Well hello there!

We have upped, moved and landed in the NT, the land of year-long summer sewing.

It seems that there has been a lot going on in blog land.  A big shout out to Liza Jane, who has the best reason ever for sewing stylishly comfortable clothes.  I am sad to see that Mary Nanna has closed up shop.  She was one of my most favourite bloggers ever, and I am keeping her on my blog roll because I am secretly hoping that she will change her mind.  Amy, over at Cloth Habit, has released her first pattern, and I confess, the very first thing I did when I got the internet on was to download the pattern and make it up (well, it did take a long time for that month's worth of emails to download and her pattern is such a jiffy little number).  My version turned out fabulous, if I do say so myself, and I will share it with you sometime in the next few blog posts.  Kbenco is sewing up a storm for her daughter's formal dress and Little Betty is still churning out the garments, though personally, I am coveting her recovered chair.

My sewing machine (and other household items) arrived here sooner than I expected, so I have something to show you.  It arrived long before my car, when I was walking everywhere, even in the middle of the day.  I desperately needed more clothes that covered my shoulders and decollete, so that I wouldn't burn to a crisp with all that walking, so I started with a shirt.

The pattern was inspired by one out of a Patrones magazine.  I didn't used the Patrones pattern because I wanted to develop my own shirt block and make the pattern from that block.

Last year, I went to a workshop at Spotlight with Connie Crawford, to promote her patterns.  We tried on one of her shirts.  I wish I had taken a photo of me wearing her shirt, so I could see how well it fit once I got home.  The shirts were made out of a heavy crepe, which is a forgiving fabric, fit wise.  She told me that all I needed to do was raise the shoulder by half an inch and I could use any of her patterns.  I was a bit confused, because I thought she put me in the size bigger than my bust size, and even I could see that the seams wouldn't close at the hips.  Anyway, I bought the pattern and decided to make a muslin, starting with the pattern as-is, except for raising the shoulder.  I had just bought The Complete Photo Guide to Perfect Fitting by Sarah Veblen,  which is very good, but I found fitting myself to be an immensely frustrating process. 

For starters, the bust point appeared to be too low (which I don't remember from the fitting), so I moved that, which wasn't too hard.  Then I thought it needed to come in in the upper torso and out for the hips and there were a few other wrinkles and pulls happening.  3 muslins in and I thought I was getting close.  There was funny stuff happening at the shoulder so I made a slash there, just to see what would happen, and my whole shoulder burst through.  So then I gave up and draped myself a block on my body double.  The final version doesn't look too far off the Connie Crawford pattern, but I think I did need changes at the shoulder line which should have been made before all the other changes.  There is a little too much ease in the shoulder cap, which is okay for this fabric and style, but I will need to work on that for my next version.  I can swing my arms forward with no binding what-so-ever, which I am happy about.

The shirring on the front neck is just a pretty feature and doesn't incorporate any darting or design features.  I added some width in across the back and shirred it too, just to match in with the front.  This does make the shirt a little too billowy at the back and I am wondering if I should add another group of shirring at the small of my back.

The fabric is a beautiful cotton that I picked up in Japan on holidays 2 years ago.  Cotton fabrics there were very well priced, if you don't take the airfare into account!

I'm glad to be back in blogland, and whilst I have read much of what you have all written, I will only start commenting from this point forward...the absence of my comments does not mean that I don't think that you all are sewing fabulous stuff!  xx