. Fast-forward to a few weeks ago. I had the evening to myself, some cheap and cute cotton to experiment with: off I went!

Crush With Eyeliner dress - By Hand London Kim dress with a pleated skirt, worn with Irregular Choice 'Windsor' shoes

If the fabric looks familiar, it's because I have sewed with it before. I made the Elaine dress from the pink colourway of this fabric last year. As with that dress, the fabric for this dress came from Goldhawk Road. I bought a two-metre remnant of it for £6 in A-Z Fabrics at the end of October, and this was more than enough for me to make this dress and self-line the bodice. Happy days!

Mrs C was right that the straps on the Kim dress were too wide-set - as well as too long - for me. I have a short torso, narrow shoulders and a short measurement between my shoulders and my bust. To work out how much I would need to take the shoulders in by, I put one of the first Kim dresses I had made on inside out and I pinned out a wedge where the neckline meets the straps on each side. As this bodice has princess seams, I then added that dart into the princess seam. It was surprisingly simple and I think it has really made a difference to the way this dress fits - no more straps sliding down!

I could probably still tinker with the fit of this bodice a bit, but I don't think that I will. Maybe on the next one, I will act on some previous advice from Mrs C and sew some cotton tape into the neckline, so that it lies flatter to my body.

The Kim pattern comes with a gathered skirt and a tulip skirt, but I am really digging pleated skirts at the moment so I added a pleated skirt to this instead. I really love the finished dress - considering it was an experiment, I think it turned out really well. I didn't make it with a specific event in mind, but once I finished it I decided to save it for wearing to see The Divine Comedy in Belfast. It was really cold in Belfast that weekend (not to mention the fact that it just would not stop raining) so I wore it with a cardigan and ankle boots, and I felt pretty great.

So, that's the craic there. Thank you, Mrs C, for the great advice!

Right now, I must go and watch this film with Nic. He's teaching Godzilla this term, so he needs to also watch some of the recent remakes. Tonight it's the Roland Emmerich film from the 90s with Matthew Broderick. Yeah. It's just as well that a) I love him and b) I have gin in the house, that's all I'm saying. We're half an hour in and it's not good.

UPDATE: No, wait. Nic says we can switch it off and watch an episode of The X-Files instead. YEAH BOI. I might still have gin though. Night!

Hello everyone! Happy December! I'm full of germs this week and feeling a bit sorry for myself: it's been a somewhat challenging week at work. It's always like that at this time of the year and, in fact, it's better than it has been in past years, so I'm trying to keep perspective on everything. What has been helping when dealing with stressful situations is keeping very quiet and trying to imagine what Scully's face would be doing if she were sitting in my place. It's generally something like this:

I swear, Scully's disdainful expressions have been giving me life lately. It genuinely helps me to hold onto my sanity when dealing with very annoying situations. Nic and I are off to Northern Ireland tonight for a long weekend with my family, which will also help. Nephew cuddles FTW! I don't have many work days left until I break up for Christmas, so I am holding onto that thought too.

That's the craic with me anyway. As I said in my last post, I have a bit of a backlog of sewing projects to share with you guys, so here is a dress I made a few weeks ago when I had a little sewing weekend to myself. At the end of October, when I met up with some sewing ladies on Goldhawk Road, I bought some lovely wax cotton:

As you know by now, I find wax cotton hard to resist and this was no exception. Look at the little horses' faces! I let this sit around for a little while as I tried to decide what to do with it, and then I took a notion for another Vogue V8998. So that's what I made!

My Lovely Horse dress - Vogue V8998 in wax print cotton, worn with Vivienne Westwood for Melissa Lady Dragon bow shoes

I first made this dress in June 2014, when I took part in a sewing day at John Lewis. Because we were working to a time limit, I cut the pattern rather than tracing it. Well, to be fair, I would usually cut one of the big 4 patterns anyway. So anyway, on that day I made this dress:

Darkness Falls dress - made in June 2014

I've worn this dress lots of times since then - I love it. However, I have lost weight and changed shape slightly since then, so I had to do a little bit of butchering on my already-cut pattern pieces. I started by shortening the bodice along the shorten lines. I increased the seam allowance on the princess seams around the bust by another 5/8 of an inch. I sewed the side seams with a 1 inch seam allowance, and I shortened the straps. The overall fit was much better, but still not totally perfect. It's as near as dammit though, and I love the finished dress:

As I said - the fit isn't perfect - you can see a little bit of wrinkling under the bust and a little bit of wrinkling on the princess seams. I think I should have been less aggressive in increasing the seam allowance across the bust as I think this is what is causing the wrinkling. However, both of these things are less of an issue in real life than they appear to be in the photo. The day after I made this dress, I made another one out of a different wax cotton and I tinkered with the fit a little bit more. You'll have to wait to see that, though!

The skirt has six panels, and I really like the way it is gathered at the sides only - it gives the skirt volume and shape without adding any bulk around the stomach. I didn't attempt to pattern match across those seams - the horses run fairly regularly across the print, but in different directions, so it already looks fairly random. I like it. Of course I made sure to have a horse dancing across my bust because if you don't have a novelty boob area on a novelty print dress, what even is the point?!

Forgive my derp back and the wrinkling on the skirt from sitting on it, but one of the things I really like about this pattern is the lovely scooped back. I think it's really pretty.

I wore this dress last week - on actually the last vaguely sunny day I can remember us having - with my red Agatha cardigan. I managed not to spill coffee on it. From what I can recall, it was a good day! The weather has been very mild - at times almost warm - over the last couple of weeks, but I'm sure this dress will work well with black or red tights when the temperatures drop. That's about as close as I get to cold-weather sewing.

