This is your proverbial stitch in time: I got to it before the worn patch wore right through, and have consequently got away with a honeycomb darn. I like doing these: they are comparatively quick; they take no set-up whatsoever; the technique is easy (it’s just blanket stitch, with each stitch of each inside ring catching the bar of the one before), and when the worn patch inevitably gets broader you can add another round or two. I probably shouldn’t have used pink; it’s going to look like my heel’s bleeding. Oh well.
This is a needlecord tunic sort of thing, from Fat Face via a charity shop. The colour of the photo is way off: it’s actually navy blue. I am not the first person to mend this. I think I did a neater job, though. (Mine’s the one on the right.)
I have caught up with all ten seasons of The Great British Sewing Bee over the last year, and, while it’s great fun, it does convey a somewhat distorted impression of sewing for fun, with an entirely artificial sense of urgency. After all, very few of us would deliberately set out to make a prom dress in five hours.
The exception, of course, is the “fancy dress costume for a child” transformation challenge; it is quite plausible that one might find oneself landed with the obligation to produce an outfit FOR TOMORROW and then cough up a quid for the privilege.
To be clear, this isn’t what happened here (apart from the charity donation bit). My child is not yet speaking and doesn’t know what fancy dress is. And I had rather more than ninety minutes warning. However, I did feel that turning:
A yellow T-shirt which we already owned
Waffley leggings which we already owned
A red fluffy pompom, a pack of which has been sculling around my house since my husband sang Mister Mistoffelees at the 2022 Discworld Convention (don’t ask)
A chiffon scarf, £1 from Oxfam
A square of brown felt, £1.40 from the haberdashery department of our local toy/bike/model/DIY/craft shop
into an ice cream, over the course of three lunchtime naps, was very much in the Sewing Bee spirit.
This was a couple of months ago, and I shouldn’t think any of it will fit any more even if it were the weather for T-shirts, however bedecked they might be. But I did find a larger, yellow, frilly T-shirt in a charity shop today, so maybe it’s worth taking some care in disassembling the thing…
This dress was originally meant for a wedding on 6 July. I sat up most of the night on the 4th (election night, you will remember). Eventually, round about the time the Labour majority was official as opposed to just obvious, I conceded defeat myself. The smocking was all finished (I’d made life hard for myself by doing the back as well as the front) but there was no way I was going to get the seams and the hem and the buttons done. I went to bed and was up again a few hours later for the drive to Exeter (not with me behind the wheel, I hasten to add). The wedding was the day after, and was a great success. The baby wore Smocked Dress 1.
As I remarked back when I finished that one, there were several things I did differently. The main one was making the pleats half the size, which instantly made the whole thing look tidier. The other thing about this dress is that it’s shaped entirely by the smocking. If you were to take all the pleats out (please don’t; it takes forever) you’d find that it’s made of three rectangles, one at the front and two at the back. The shape of the armholes is formed by judicious use of more and less elastic embroidery stitches. I smocked the whole thing then turned in the edges at the neck and armholes. In that sense it’s a zero waste pattern. I’m torn between feeling vaguely virtuous about that and a little bit sad there aren’t any scraps to use for patchwork.
I didn’t quite get it done in time for the baby’s birthday. But she wore it to her birthday party, then to mine, then to her great-aunt’s. Smocking is quite stretchy, so if only the weather holds up it might get a few more outings. For the moment, though, I’m attempting to knit a sock.
This is not the finest garment I’ve ever sewn. It won’t be even when it’s finished. The pleats are too deep, the tension is irregular, the smocking goes closer to the left armhole than to the right, the bias binding is very slightly brighter than the main fabric, and the less said about my feather stitch, the better.
However, this was my first attempt at smocking, and once I got down to the Vandyke stitch and surface honeycomb on the bottom rows I was enjoying myself hugely. It’s also the first garment I’ve made for my daughter, and a trial run for a second little smocked dress. It doesn’t need to be perfect.
Kathleen Jowitt 