Book Bag | Waste Not, Want Not

I’m trying to think of projects to use up some awkward-sized fabric remnants. Apart from making lots of bias binding, a book bag seemed like a good bet | the pretty print cotton was leftover from an apron I made for my mum, with interfaced straps in leftover Zinnia blue gabardine.

Knitting & Stitching Show | Kensington Olympia

Sewing and making inspiration on a large scale | my first Knitting & Stitching Show. I am now the proud owner of some lovely new fabric to play and a new dress pattern to try :)

Zinnia 02 | The French-inspired edition

Another Zinnia, this time in navy gabardine. I love this skirt; it’s perfect with some Breton stripes & a spray of favourite perfume :) I want to make a shorter one next and try the other pattern versions.

Colette Laurel 03 | Floral Jersey edition

A third Laurel dress and even more jersey fabric on sale. This dress cost £8 in total so it would have been rude not to! 

So lessons learned here: don't cut a dress out when you are tired or preoccupied. Particularly this kind of material-  a synthetic jersey which was a pain to sew with. 

Second lesson: I also need to take my measurements and fit my clothes much better; this dress ended up way too big. It was a nightmare to limit stretching, even with bias binding and stay-stitching, but still. I ended up shortening it and taking it in at the sides so it looks much better now I think. All in all, it is a lovely work dress but I might stick to cotton jersey fabrics in the future.

£8 though... :)

Top in an afternoon

 The problem with leftover fabric from a project is that is just seems to accumulate into a fairly random stash. I had off bits of of sale-bargain stripy jersey left over, so decided to fashion a top from it. On the plus side, being fabric-economical make me cut a size smaller, which ended up fitting much better. Lesson learned. 

After much fussing about cutting, this was actually very fast to sew up and finish on the same day. Relaxing and fast fashion :)