At first when I saw the print, it reminded me of Invicta, the white horse of Kent. Nic is a Man of Kent, coming from East Kent (if you come from west of the Medway, you're a Kentish Man), so the print to me is nicely symbolic of where he comes from. But mainly, it spoke to me of where I come from, and of an important part of my cultural heritage:

My lovely horse

Running through the fields

Where are you going with your fetlocks blowing in the wind?

I want to shower you with sugar lumps

and ride you over fences

I want to polish your hooves every single day

and bring you to the horse dentist

My lovely horse

You're a pony no more

Running around with a man on your back

Like a train in the night, yeah

Like a train in the night

We have to lose that sax solo!

So anyway that's the craic there. Now I need to go and pack. I have a flight to catch. Bye!

Hello everyone! I've managed to rid myself of the lurgy that was plaguing me at the end of last week: after a stressful week at work, maybe it was 90% feeling exhausted and angry. Whatever it was, I flew back to Northern Ireland for the weekend and I'm feeling much more like myself now. It was very good to go home and see the family before Christmas as Nic and I will be spending Christmas in Leamington again this year. As always, it was great craic hanging out with my two-year-old nephew Joe, who wanted to show us both that he knew his alphabet, that he could count to ten and that he knew all of his colours. The delight on his cheeky little face as he pointed out that something was purple was enough to chase away any residual work stress. There is also a lot to be said about the stress-relieving properties of cuddling a small dog.

Mini!

There is also a lot to be said for the stress-relieving properties of leaving it all behind and flying home to your own little flat:

It was a good break and now I'm on the downhill slope to a proper break over Christmas, so I am definitely feeling more chipper. I am very much looking forward to a few weeks of sleeping, eating, sewing and knitting!

I actually have a knitting project to share today. This has been waiting to be blogged - I actually finished it six weeks ago! I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to blog it, but there we go. The item this time is the Hetty cardigan by Andi Satterlund, which I decided to knit in navy. I bought some Drops Big Merino from Wool Warehouse for it and away I went!

This cardigan feels like it took forever to knit, mainly because I had to frog that shit. TWICE. I'm not even kidding. The first time was mildly annoying because I was a decent way into the body but the second time was an absolute WOUNDER because I had bound off the body and was picking up the sleeve when I realised that I had managed to twist the front left side when I was joining the back to the front, and I had ended up with some sort of mad cardigan mobius strip.

I mean, SHIT. Isn't that annoying?! At this point I could probably have unravelled back as far as the armholes but I was so pissed off that I unravelled the whole damn thing. I did think of knitting something else entirely, but the dream of a navy Hetty wasn't going to die that easily so I cast it on for a third - and thankfully, final - time. After that it was grand! Fuck, it had to be, otherwise there was going to be some smoke in the city.

Navy Hetty cardigan, worn with the Ball and Chain dress

Hetty is a lovely pattern and not at all difficult, despite the trouble that I had with it. After three attempts at it, I was very well acquainted with the pattern repeat. Even without that, though, it's an easy enough one to memorise. I was sort of dreading casting on the sleeves, where you need to keep the repeat in mind alongside using short rows for shaping, but they're not too bad at all.

I have worn the finished cardigan a lot since I completed it - I definitely had room in my wardrobe for a cropped navy cardigan! I really like the pattern and I'm very pleased with the quality of the Drops yarn that I used. It is dense and springy, and it hasn't pilled or fuzzed up in the wearing. I was wary of it stretching out too much with blocking in the way that my pink Audrey in Unst did, so rather than wet-blocking this I gave it a fairly gentle steam blocking. I will use steam to wash it too, I think.

Here it is from the back - I really like the way the lace pattern looks across the back.

It was worth persevering with this cardigan, but it isn't always - the purple cardigan I cast on while I was in Glasgow has since gone in the bin. The yarn fought me all the way - it was tangly and knotty on the skein and kept sticking to itself - it was horrible! I had to unravel one of the sleeves - I had knit it the evening that my granny died, so it was full of mistakes because my mind was elsewhere - and the yarn ended up snapping in the armhole stitches, and it was looking impossible to fix. Everything about the cardigan felt like it had bad juju at that point, so I gave it up as a bad job! In knitting, as in life, it is good to recognise that something isn't working for you.

But back to lovely Hetty - as I said earlier, I have been wearing it a lot and it even got a compliment from my dad when I wore it in Belfast a few weeks ago. High praise indeed!

So anyway, that's the craic with Hetty. I have just finished another blue knit - a Chuck sweater - and am about to cast on another one in bright pink. I'm very predictable but, oh well. You knew that anyway.

Right now. On the cards tonight is Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone, a mince pie and maybe even a gin and tonic. Until next time!

Evening everyone! Hello! What is the craic?! It's ninety here. I had a brilliant weekend, I have three work days left of 2015 and I hit an important deadline today. All of these things feel pretty good! I was working at home today and I had a very busy day, but it was really nice to be working while the Christmas tree lights were twinkling away next to me. And now Nic and I are watching the Hollywood A.D. episode of The X-Files. Yeah!

I've had a busy few weeks with not much time for sewing, but I have a dress that I finished a couple of weeks ago to share with you. I made it the same weekend as the My Lovely Horse dress and indeed, it is the same pattern - Vogue V8998. Even the fabric is going to look familiar to some of you...

