Dressmaking

Nowadays, I tend to avoid making my own clothes (although as a teenager most of my wardrobe was either handmade or adapted from jumble sale finds). The main reason is that whenever I do make something, I generally don't wear it, which seems such a waste of fabric, time and effort. The things that I have made over the last few years include a beautiful silk top, with an enormous pussy bow, a handful of dresses, one of which involved some quite sophisticated boning in the bodice. They all turned out fine (no wobbly zips or lop-sided shoulders) and would have looked lovely on…someone else! But not me. And that's the trouble, I was choosing garments that were completely unsuited to my lifestlye (in my deluded imagination I must see myself as some sort of chic and sophisticated Tippi Hedren style girl-about-town).

Not everything I've made has ended up in a bag destined for the local charity shop; the above trousers (although I don't claim to look quite as lovely in them as the model) and this tunic are much loved and frequently worn. However, as much as I love the tunic, Burda patterns are a real faff: not only do you have to print them out in sections and then carefully piece them together, you also have to add on the seam allowance. Get it wrong, and you end up with a too tight, skewiff garment that looks as if it's been made for a hunchback.

But I think I may have hit the jackpot with my latest pattern purchase from Merchant and Mills. I can actually see myself wearing this fisherman's style top (bet you'd never catch Tippi Hedren in one). And as Merchant and Mills supply their patterns, ready cut on sturdy card, I can get straight down to the business of cutting the fabric! I'm currently leaning towards making it up in a light tweed, or perhaps some other kind of men's suiting fabric. Of course, I could always make it in my favourite Japanese woven cloth, which I just can't get enough of and am also using on my Chinese coins quilt.

Note to self: if using the same fabric for the tunic avoid all contact with finished quilt; you risk a) looking like a Magrite optical illusion, and b) plain daft.

What do you think?

Elizabeth,
x.