A Literal Overload of Sewing

The old sewing machine has been working overtime lately. I'm just a teensy bit obsessed with making my own clothes at the moment. Remember my original red dress, back in March? Weeeellll, I wasn't all that happy with it in the end; the untidy purple stitching and the baggy neckline put me off. I was umming and ahhhing about what to do to fix it, but as it happens, I actually had loads of fabric left so I made myself a whole new one:

Ta da!!!

I'm much happier with this one; I used matching thread and everything. I altered the pattern so the neckline comes in more at the shoulders and no longer flashes my bra straps, made a casing for the neck elastic which gets rid of the "baggy back" problem, and added in pockets. You gotta have somewhere to keep your tissues. The flowers are a line of black lace trim which I just folded around and in on itself to make the flower shape, then just zigzaged it on, using virtually my entire stash of pins in the process. Add a black button to the centre et voila. Quite Rennie Mackintosh-esque, I think.

So, what did I do with the first dress? The top half was pretty unsalvageable, but the bottom half was fine, so I just cut it off. I got a cheap 2-quid-Primark-special-t-shirt, cut the bottom off that, then stitched the two together like so:

(Good, old, hardworking black cardi. I re-dyed it last week, along with an oldish pair of black trousers, and they're both as good as new. Hurrah for mend-and-make do.)

Awesomesauce. A whole other outfit out of a mistake.

I'm just about to finish another red dress, with black polka dots, which I'll share ASAP, along with a green and a grey which are already finished. In fact, I'm wearing the grey right now! Jersey is so comfortable and nice and light for summer. If it ever returns properly, that is.