Diva Lady dress - Vogue Patterns V8998 in star-print wax cotton, worn with Red or Dead Lindy Hop shoes

Yes, more star-print fabric - but this time in bright pink and green! I bought this pink colourway of the lovely star-print fabric when Nic and I were in Paris in August. I bought it in Moline and I got the last two metres of it they had. The colour is very obnoxious in real life - bright, fuchsia pink and lime green stars. Obviously I love it. I was also very taken with the selvedge, which I don't think I've seen on any of the other colours I have bought of this fabric:

The selvedges of wax cottons such as this usually have the country of origin or the design number, but I don't think I have seen the description 'best lady' before and it tickled me immensely. Recently, Katie shared this article about wax cottons which is an interesting read - and it's added a few prints to my wishlis - including the colourway of this print that is red stars on a yellow background. One in every colour, lads!

I made basically the same adjustments to this dress as I did to the My Lovely Horse dress, tweaking the bodice slightly so that I had a slightly smaller seam allowance on the princess seams. There's still a bit of wrinkling under my bust but, eh. I think it's fine. I really love this dress and I have worn it quite a few times already. The print has purple in it - you might be able to see it in the photo above, there - so it's made this dress perfect to wear with the latest addition to my glittery shoe collection:

Good old ebay. I'm still waiting for the green ones to appear. One day, I'm sure. Although I can't think that I'll own anything else in the same highlighter shade of green as the stars in the print!

I'm still very taken with the gored skirt that is part of this pattern. I'm not sure that it photographs all that well, but I love the way the side gathers add volume to the skirt. I have since added this skirt to another bodice - I'll have to hope for a day with actual daylight to take some photos of that project. Spoiler: it's more wax cotton. I love it. I'm still not done with this pattern, either. But then, when am I ever done with a pattern, right?

So anyway. That's the Diva Lady dress, and that's me for the evening. I have to go and pack for the next few days, and wrap some presents, and knit. Oh, and A.D. Skinner has left me the bureau credit card for the evening...

I will never get tired of Scully gifs. Not sorry.

Catch you guys next week!

Hello! Happy Christmas, everyone! I hope that you've all been having a festive and restful holiday period. I was very busy in the lead-up to Christmas at work and with social commitments and, as soon as work was finished, Nic and I headed down to Kent to spend a few days with his family. That was really lovely, but it was excellent to get back to Leamington and to my own bed so that the break could really start. At this time last year I was stressed out to the max, suffering from insomnia and getting over alcohol poisoning... this year has been a breeze by contrast!

Nic and I spent yesterday chilling out at home together, which was lovely. We went out for a walk at lunchtime and I made my first ever Christmas Day visit to the pub! The pubs are closed in Ireland on Christmas Day, so it's something I've never done until now - we tried last year but didn't manage it! Anyway, it was very festive indeed:

Yes, that is Darth Vader on top of the Christmas tree!

This afternoon, we're going up to our friends' house for vegetarian pie, trifle and a Father Ted marathon. Hurrah!

I didn't manage to get around to making a new dress to wear for Christmas so instead I wore my (yet to be blogged) blue Chuck sweater and Beeswing dress. This is mainly because I was away a lot in December, so hopefully I'll be able to make myself a fun dress to wear on New Year's Eve. I did make a Christmas party dress (also yet to be blogged) and, on Tuesday, I sewed a dress to wear to a party that Nic and I had been invited to on Wednesday. I hadn't planned to make something special for it but it was a cocktail party and, at the Sewists' Christmas Party arranged by Karen, my secret santa had given me an eerily appropriate gift:

I KNOW RIGHT?!

So, on Tuesday afternoon I set about making myself a dress to wear to the party on Wednesday. I knew that the By Hand London Kim dress was a quick dress to make and fun to wear, so that's what I did:

Number 9 dress - By Hand London Kim dress worn with Irregular Choice shoes

So this dress is really cute and everything, but I have to be upfront and say I really hate all of these photos! It's partly the length of the dress - I think it would be more flattering about an inch shorter - but also, the cold grey light of December and my very Irish skin is like HELLO PASTY. Ah well. The shortest day is past us. It'll be spring soon.

Not too much to say about the dress itself. I lined the bodice with black poplin and I made Mrs C's adjustment to the bodice. I think that I still need to shorten the bodice by a fraction - maybe by an inch - but for a novelty dress I'm happy with the fit of the bodice.

The party we had been invited to was in Birmingham and, on the train journey over, Nic and I tried to figure out as many of the cocktails as we could. We could see a martini, a cosmopolitan, a margarita, a mojito and a glass of red wine... I fell down when it came to the brightly coloured ones with fruit hanging out as that's not really my area, but I guess one of them is also maybe a pina colada. I named it after a cocktail that isn't on the dress - the Number 9:

I don't think this is an official cocktail recipe but it was my favourite drink in Le Commerce when we were in Paris. In a wine glass, pour a measure of dry gin, a measure of St Germain and the juice of a whole lime over some ice cubes. Top up with some soda water and garnish with two slices of fresh ginger. I made it the other night with Brockmans Berry gin to give it a festive flavour, but it's really best with a good dry London gin such as Tanqueray or Four Pillars Navy Strength.

I did try to get a shot of the dress in action on the night. I failed due to lighting, but also due to the fact that I am quite crap at selfies. So, you'll just have to imagine me drinking cocktails in this dress. It was a very lovely party and I was quite restrained - you have to be when you know you have to catch the last train home - and as my fellow guests seemed quite impressed by my themed outfit I didn't feel like too much of a twat. So that was good.

So anyway, that's the craic there with the dress. I'm still on holiday until 4th January (woo-hoo!) and now I should have some time to do some crafting before going back to work. The loose plan is also to blog some of the backlog of projects before the year finishes... but, eh, let's see how that goes! Now it's time to get dressed so that I can go and eat some pie. Happy Christmas, everyone!

