Miaou

Things have been rather quiet on the blog front - I have been busy putting together a dress for Eilish for a school project. She wanted a traditional spanish dancer’s dress. I used an old T-shirt of mine, 4 metres of plain blue cotton and 3 metres of spotty. I cut the t-shirt down, cut the polka-dot material into strips and hemmed them, then gathered them and added them to the plain blue fabric (which I had cut so that it was narrower at the top than at the bottom. Then I ran a seam up the side to join the skirt, gathered and pinned the top and sewed it to the bottom of the t-shirt (which I had cut shorter to make it waist length). The only spanner in the works was my *!?$&* sewing machine which would not sew through the t-shirt material and kept skipping stitches - I struggled through altering the body of the t-shirt, but when it came round to the sleeves and to adding the skirt, I gave up and sewed it by hand! Consequently, I ran out of time to add ruffles to the sleeves. Ah well.

It might seem like a lot of work to do for a school project, but Eilish had been wanting a long frilly dress for ages (and shops don’t sell them above the age of about 4!), and it will come in again for the Town Gala Fancy Dress Competition in the summer (for which I might have recovered enough patience to add sleeve ruffles). She is very pleased with it and it went down very well at school too.

Way back in the mists of time (December actually), I won a prize from Mee Crafty , but until now I haven’t got around to posting a picture! Sorry about that. So here it is:

The little box is made of padded fabric and the pattern is just delightful! I love the rose brooch too - I am knitting a grey cardigan at the moment and I think it will be just the thing to jolly it up. Although you can’t tell from the picture, the threads are all glossy - gorgeous! I am keeping them in a safe place until I can think of something special to use them for! Thank you very much Chloe, it is a lovely prize.

OK - now for the tute. When Caitlin wanted to dress up as a Victorian Match Girl for Halloween last year, I bought this brown corduroy skirt from a charity shop for £3. We sewed patches all over it and she was very pleased with the result. I was rather pleased with the skirt and thought I might wear it after she had finished with it! However, being somewhat, erm, vertically challenged, I looked like I was dressing up in my mother’s clothes. It almost reached the floor! A perfectly good look for my daughter, not so good on me.

So I decided to shorten it. However, what to do with all the leftover material? I decided to make a feature of it and turn it into a flounce. If you want to have a go too, just follow these instructions!

Step 1: Find your skirt

Step One: Find your skirt! This one is very long and cut on the bias. This would work equally well with a shorter skirt, but the fuller it is the fuller your flounce will be.

Step 2: Cut off the excess

Step Two: Cut 24cm evenly off the bottom and cut it into two. Make the upper piece slightly wider than the lower one to allow for adding a hem. The pieces above are 13cm and 11cm wide. Cut each piece at the side to make two long lengths.

Step 3: Oversew the edges

Step Three: Using a zigzag stitch on your machine, oversew all the raw edges (top edge on the lower strip, top and bottom edges on the upper strip).

Step 4: Turn the hem

Step Four: Fold up and press a hem on the upper piece cut from the skirt. Sew neatly using a medium length straight stitch. Sew both strips together at each end to create one large loop.

Step 5: The gathering stitch

Step Five: Using a contrasting thread, sew a running stitch through the top of the fabric as close to the edge as you can.

Step 6: Pin evenly

Step Six: By folding the skirt, find and pin the centre of each panel; pin each side then place pins in the centre of each section (eight pins altogether).

Step 7: Pin the flounce

Step Seven: Pin the length of fabric in the same way. Then line up each pin and, with right sides facing, pin both fabrics together.

Step 8: Pull up the gathers!

Step Eight: Draw up the contrasting threads, carefully arranging the gathers evenly along each section. Pin at small intervals.

Step 9: Sew to skirt

Step Nine: Using a medium length stitch and a heavy duty needle, carefully sew just below the contrast gathering stitch, rearranging the gathers as necessary.

Step 10: Finished!

A close-up of the flounce

Step Ten: Remove the contrast stitching, press if you need to, then wear with pride and wait for the compliments!

Sadly I have no-one here to take a pic of me in the skirt, but I must say that the flounce works really well, and swings beautifully as I walk!