Take Two

This week I got down and dirty with jersey.  Yep, and I can fairly safely say I will not be doing that again!  I found this gorgeous brown/pink/orange jersey fabric recently and when I saw The Great British Sewing Bee's (TGBSB) pattern for a tea dress, I though they would make a perfect combo.  Cutting out was ok using a rotary cutter, but sewing was, well, not without frustration.  I'd read up on tips on how to sew jersey and I thought that having mastered oilcloth, I'd get a handle on this stuff easily enough.  Using my ball-point needle and walker foot I began cautiously in the appropriate stretch stitch and whilst some of it went ok, most of it was very messy indeed and prompted rather a lot of swear words that filled the shed.  I carried on regardless, desperately not wanting to add to my pile of ufos and actually, in the end, not peeking at inside seams at all, it has turned out fine and only took about an hour and a half to put together as it has only a few pieces (front, back, facings and sleeves).  It fits, it's comfortable and I still LOVE the fabric.  This is Nancy showing it off above, named by my daughter and I think it suits her.  Said daughter is a little perturbed by her not having a head and begs me to give her the blue one that lives in my shed… relax it's polystyrene and generally just looks dandy sporting a venetian mask as I don't find myself at many fiestas around here.
Anyway, I digress… someone very kindly gave me an overlocker last year but I haven't yet tried it out; I'm sure that would have whipped through jersey without a hiccup, but I haven't yet plucked up the courage to use it. The GBSB pattern instructions were very clear but since I made the dress from jersey I avoided the need for an invisible zip, so I'll tackle that with my next project.  Job done!

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The gathered sleeve, first tried out last week!

This is the version in the book.

I also made these in the week, they're my hi-top bags in matt black oilcloth with deckchair and pink geo linings. 

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