Evening all! I hope that these in-between days are treating you well. I've been having a lovely time. Nic and I had a little potter around the shops on Boxing Day before going to have lunch and a Father Ted marathon with friends. I spent yesterday sewing and watching films - Serial Mom and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (I know, I know, but they were both brilliant) and today, Nic and I went for a very long walk and a pub lunch and we stocked the fridge with champagne for the rest of the week. Now we're back on the sofa and Nic is watching And Then There Were None on the BBC iplayer. This is really living!

As I said in my last post, I'm trying to catch up on a backlog of sewing and knitting projects - so here's something else that I finished a little while ago. It's another Andi Satterlund Chuck sweater. I've worn my green one quite a lot since I finished it and I enjoyed knitting it so much that it was pretty obvious that I was going to make another one.

Andi Satterlund Chuck sweater, worn with Emily and Fin dress

Isn't the yarn amazing? It's Malabrigo Worsted and the colour is called 'Azul Bolita' and, somewhat predictably, I bought it from Wool Warehouse. I love the colour a lot, because it's clearly TARDIS blue, which is very cool even though I have basically totally lost patience with Doctor Who now. The yarn was also very enjoyable to work with and lovely to wear - it's dense and doesn't make a very drapey fabric, but it's not at all itchy to wear. I really like the Cascade 220 Aran yarn but find that it makes my arms itchy by the end of the day.

ANYWAY, the jumper. So, I cast this on sometime in November. I was able to knit the body fairly quickly but I made the mistake of knitting the sleeves on the train after stressful work days and I ended up making a total hames of them. So I ripped both of the sleeves out and re-knit them when I was in a better, more chilled out place. Knitting when you're tired and angry isn't the best idea: who knew?!

For some reason I can't remember now, I knitted the waistband ribbing and the neckband ribbing a little bit shorter than on my green Chuck and I kind of wish that I hadn't. I love the finished jumper a lot, but I do think that the neckline would be better with slightly deeper ribbing. But, eh, whatever. I still love it.

The Malabrigo yarn has a slightly variegated colour - I guess because of the way it is dyed - so the cable pattern across the front of the jumper is maybe slightly obscured by this - the texture of it is not so apparent when the colour variation in the yarn creates a textured look as well. So that's something you might want to consider before pairing this yarn with the pattern. I like it though - so much so that I am in the process of knitting another Malabrigo Chuck, but this time in pink. It really is lovely yarn to work with and wear.

Ripping back the sleeves on this was kind of a pain but it was worth it - I've worn the jumper quite a bit since I finished it. I wore it on Christmas Day and Boxing Day!

Here's me wearing the jumper on Christmas Day when my hair looked much better than it looked when I tried to get proper photos of the jumper on Boxing Day. Damn you, hair!

So anyway. It's good to have a blue jumper. It helped me to remember where I've met Sister Assumpta before. You know. I stayed with her in the convent back in Kildare. And then I was hit by a car when I went to the shops for the paper. And then I won a hundred pounds with my lottery card. And wasn't I accidentally arrested for shoplifting? They had to come down to the police station to get me...and the police station went on fire, and I had to be rescued by helicopter. And then I fell out of the helicopter over the zoo. And the tigers! Anyway, I was wearing my blue jumper at the time.

Anyway lads, that's me now for the evening. Night!

Evening pups! What's happening? Right now I feel like I'm living my best life: Nic and I are watching an episode of The Fugitive, I have a glass of champagne on the go and I'm full of roasted chickpea and broccoli burritos. Yassssss! Our friends Amy and Barney bought us the Thug Kitchen cookbook for Christmas on the basis that it is very sweary and holy shit, the recipes are awesome. Happiness! I've had a lovely day of pottering around and sewing. Being on holiday clearly suits me.

As I said, I've been sewing today (yet another McCall's 6696) and last night I finished the pink Chuck sweater I mentioned yesterday, so I'm feeling particularly productive at the moment. Less so on the blogging front, as tonight I am going to show you a dress that I made in October but never got around to photographing. This dress:

Soupy Norman dress - New Look 6776 in wax cotton

I do have photos of it on me too, but I really like how this dress looks flat! So, it's another New Look 6776, and I made it very soon after making the Ball and Chain dress - like, I think I made it in the same week? So, with this one I wanted to have a go at adjusting the pattern by narrowing the midriff band slightly to see if the waist hit me at a more flattering place. It's only a slight difference and I'm not sure that it wasn't better as it was, although it is honestly difficult to compare as the way the dress looks is so different because of the difference in the fabric.

Worn here with tights from H&M (they have gold polka dots on them but you can't see that in this photo and anyway they ripped so I've had to put them in the bin FFS) and Swedish hasbeens ankle boots

I bought this lovely wax cotton when Nic and I were in Paris in August. I bought it in a shop called Festival Tissus, which is on Rue Pierre Picard in the 18th. It was quite a strange little shop where, although the fabric was all in 6 yard lengths, the owner seemed reluctant to sell you the whole yardage. It was kind of a strange transaction, although the man in the shop was very nice. Anyway, I bought 3 metres of this thinking that it would be nice for an autumnal dress and you know what? It is! I've worn this dress a lot since I made it and most commonly like this, with ankle boots.

As with the Ball and Chain dress, I really like the way the bias-cut midriff looks with a geometric print like this. And, as you can see, I decided to have the shapes running in the opposite direction on the bodice to on the skirt, just to give this dress an extra bit of optical illusion chic.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the fit of this dress - it still feels like there's a bit too much fabric in the curved midriff. That said, this has come in handy in these post-Christmas days - there is definitely room there for a bit of Christmas indulgence! Judging by how often I have worn this dress in the last few months, though, it's definitely a winner. I might have to make another one.

