oops, i broke summer

Ok, I can exclusively reveal that the reason the bank holiday scorcher failed to materialise in northern England this weekend isn't anything to do with the Met office messing up their climate prediction models. In fact it has nothing to do with patterns of precipitation and airflow across Europe at all. It's because I sewed myself a sundress! Sorry about that.

The clouds began to gather last week when Mr Rubbishknitter bought a tent on ebay. And now the sewing action, I fear, has sent the sun packing from our skies, and it is unlikely to return until the new dress has fallen apart in the wash. (But don't worry - according to my garment lifespan prediction models, this may happen rather soon.)


I don't know what the fabric is, a lovely friend of mine donated it to the rubbishseamstress cause a while ago. I am a big fan of checky print and was very pleased to discover that the gridlike nature of the pattern makes it relatively easy to sew in a straight line. Although you may detect some wobbling, particularly around the zip area. Zips, in the context of sewing, give me the fear a little bit. I dealt with this using beer, which had a very beneficial effect on my general sense of wellbeing, but not so much on the rectilinear nature of the seams.

I picked a pattern which purported to be Very Easy. It's Butterick 5180, and I would recommend it for other sewing numpties looking for a quick easy dress. There are only 4 pattern pieces, and I managed to join them all together in roughly the right places. It's not amazing, but my expectations were pretty low. There was a minor disaster when I pulled a thread turning it inside out, but this turned out to be fixable using only a knitting needle and some swearing. It's a very basic straight up, straight down shift dress with no shaping so is a bit baggy and not tremendously flattering. The pointy bits at the neck are a little floppy, possibly because the interfacing I used was too lightweight. And if I'd had enough common sense to centre the pattern around the neckline, it would have looked much better. But to be honest I'm just pleased that I managed to complete a wearable garment on a sewing machine without permanently attaching any of my fingers to it. Now, if you will excuse me, i'm off to put a jumper on...