A little adjustment.

I wore my red broderie anglais dress out on Saturday night to the awesome Fat Pug in Leamington (great pizza and crayfish popcorn) and then The Kenilworth - probably the best cocktail bar in the country.

Anyway, the pouchy bit at the front of my dress was annoying me so I decided to bite the bullet and make some changes. I had hoped that I had enough fabric to re-draft the whole skirt or at least the front, but I only had scraps left. So, I unpicked the waistband and the pleats and the front and re-did them as darts. I just eyeballed this bit and the first attempt was still rather pouchy so I extended the darts further.
And the end result is a big improvement. I also took the opportunity to neaten up the hem by folding it over. My first attempt had started to fray, but then I do find hemming dull.

 
The reason for the night out was that my son was at Beaver Camp. He has done me the honour of being the official photographer again today, so forgive the low camera angle and blurry shots!












The other project of the weekend has been my Burda vest top, which I would say is finished but I think I am going to be tinkering with this too. I made the straps out of doubled-up bias binding but I didn't make them long enough and now I haven't got enough left to re-do them. Doh!

So, as you can see the result is a rather demure vest top (apart from when I lean forward). It's ever so comfy though, really nice to have a slouchy vest top rather than a clingy one.

I also managed to snaffle up a copy of The Great British Sewing Bee at my local library. My husband suggested that was purely so that I could ogle the delicious Patrick. As if! No, I shall be paying close attention to hemming techniques and bias binding... (sigh)





Actually, the other half seems to have caught the sewing bug too. He's been sewing badges on our son's camp blanket. I may be from Brighton, but it's not that sort of camp - it's the blanket Scouts take with them to camp. The tradition is to cover it with badges that you've collected or swapped. It belonged to my husband when he was younger, so there are some great badges from all over the world. He says that sewing the badges on reminds him of when his mum used to sew his badges on. I think that's one of the lovely things about sewing: it connects you with the past. Mind you, my mum hated sewing and used to glue my Brownie badges on until Brown Owl told her off!