The first time I wore it was to a gin tasting at my local wine shop and I subsequently wore it to go to a gin bar in Glasgow. So it's put in some good work already. Nice one, dress! If I were wearing it now, I'd honour it further by drinking more gin, but I'm not, so I suppose I'd best carry on with the champagne.

I'll be back tomorrow with another dress. Lads, it's a good one. So I'll see you then. Bye now!

Evening all! It's been a windy, rainy, chilly Wednesday and I haven't left the house today at all. It's not something I'd like to do every day, but every so often it's good to not have to engage with anyone other than Nic. It means that I have zero craic though, so sorry about that! It has been a good day, though. I finished a dress - probably the last one of 2015 unless I take a notion to sew tomorrow - and, well, that's been about it really.

Luckily, although I have no craic at all, I do still have some dresses to blog about. This evening it's one I made on Sunday in a pleasing bout of post-Christmas activity. The real star of this particular dress is the fabric, which I bought a few weeks ago from The Village Haberdashery:

The fabric is 'Regatta Border' by Michael Miller and I think it's currently out of stock - I bought it as soon as Annie listed it on their website - but I believe they'll be getting some back in before too long. Anyway - as soon as I saw it on the Village Haberdashery instagram I bought 2.5 metres to make myself a nautical border-print dress - much like I did last year when I bought Michael Miller flamingo border-print fabric and made the Nora dress.

The only thing for this fabric was going to be a dress that would show it off, so naturally enough I decided to sew another Emery dress. It really is my favourite pattern for when I want the fabric to really be the star of the show. I knew that the shape of the bodice would work well with the striped portion of the fabric and the gathered skirt would really show off the beautiful boat-print section. So on Sunday afternoon, off I went!

Precious Things dress - Christine Haynes Emery dress in Michael Miller 'Regatta Border' fabric, worn with Swedish hasbeens Frederica sandals

I spent a little bit of time on the pattern placement before I cut the bodice out as I wanted to make sure that I'd be able to match the stripes at both the side seams and across the centre back. I did do that but I didn't get any photographs of it so you'll just have to trust me! I wanted to use the narrower stripes for the bodice so that there'd be some graduation in width down to the skirt. Ideally, I might have had a slightly wider band of navy across the top of the skirt so that the stripes flowed a bit more naturally but I didn't have quite enough fabric to do that. In any case, that would have affected the length of the skirt, which I think is pretty much spot-on, so it's all good.

Here are those little boats!

I ended up with just enough fabric to make this dress as I wanted it and to match the stripes at side and centre back seams. I had a moment where I thought that I didn't have enough fabric for the full gathered skirt that I wanted and, of course, with a print like this, pattern tetris just isn't possible! However, it all worked out perfectly and I really love the finished dress.

I had to cut the whole thing on the cross-grain in order to have the stripes running horizontally like this. It shouldn't give a closer fit: the cross-grain generally has slightly more stretch than the straight, but I have found that it does often give a slightly closer fit in the bodice and I'm not sure why. The bodice on this dress doesn't feel too tight (and fit is a personal thing anyway) but the fit around the bust is definitely different to when the bodice is cut on the straight grain.

Anyway, that's boring. Fit waffling notwithstanding, you can be sure that I will wear the shit out of this dress. Despite the fact that I had planned to wear something else on Tuesday (a dress completed in 2015 that now has missed its chance to be photographed this year) I tried this dress on in the morning and didn't want to take it off! Tuesday was a very mild and pleasant day, and I wore this dress to go for a good long walk and a pub lunch with Nic. Hey don't be worried though: I wore a cardigan AND a coat. Those bare arms were for photographs only.

This dress looks fab with my navy Hetty cardigan: happy days! It was definitely worth having to knit that shit three times.

This is the cool thing about sewing, though, and it's the thing that never stops being awesome: you can make exactly what you want. Before I knew how to sew, I would have been seriously hanging out for a dress like this (see my 'Sailor Dresses of Dreams' pinterest board for evidence) so it is a major thrill to be able to make one myself. YEAAAH BOI.

I know this is like the fifth time I have used this gif but I don't even care. BENTON FIST PUMP.

I can't foresee a time when I'm going to become tired of slightly nautical-themed dresses (currently lurking some of that Robert Kaufman anchor-print chambray with dreams of it becoming a shirt-dress) so I am very happy with this dress. I look forward to wearing it in the spring, when it's going to look a bit more appropriate to the weather!

KNEES!

So anyway lads, I'll be back tomorrow with my Christmas party dress and a little 2015 round-up. See you then!

Hey everyone! Happy New Year! I did mean to post again yesterday but...eh, blankets, the sofa, pizza-making and champagne intervened. Ah well! I hope that you all celebrated the evening in the way that suited you best: for me, that was drinking champagne and watching an Astaire and Rogers film - Shall We Dance.

HASHTAG WARDROBE GOALS. That dress!!

It was a good evening and I woke up without a hangover. Hurrah!

So today I'm going to share with you one more dress that I made in 2015. It's not quite as fabulous as Ginger's frock above but I only have Roisin to make my gowns, not Irene. This is a party dress, though - I made it to wear to the Sewists' Christmas party and my work Christmas party, and I also ended up wearing it to have Christmas dinner with friends on the Sunday before Christmas. As party dresses go, it's done good work.

Perdita dress - By Hand London Kim dress with a circle skirt, worn with Vivienne Westwood for Melissa Lady Dragon bow shoes

It's another Kim dress! Not sorry. I love the bodice, especially now that I have sorted out the fit of the straps. This fabulous fabric is polyester crepe with a slight stretch to it, and I bought it from The Man Outside Sainsbury's on a trip to Walthamstow in October with some sewing friends. I had previously seen the fabric in action when Karen made a top from it in September, so when I saw that TMOS still had it, I was all over it. It was something like £3 a metre and I bought 3 metres of it. My original plan was to make a knock-off of a dress that I had seen in L.K. Bennett:

I still kind of want to make a knock-off of this dress, to be honest, because it's beautiful. However, this polyester crepe was not the one for it. It just didn't feel right - the springy, bouncy crepe felt like it would resist that lovely pleat at the front of the skirt. So I dithered about it for a while before deciding that a circle skirt was the way to go and paired it with the Kim bodice.

