zips, rick rack and sleeves

Another weekend and more sewing. This weekend I cut out the A line skirt pattern I bought over the inter webs. Either I did something really wrong or the pattern was wrong because the waist pieces did not match the skirt pieces. I did some creative "adding of material" to the waist pieces so they matched. Phew. Then came the kicker....time to sew a zip for the first time since I was about 20. Yes I had a zipper foot for the sewing machine but I had no idea how to use it. I figured I would manage with the normal foot. And I did. It may not be the most beautiful zip in the world but it goes up and down and the skirt fits and stays on. It's made of some patchwork material that has been sitting in the cupboard for many years. Like I'm going to do any patchwork! Pfffft.

What's that you see? Yes indeed it's rick-rack. Rick rack is a running joke in our family. As a child my mother sewed lots of my clothes and invariably they were decorated with some kind of rick rack. I couldn't resist buying some a few weeks ago and I figured since I had mucked up the waistband on the skirt by sewing the bias binding to the wrong side and then having to turn it into a "feature" that I may as well do the same for the hem and then rick rack away. Perhaps I got a little carried away. Whatever. I sit in my office all day. I'll wear what I like.

Buoyed by my (ahem) success with the new A-line skirt pattern I decided to try a new dress pattern. This one came from spotlight this morning where I finally caved and became a VIP member after the zillionth time of them asking me. I was going to do the "no sleeves" version but then I thought, "Hey, I can sew a zip! How hard can sleeves be?". Well the answer dear friends is quite hard especially if you cut the material probably a size too big and then have to sew in the side seams meaning that the arm holes don't match the sleeve pieces any more. It's more difficult when you only realise this at the point of sewing the sleeves into the arm holes after you have hemmed them etc. At first I ended up with weird puffy sleeves where I had to gather the excess sleeve material to make it fit the arm hold. Then I decided that I was not Anne of Green Gables so I sewed the excess down, sort of like a reverse dart. I'm calling it a topstitch kind of feature. Luckily the busy pattern means you can't really see it. Anyway, although it looks like a tent on the hanger it fits pretty well after all my adjusting and I might even wear it to work tomorrow.

And that is the end of my sewing adventures for the weekend.