Do you ever have those weekends, where Saturday morning
rolls around and you think ‘YEAH, I am going to get SO MUCH DONE this weekend’
well, the weekend I am about to tell you about started out like that.
I had one task on my ‘must
do’ list, and then a whole bunch of other things that were on the ‘I’ll do if I
have time’ list. The ‘must do’ task was to make an irish dancing skirt for my
goddaughter. It was her birthday the following weekend, and it needed to be ready
to be parcelled up as a present and sent off. I’d never made one before, and I
was using stretch fabric, which perhaps isn’t my forte, and a twin needle, that
I’d never used before either. BUT HEY. What could go wrong.
I was so confident about this self drafted pattern that I
was going to do a tutorial for you guys. LOOK. AH how I now laugh at the sweet naïve
me that preceeded that weekend. OH HOW I HAVE LEARNT NOW.
Failure number one
was: pinking shears. They are pinkING shears, not pinkY shears. Apparently I
misheard. This was the last photograph I took. Everything started to go
downhill from there. I would also like to point out that the first thing I did
when this happened was jam my finger in my mouth and run to the sink, because I
had no idea how deep I’d cut and I was damned if I was going to bleed on my
fabric! I then got Mr P to get me a plaster – I’m obsessed with plasters, I
love them, it’s an unhealthy love, a truly unhealthy one.
I thought doing the majority of the sewing on the overlocker
was a GREAT IDEA. Because overlockers are fab with stretch fabric, that’s what
they’re best at. So I did. Forgetting of course that I was trying to put godets
into a skirt is possibly not the easiest thing to do on an overlocker. I
totally managed it though. Had to go over some of them a few times. And they
looked a bit funny. But hey.
I then decided to do the waistband with a twin needle.
Honestly, I don’t know what I was doing wrong, but the two threads kept
twisting together in my machine, and all I could find online about it was the
words ‘make sure your threads don’t twist together’ which is SO HELFPUL. But, I
persevered, stopping every few inches. Only a skirt for a 9 year old, so it
wasn’t that big, it didn’t matter so much. And I got it finished. And then I
cried. IT WAS JUST SO UGLY. In retrospect, I gave it the designation of ‘looks
pretty ugly on the hanger, might look alright on’. But at the time I thought my
world was ending. So I sulked. And by sulked, I mean I did baking. Don’t judge
me.
Baking done, I sat back down at the sewing machine. I needed
something to give my goddaughter, and the ugly skirt just wasn’t going to cut
it. So I decided to make her a simple patchwork tote bag to take her dancing
things in, and a notebook cover. I’ve made the notebook covers before ,
just once or twice, and I am a MASTER at sewing these up. Seriously, I find
them so quick and easy now. So, I decided to embroider a quote onto a patch on
my machine, nice and quick, and then stitch it to the notebook cover. I got to
the final stages of making said notebook cover, and wrapped it around the
notebook only to find IT DID NOT FIT. I don’t know how. I’ve made SO MANY of
these. And yet, this one didn’t work. Ugh. Failure weekend had me again.
So, I turned it into a cute little failure pouch. Which I
put the ugly skirt into (I’d decided to send it to her as a prototype, as
without seeing it on her, I couldn’t make any adjustments).
THE PATCHWORK TOTE WAS NOW MY ONLY HOPE. And patchwork is
REALLY not my strong point. Actually patchwork is probably a bit of an overstatement
at this point. Each side of the tote was made with 6 squares. That bit went
FINE. I decided to line it to make it look all professional and nice, and also
decided that it would be cute to put a pocket on the inside, with her name
embroidered on it . Ok, so I’m a bit obsessed with the feature on my machine
that means I can embroider letters… anyhow, I went to press the lining, which went
fine! And then went to press the pocket down, the pocket which was made out of
the same fabric as the lining, and THE IRON MELTED IT. I still have no idea how
this happened. Demon Iron. Anyway, it fortunately didn’t melt it too much, and
the pocket was salvageable.
Next, I went to stitch the lining into the bag. This is
probably my only ‘win’ moment of the weekend. It’s less of a win, and more of
an averted fail. I came within inches of sewing the lining to the outer bag completely
and leaving no room to turn it right side out. BUT fortunately I realised my
mistake in time, and just had to turn it through a TINY HOLE instead.
It actually looked pretty cute though. So I parcelled it all
off and sent it to the birthday girl. Then I did more baking.
Happy June guys – it’s got to be better than that!
Katy x
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