Bodice view! I took the belt from another dress but I think I'd like to make a little bow belt to go with it.

I nearly always sew with cotton because it's what I like to wear. Working with this crepe took me out of my comfort zone slightly - but, to be fair, only slightly. It did take a press fairly well and didn't fray too horribly. It was fairly irritatingly slippery to cut out but it was grand. The very best thing about this fabric though is that it just does not crease. This was perfect for each of the parties I wore it to, as for each of them I had a decently long train journey to get there. So this is kind of a magical party dress for that reason. I really love it and I think it might be one of my favourite things I made in 2015. It's hard not to love a polka dot party frock, right?

So yes: my party dress! Which, by the way, looks great with my just-finished pink Chuck over the top of it, so I'll be able to wear it on more everyday occasions. Yes! (imagine the Benton fist-pump gif here as I don't think I can justify using it twice in two posts.)

And that was 2015. I counted up my finished projects the other night and the total came to 61. This was composed of 14 knitted garments, one crochet blanket (a giant granny square blanket that I made as a Christmas present for my father-in-law), a skirt for my friend Lucy and 45 dresses. I'm not going to do a top 5 best and worst list (although I am enjoying reading everyone else's) because, with a few notable fails (hello Marion cardigan, I'm looking at you) I'm very happy with almost everything I made this year. I have a few favourites, obviously - I mean, I'm not being funny, but I think the Rural Juror dress is fucking awesome:

I also totally love the Larry Vaughn dress - the Sew Over It vintage shirt dress - and I must make another one:

In terms of knitting - I am learning all the time and enjoying it more with each project. I don't wear all of the knitted garments I have made this year but I have been really proud of them all, especially the ones I have made in the latter half of the year. Although my Marion cardigan was a fail, it meant that I learned how to knit cables, which I'm very proud of.

So, crafting-wise, I think that 2015 was a good year. It was a bit of a weird year personally. The first few months of the year were really challenging at work, and it took a while for me to get back into a good place emotionally with regards to my job. I did, eventually, and I feel pretty happy about it now although I know that 2016 is going to bring lots more changes and challenges.

Quite a few sad things happened in 2015 - by that I mean in my personal life, not just in the wider world - so it was a year of real personal growth. Despite this, I'll look back on it as a good and happy year because Nic and I looked after each other throughout it and managed to have a lot of fun in the process. You can't say better than that, right?

I don't really do New Year's Resolutions and my hopes for 2016 are simple: that Nic and I are able to continue to meet our challenges together, that I am able to carry on sewing and knitting joyfully, that I can keep on blogging in a way that entertains me and that I can continue to make things that I am proud of, like this drawing that I made last night of Bradley Walsh in Law & Order UK:

I'm only partly joking about that last one. I'm quite proud of this drawing. I mean, YOU try drawing a man with that hairline in black ink without accidentally drawing Hitler.

So that's 2015. I have some exciting adventures lined up for 2016, and I might spend tomorrow making my first dress of 2016 too. Can't be bad.

Now, on that note, I'm away here. I'm going to drink tea and knit and watch a silly film. Thank you to everyone who read and commented in 2015. Happy New Year!

Hey you guys! How's the form? My first week back to work has been grand, if a little depressing that it's so cold and dark and, you know, January-ish. My body responded petulantly to being back at work by getting sick, but not sick enough to justify not working. I can only assume that I'm allergic to doing anything other than watching Netflix in pyjamas. It's grand now though. I'm feeling better and Nic and I have had a lovely weekend - we had a quiet Friday night, spent last night round at our friends' house and today we put up some of these awesome tomado shelves in our bedroom. I know, DIY is boring, but it didn't take long and they look great. So, yay!

It has been a good week, though. On Monday, Nic and I booked a holiday to New York City! We're going at the end of May for two and a half weeks, and we're staying in a lovely apartment that's on the border of Prospect Heights and Crown Heights in Brooklyn. I'm super psyched as we've wanted to visit New York for absolutely ages, and we'll have loads of time to really explore. Hopefully having this super exciting holiday to look forward to is going to make the next few cold months bearable! At the moment I don't have a long list of things I want to do, but of course I'm going to be reading up lots over the next few months.

So, yeah, that's the craic there anyway! I haven't done any sewing this week - I was too busy being ill and stressing about finding the right airbnb apartment to stay in (I sent approximately 7,000 messages to lovely Sonja bugging her about which areas are good to stay in - I definitely owe that girl a drink or two.) I did manage to get lots of crafting done during my long Christmas break though, so here's the last thing I made in 2015:

Space Dog dress - McCall's 6696 in purple Liberty Carline fabric, worn with Red or Dead Lindy Hop shoes

Hey, another McCall's 6696 in Liberty fabric. Predictable, your name is Roisin. Whatever though, seriously, because it's a perfect match and I love this. LOVE IT. Emmie alerted me to this fabric on eBay in about March of last year and I immediately bought it. It was listed as lawn, but it's actually poplin - now, this would have probably been disappointing for some people, but I am all over the Liberty poplin and it's the perfect weight and hand for this pattern. I bought the fabric with the express intention of making a McCall's 6696 but for some reason it took me months to get around to actually making it. It wasn't that I had changed my mind about pattern and fabric, I just kept putting it off. Anyway, as you can see, I finally made it over Christmas.

