Channelling Oona

Over the last few weeks I have been very busy with uni and more uni stuff, and sewing has taken a back seat, with the second half of Roswell Week postponed. To cheer myself up slightly, and completely disregarding my pledge to sew from my stash, I popped into Edinburgh Fabrics and bought the jazziest fabrics I could see.. Oops!!

These magnificent fabric choices make feel a little bit closer to the awesomeness of the lovely Oona, and her love of pattern and colour.

First we have a peacock feather cotton, probably to become a simple dress..

And then this fabulous flamingo print cotton, DESTINED to be a hawaiian stylee 50s shirt dress.

Now I just need some time to sew.....

Roswell day 3 - bird box cushions

Item completed - Bird box cushions.

State before Roswell Week -cut out. 

Reason for abandonment - I got distracted

Time spent as an UFO - as foam cushions that needed covering, a year? as cut out pieces, about a month. 

Time used to finish - about an hour

"chump" factor felt for not having done it sooner -pretty terrible for the amount of time it took me to buy the fabric, not so bad for the rest. 


Ok, this isn't actually finished, as I only finished one, but I though I would check it worked properly for sewing the other one up. 


For many years we had some uncomfortable kitchen chairs, which I cut out some foam squares to make more comfortable. These gradually became slightly disgusting, as I never got round to covering them. Then I got some new chairs, from a second-hand scrap yard in Prestonpans. They were far more pretty, but the foam was still useful.We also have window seat, and the cushions at the end always flopped down and weren't comfy, so I rolled up a bit of foam to make a bolster to prop everything up, which I also never covered. 


I eventually found some fun bird fabric in Ikea. I have never made a box cushion before, and I am not sure I sewed it all up in the correct order, but it seemed to work. I put in zips and everything. As stated in my previous post, the bolster was a bit tricky as it isn't a perfect cylinder or anything, and I made a bit of a hash of bits of it, but luckily these are not visible in use! yay!

Roswell Week day 2 The Meringues don't agree with me skirt

OK, its not day 2, but the weather was so nice over the weekend that I didn't sew anything, instead choosing to ride around on my bicycle.

Item completed - The Meringues don't agree with me skirt.

State before Roswell Week - finished apart from hand stitching the facings, but it didn't fit right. 

Reason for abandonment - I wasn't sure what to do with it. 

Time spent as an UFO - about a month (borderline current project!)

Time used to finish - about an hour

"chump" factor felt for not having done it sooner - not too bad, I tried this fairly recently, and I did need to think about it. 

Well, as you may remember from my previous post, I (like every other sewer on the planet) had tried to make a meringue skirt from the Colette patterns sewing book, only I wasn't very happy with it. Now this wasn't the fault of the pattern, it came together very easily, and for once, wasn't the fault of my inability to read instructions. I really  like the way it looks on other people, particularly Sarah's nice denim version and Scruffy badger's pinstripes.  I just didn't like it on me. I used some nice sturdy stretch cotton, with bright flowers. The fabric isn't quite as lurid as it looks in these pictures. I managed to follow the instructions and worked out how to do an invisible zip perfectly for the first time. I did forget that with Colette skirt patterns I always end up taking a bit off the waist/hip area (I thought it might be just the waist, but it turns out its not) so it was a little large, but reasonable. I thought the scallops might be tricky, but they weren't at all. And then I tried it on and I didn't like it. Rats. As you can see from the pics below, its perfectly wearable, its just a little blah, which is much more visible in real life than the pictures, it just didn't move right on my figure somehow.

I hemmed and hawed a bit, and decided that it was the shape that was wrong. On me I think it either has to be more aggressively A-line, or tighter, this treads a line in between that doesn't work with my hips. I was then a bit stuck, if this was a normal skirt I would just peg it, but this had scallops.. it was going to be a horrible mess if I got it wrong. So I tried first sewing down inside to remove one whole scallop from each side of the front and back. I would have taken a comedy picture of the result, but I couldn't walk far enough to get a clear shot, plus I hadn't taken it from high enough so it poofed around my hips-the end result looked a bit like I was wearing one leg of a massive pair of jodhpurs. I pulled that out and tried again, this time I sewed down so I ended up exactly in the middle of a scallop, so the scallop goes across the side seam. Result! the skirt now looks much more plausible on me. I also cut an inch off one side of the waistband (sloppy I know to only do one side, but the other side had the perfect zip in it, anyhow it looks fine!)

In case anyone is wondering about the title, it is referencing to the fact that I have problems with meringues in real life too, as they are made with eggs which I am allergic to. 

beautiful invisible zip (no, I didn't even try to match the pattern. but it's so busy it doesn't matter)

I am also making progress on my box cushions, with some more nice neat zip action.