Progress at last

I was sewing till about 12.30 last night, but I did make some progress with my dress. I've finished the bodice, so I now only have the skirt to stitch together, gather into the waist (urk!) and then put in the concealed zip. Maybe 'only' doesn't cover it. Still, I reckon that's about 1 day of sewing and I'll be done.

See the understitching next to the seam?

I learnt all about understitching last night. Understitching is where you take your seams and sew them on to the lining, to stop edges of lining or facing rolling forwards. It gives a much neater and more professional edge and is pretty easy to do. There's an excellent guide here on YouTube that helped me.

Before (left) and after (right)

However, I did make one mistake, which was trying to irom my seams down before stitching. As you can see form the photo below, the pins left massive holes! I'm hoping they'll fade or be repaired by ironing later. So annoyed with myself!

Today will be mostly spent on some much needed housework and garden tidying and then it's back behind the machine tomorrow.

I also just wanted to share Debi's version of the simplicity pattern I'm planning to sew for the Hepburn and Hepburn project - what amazing colours. Thanks to Sarah for tellinbg me about it. I'm very excited now!

Hepburn and Hepbut project

I've decided to join in Sarah's project sewing - somehthing related to one of the Hepburns. Since no part of me could be described as petite, I'm not going to go for Audrey.

Katharine Hepburn, on the other hand, has been one of my favourite actresses for a long time and inspired my middle name (Lauren Bacall having inspired my first!), so I'm going to give an outfit in her style a go. Eva Dress have a 1930s dress which is apparently something she wore in her first film. It's nice, but I'm not sure it's my thing.

Instead, I think I'm going to go for Simplicity 3688. I like the trousers and the top, so I'm going to give the 2 a go. As soon as I get back from Goodwood I'll be buying some suitable fabric and will probably start on the trousers.

Sarah is giving away some lovely patterns in conjunction with this sew along project - check out http://www.rhinestonesandtelephones.com/ for full details!