I have nothing new to say about this pattern. I'm really happy with the fit with the bodice shortened. As with the Chronic Town dress, I sewed the buttonholes horizontally and I added in the hidden button at the waist. I'm considering moving the buttons so that they're off-centre to reduce the slight pulling on the button band, but it's no biggie so I'm not in a massive rush.

As you can see, I used fairly bright green buttons on the dress. It's brighter than the green of the leaves, so it's maybe not quite the right shade for the dress? I quite like it though - I think it adds an extra bit of retro charm to this dress. Anyway, again, I don't care because I really love this dress and I am very happy that I finally got around to making it. This pattern is the best. I like it so much so that I have bought myself a backup copy of it as I didn't trace the original. That's perhaps a little bit obsessive but, hey, you know that's how I roll.

Nothing more to say. I just liked this photo.

The weather has turned pretty cold now, so I probably won't wear this dress very much until it warms up a little bit but I'm glad it finally made it off my 'to make' list.

One thing that is going to make it a little bit easier to wear is that the one of the first things I made in 2016 is a purple cardigan to wear with it - an Andi Satterlund Miette cardigan:

Miette is a free pattern. It's a top-down seamless cardigan with raglan sleeves, and some lace detailing around the yoke, button-bands and waist. It was actually the first knitting pattern I ever followed and now that I am a much more confident and proficient knitter, I wanted to revisit it. I actually knit a blue one last summer that I never blogged, mainly because after I finished it I realised that I had fundamentally misunderstood one of the instructions and the raglan shaping was jacked up as a result. I'm always learning! When I understood what I had done (raglan drift, yo, the struggle is real) I knew how to fix it, so I wanted to knit another one.

The yarn is more Malabrigo worsted, and the colour is called Jacinto. The yarn is lovely but I must admit to not fully loving the colour - or rather, not fully loving the way the variegation looks in this colour. It's fine, though, and a purple cardigan is going to be really useful.

Sadly you can't really see the cute lace detail around the button band, but it is there! I cast this cardigan on on New Year's Eve while Nic and I were drinking champagne and watching Shall We Dance, and I finished it on Tuesday - thanks to the holiday, I was able to knit this in five days. It's cropped, and it's mainly stocking stitch though, so it's not like I have some kind of X-Men knitting skills.

Here's how it looks from the back! I followed the instruction for the 34 inch bust and I really like how it fits. I like it so much that I almost immediately cast on a yellow one, so watch this space for that!

So that's what I've been up to! Having successfully completed both DIY and tidying and, having bought a new bottle of gin this weekend (Daffy's, if you're interested), I'm going to treat myself to a cocktail in the bath and a read of a New York guide book. Have a good week, everyone!

Hello everyone! I hope that this blue Monday hasn't been too blue for everyone. Mine has mainly been a tired Monday - I had a very intense week at work last week where I had to stay in London for a few nights and work on Saturday, and I am sort of catching up with myself as a result. I don't often have to stay away from home for work and I try to make the most of it when I do - but this past week it was too exhausting to do much apart from order room service and watch trashy TV in my pyjamas. I was very glad to get home on Saturday night.

This week is going to be just as busy but at least I'll have my whole weekend to myself. Also, I am feeling in a celebratory mood: I had an interview for a promotion at work today and I got it! The job is maternity cover for my line manager, so it's a temporary promotion for 14 months. It's a good step up for me and will be good experience, so I am pretty happy with myself at the moment - although I was too tired to do much in the way of celebrating apart from having a quick gin and tonic with Nic on my way home from work. Still though. It's a nice way to start 2016!

I haven't been sewing because work has been so busy - my sewing machine isn't going to see any love until this weekend - but I do have something I sewed during my christmas break to blog about.

So, long-term readers might remember this, but in March 2013 I sewed a By Hand London Elisalex dress from this beautiful Michael Miller fabric:

Wing Song by Michael Miller

I really loved that dress and, when it didn't fit any more, I took it apart and refashioned it. Now, sadly, that dress is also too big and I didn't have the heart to take it apart a second time. The fabric has also faded a bit. I missed this print in my wardrobe though, so I bought two more metres of it and made another Emery dress.

Feckarse Industries dress - Christine Haynes Emery dress bodice with a pleated skirt, worn with Vivienne Westwood for Melissa shoes

It felt a little bit extravagant to buy the exact same fabric again, especially as I am going to hold onto my the original (refashioned) iteration of the dress - for sentimental reasons - but I am glad I did it. One of the great joys of being able to sew is being able to make just what you want to, and this is just what I wanted to make. I love the combination of colours in this dress and the creepy little birds. The print is a winner, basically.

The original dress was named the Feckin' Birds dress, in tribute to an episode of Father Ted.

Fully crow-resistant

For the updated version, it seemed like a good idea to stick with that theme:

Chart provided by Slovakia's premier lens manufacturers

Basically, as I get older, I get closer and closer to the person I am going to ultimately become:

I'm okay with that, to be honest.

So that's the craic there anyway. I'll leave you with one more photo (because, fuck it, why not) and then I'm away. I am really tired and all I want to do now is chill out watch an episode of some kind of cop drama.

FECK! ARSE! DRINK! GIRLS!

