Oh! I. Give. Up!

Still basking in the glow of renewed enthusiasm for the much loved and much neglected (in this house at least) art of dressmaking, and housebound because of the high winds and torrential rain battering the house, I decided to spend a happy hour cutting out jeans for Little Stitch and the black and white gingham blouse for myself.

Ahhhh, the best laid plans of mice and sewers.

The jeans that Ma S-I-L had donated to the cause are far too tiny to be cut for Little Stitch.  I’m going to have to filch an old pair from get Mr Stitch to find an old pair of his, and try those, or, sadly, I will just have to go fabric shopping next week. Tragic!

So I pinned the pattern to the board for later and laid the fabric and pattern pieces for the blouse on the table ready to press, pin and cut:

Hmmm. At first glance this looks like it’s going to work, but what you can’t see is that the fabric has a flaw.  A yellow line running down each edge of the fabric, intermittently, about 5 or 6 centimetres in from the selvedge.  On both selvedges. As the fabric has been washed and I don’t have a receipt, there is little I can do about this.

So, as I have to cut around the flaw, there simply isn’t enough fabric.

At this point I suggest you insert your own expletive.

Thankfully, there’s enough fabric to cut a shell top, with a short sleeve, if I cut carefully.  It won’t shouldn’t take me long to draft that, but at this point I’m doing the wise thing.

I’ve packed the pattern away for another day (before I put a match to it), ditto the fabric.  I’m pouring myself a glass of something therapeutic and curling up with my man, Ugly Betty and my knitting.

I’m making a start on this for Mr Stitch:

It’s official title is “Snowflake Jacket” but Chez Stitches its “The Starsky and Hutch Cardigan”.  I’m not doing it in the proscribed yarn as Rowan yarns and I simply don’t get on, but in Patons Jet, which I bought for the princely sum of 79p a ball!

I shall, of course, be starting off with a swatch!