Trial and error

I gave myself permission to have a guilt-free sewing day today. (I never have to ask Smithers’ permission, I’m the one who always thinks I should be doing something else.)

It’s been a bit of a frustrating day though, probably because I’m still tired from our weekend away. (We both are.) So I got myself into a bit of a muddle trying to practise lining the toile of the bodice of the three-tiered sleeveless dress in the professional way, in which both the top and the lining are fully machine stitched together and ‘bagged out’. It wasn’t helped by the fact that the pattern I have is an Australian make, and according to their instructions they do things differently there it seems! Every YouTube video I watched also had a different method and I was quite bemused by it all.

I did eventually manage to make the top of my toile out of an old bed sheet, although not before a few tears welled up in frustration at the bagging out process. I then gathered and stitched the top tier of the skirt to the lined bodice, and took this photo to upload to Blip. It was only when I took the sewing out of the machine and lifted the part-made dress up that I discovered that my bobbin had run out of thread shortly after I’d started, and only a few inches of the top tier of the skirt were actually attached to the bodice!

PS The top fabric in the pile behind the machine is the double gauze in which I want to make the proper three-tiered sleeveless dress. The other two fabrics arrived yesterday and will await my attention if and when I manage to make the first dress.