Yes I am back!

Well it's only taken me two years, but I have finally come back to trying to start my sewing blog.  The idea of creating a sewing blog to keep me accountable didn't work.   I had such good intentions when I entered those first two posts back in 2011 but I just couldn't get my sewing mojo back.

The problem was that every time I made something I just wasn't happy with how it turned out.  It never looked as good as I hoped it would and I felt I was wasting my expensive fabrics on wadders.  So I just stopped sewing.  I got it in my head that it just isn't possible to look good in anything if you aren't size 16 or below.  I know that is silly now but that was what my crazy mind was telling me.

Then out of a necessity I had to sew something for myself.   Out of necessity you ask!  Well Steve's gorgeous daughter Simone told us she was going to get married in Paris on the 4th January.  As usual I shopped around for an outfit to wear but could find nothing that really suited me or more importantly fitted me.  As it was already quite hot here in Australia our winter clothing was  already out of the stores.  I had never been to Europe in winter before but I knew it would be MUCH colder than a winter here in Australia could ever be. Possibly even snowing.  

What could I wear that was still a little classy but warm?  The wedding was just going to be for family and close friends.  Not a big affair.  Just 25 of us.

A year before I had started making Vogue 2988 (sorry OOP now) in the most beautiful fabric, which I purchased from Astratex here in Melbourne.  I paid an absolute bomb for the fabric. It was an imported European wool and cashmere blend that came in panels.  The colour of the panel started off as black at the bottom and graduated through to a animal print then up to a lovely taupe colour.   Because of my size I needed to purchase two of these panels and I think they were around $80 each!!!  I don't know what possessed me but they had made the jacket up as a sample in the shop and I just loved it. 

The problem was that the sample in the shop was a petite little size 10-12 and I needed to cut a size 20-22.   So when I cut mine out it looked nothing like I envisioned it would be on me.  So I did what I normally do and stuffed it into a plastic bag and put it away in the cupboard.  I was so angry at myself for wasting that beautiful fabric. 

While thinking of what kind of jacket/coat I could make for the wedding I remembered that beautiful expensive fabric and went searching for the bag.   When I pulled it out and looked at it again I thought it could look nice with a classic black wool crepe sheath style dress.   When I tried it on, to my delight it was too big :-)    Fortunately I had sewn this to the stage that all it needed was the lining attached and I was able to alter the fit of the jacket easily by just running it in through the side seams up through the arm. 

This isn't the black dress I wore to the wedding.  The black dress I made for the wedding is at the dry cleaners at the moment.  I will do a post on the fun and games I had making that shortly :-)