Late to the party...

The Easter holiday has made me late to Daisy’s Sew-A-Long, but better late than never!

You may remember my good fortune with the chosen pattern from this post, so I bought my fabric – a happy springtime floral – and set out to make a good start the other evening. I didn’t assume that I’d finish the entire skirt, I haven’t sewn clothing since I was, like, 14, but I imagined a decent amount of progress.

So with the pattern instructions on my left, and Daisy’s Part One tutorial on my iPad to the right, I pinned on the pattern pieces my grandma had cut out years ago.

All was going well, but I noticed I had four little tissue facing pieces rather than just the two pictured in the instructions. I grabbed the phone and rang Grandma; she assured me that all was fine, there just happened to be two of each facing piece, probably from a duplicate pattern she had for my mother.

I told her I had pinned all the pieces and was going to cut the fabric into pieces. Then she asked me a question.

“Chrissie, is the floral pattern all over, or does it go in one direction?”

I stared at the fabric. “Erm...all over. No, wait. There’s a big pink flower that’s in one direction. Oh, drat!”

I was grateful that my grandma had saved me from a Great British Sewing Bee-type gaff, but then I felt the frustration of a project interrupted. Why couldn’t I have chosen a simple solid colour? Why must I make things more difficult for myself?

“Grandma, I don’t have enough fabric to pin the panel the other way. I’ll have to go buy some more tomorrow.” Cue pouting and grumbling.

Then my mom, who was on the other phone at Grandma’s, chimed in: “Go crochet something.”

So I sat in the corner and did what my mother told me.

The crochet corner

Next morning I had a crochet lesson to teach, but straight after I zipped to the haberdashery and bought more fabric. Now the pieces fit in the right direction.

This time I was confident to cut the fabric.

I now have my skirt pieces ready to start sewing, I have a good amount of leftover fabric to use for other projects (I bought extra because it was inexpensive and I feel more secure with some back-up fabric)...

...and I have a jolly colourway to use for a crochet blanket someday! This strip is from the selvedge, which offers wonderful little dots of yarn inspiration!

Next step: Get sewing! More on that soon...

Chrissie x

P.S. I’ve put a top tulip tip on my Facebook page – please check it out if you’re a tulip fan! (And a top FB tip from a friend: when you click ‘Like’ on a FB page, hover on the ‘Like’ button until a menu drops down. Then click on ‘Get notifications’ so you can actually receive all of the regular updates of that page!)