You might remember I made a black linen top a while back which wasn’t a great success. Well I had some linen left over and thought I might have a go at making a dress for myself. Nothing complicated you understand, I think we’ve all come to realise I don’t do complicated! So once again using the two rectangle pieces of fabric sewn together formula, I set about my task. Now whilst the linen itself is  a beautiful fabric its quite hard work to work with. Its lovely to sew, but the devil is in the detail and when ironing linen, I was advised to use a damp cloth to prevent the fabric from going shiny. I honestly couldn’t be bothered to use a damp cloth as I’d have to keep re-dampening it. So I just use an old cotton tea towel between the linen and the iron, this seems to work pretty well. It does however make the ironing of seams and hems just that little bit more complicated.  The ironing takes forever, and as my ironing board is down stairs and my sewing room is upstairs I’m forever running up and down the stairs! Seeing as my exercise regime has gone out the window since starting to sew, I am at least getting some form of exercise.

I’m quite happy with the finished product. My husband though keeps telling me I need to make something with more shape, but I like it. I like shapeless.

Not very interesting hanging up.

The boat neck.

Sorry for the blurry pic and dusty mirror.

One of my very lovely friends has such utter faith in me that she asked me to make her  a dress! We were in Merchant & mills (again) as I was buying more fabric, and she spied a pink version of the blue & white one that I have, and she does love pink, and she asked if I could make her a dress? I said I’d have a go! Basically she was asking for a dress version of the top I’ve already made. And Kristina was so easy going about it that there was no pressure, other than what i put myself under. I just didn’t want to mess up the fabric she’d bought!

Here it is!

The back. I like the neckline at the back.

Seams finished nicely. Way better than my first top!

Fairly tidy neck at front, slightly wonky stitching though!

Kristina was very happy with it, but decided she would like pockets too. I’ve never done pockets, so this was another little challenge. She sure does like to give me little challenges. And every time, I say “I’m not sure I can do that”, and every time Kristina says ” You can do it darling”.  And so I have!

I’ve put things in the pockets so they can be seen better.