Hello! Here we all are now, all the lads. I hope you've all been having a good weekend - I have been having a very relaxing one. Last week was incredibly full, work-wise. After the job interview on Monday, I had a standard-issue busy Tuesday and then I was off to London early on Wednesday morning to spend the rest of the week in all-day meetings. Staying in London for half the week is not my favourite thing to do, but it wasn't so bad this week as I had a comfortable hotel room and I was joined by Nic. He was also working in London and being able to spend the evenings with him made the whole week that bit more bearable. So did going to Amathus after work on Thursday night and buying a bottle of gin, like:

Bobby's Schiedam Dry Gin - very good with tonic, orange peel and cloves

Nic and I got home late on Friday night and I spent yesterday pottering around, getting the flat sorted out and sewing. Today we have done much the same - we put up some more retro tomado shelves (this time in the living room) and now I'm half-watching an episode of Rebus while the dinner cooks. Ken Stott as Rebus, because I have always found John Hannah unaccountably irritating. I'm enjoying it: it's less like a Scottish Morse than I thought it would be, but that's not a bad thing. Every time Ken Stott swears it makes me laugh, and you can't beat the beautiful Edinburgh scenery. I love a good 90s crime show, especially when it was made in 2006.

I have another busy week ahead; January is pretty relentless in my job. But that's okay, because I have fun things to look forward to, delicious gin to drink and a new dress to wear. As I said up above, I spent yesterday sewing and here are the results:

Brownstone dress - Sew Over It vintage shirt dress, worn with Irregular Choice Dippy Daisy shoes

It's another Sew Over It vintage shirt dress. I've been meaning to make another one ever since I made the Larry Vaughn dress last summer but I never got around to it. Not sure why, because I love that dress and really enjoyed making it. I had trouble getting to sleep on Friday night - I think it's because I was a bit over-tired - and as I was trying to sleep I remembered this fabric and it suggested itself to me as a good match for the vintage shirt dress.

The fabric is Cath Kidston barkcloth. I think the print is called Autumn Bloom, and I bought it on ebay. The barkcloth is really lovely to work with - it drapes well, presses well and stitches just disappear into it. Having used it previously on the Bearaigh dress (and having bought a few dresses made from it from their shop) I know it holds up well to washing. It's fairly thick as well, so despite being sleeveless, this will be a good dress to wear during the rest of winter.

While I am very happy with the finished dress, I'm not sure this fabric is 100% the best choice for this pattern. It's pretty thick and, as you can see from the photos above, getting the lapels to lie nice and flat is a bit of a challenge! It's a minor issue and it might not stop me from making another barkcloth shirt-dress if the right fabric came along, you know? When I finished the dress last night I felt a bit meh about it, but it was 11:30 and really dark - when I put it on in daylight I was pretty damn happy with it. I really like it!

As with the Larry Vaughn dress, I cut the size 8 and, as I said before, this pattern has a considerable amount of ease built into it. There's a good reason for that - Karen put it more succinctly than I could - but there is still more than is to my liking. With the Larry Vaughn dress, I ended up going back and taking it in at the sides, and I didn't want to do that here. So I basted the side seams and, when the rest of the dress was constructed apart from the buttonholes, I checked the fit and sewed it up. I ended up using a 2.5cm seam allowance on the side seams, but I made sure to check the fit sitting down as well before I committed to anything! I also lengthened the skirt by 2 inches and I used 12 buttons rather than the recommended 8.

Here's how it looks from the back

Slight issue with the collar aside, I am very happy with the dress. This is such a great pattern. I love the shape of the bodice - the pleats give it a softly structured look that I love, and the same is true for the skirt. As the name suggests, it has a vintage appeal, but it's not costumey at all. When I finished the dress last night, I wondered if it was too twee, but I think it's good.

So, that's the craic there. Obviously I will be keeping an eye out on ebay for more Cath Kidston barkcloth and the success of this dress has led to me mentally pairing it with a few other fabrics in my stash. There will definitely be more of these in my future!

So, I have more London days this week but no more all-day meetings until next week. And by then, January will be over. I mean, February is worse (I hate February: it sucks) but STILL:

Okay, now. That's all the craic I have left so I'm going to go. Laters.

Let's drink at my place so I can walk home.

Analyse, Strategise, Succeed. A.S.S. I'm going to crush this problem with my ass.

Boos? Really, how gauche.

Excuse me, Meryl Streep could play Batman and be the right choice. She is perfection.

I had bread. I had cheese. I had an iron. What was I supposed to do?

You're so nice to me, and I was so mean about your zookeeper dream.

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve lived in New York. It’s still fun to look up and pretend all the buildings are giant severed robot penises.

Oh, what’s this in my shoe? Red carpet insole. Everywhere I go, I’m walking on red carpet.

I sold a Makita cordless drill in the local paper; I got it back as a Christmas present from my brother-in-law, minus the power pack.

They have horse riding as well. I remember I did it last year. Well it wasn't really a horse, it was actually this oul fella. He couldn't go very fast so I had to hit him with the whip a few times.

You can forget about Icey T and Scoopy Scoopy Dog Dog.

Scully, if I'm carrying Marilyn Monroe's purse, do you assume that I've slept with JFK?

I mean, one does not pick dahlias and chrysanthemums in an alpine meadow.

I brought the normal scrabble and the travel scrabble, Ted. The travel scrabble for when we were traveling, and the normal scrabble for when we arrived!.

Up in Dublin they’ve things called buses. Big yokes. With wheels. Big long things. Called buses. With wheels!

I do admire Wonka; he is a true capitalist. His factory has zero government regulation, slave labour and an indoor boat. Wonderful.

Ugh, I hate January. It's dark and freezing and everyone's wearing bulky coats, so you can do some serious subway flirting before you realise the guy is homeless.

You can try to change New York, but it's like Jay-Z says: Concrete bunghole where dreams are made up. There's nothing you can do.

Well, it's the first time I have used that particular chart actually. I got it free with a promotional crate of Carlsberg.

I hope my legacy is a Sesame Street-type TV show that promotes illiteracy in girls.