Stashbusting Sewalong: February theme "Let's Talk About Love"

For my February themed stashbust, I have once again made a dress for my daughter. Remember this dress that I made for her last February? This new dress is the first one that I have made for her since then. (I know, slack mummy). It is a twist front bodice dress with full circle skirt.

The fabric that I used I bought last year specifically to make a dress for her. I even justified it to myself as not adding to my stash because it wasn't for me. It was an absolute bargain though. From memory it was $5 per metre. Well, everything is fair game this year, and if the fabric was already in my house at the start of the year I'm counting it as stash.

Last year when I bought pattern magic, I picked out a few techniques to try ASAP. Better late than never, this is my first project using this book.

I think I told my daughter the day before that I was making something for her, and it came together quite quickly. I had the pattern drafted and dress sewn all in one day while she was at school. I didn't quite use the whole piece of fabric, but it did use up 1.4m of fabric (150cm wide!) Most of this is from the circular skirt, which I cut out in one piece. The bodice is all self lined, as the front needed to have the same fabric front and back for the twist.

Getting ready to......

Twirl!

She absolutely loves it. You'd be forgiven if you think that it looks a little large on her, that's because I made it a size bigger than she currently wears. Being near the end of summer she won't get to wear it much this season, especially now that she is at school 5 days a week wearing a uniform. I already have it earmarked to wear to her first piano concert which should be sometime in September. (But now that I've done that, my son will be needing a new shirt for his concert too!

I only noticed after I'd taken all the photos
that this lion has an Oreo perched on it's nose!
Can you see it?

Not bad for a first effort with Japanese pattern making techniques. I'm thinking of trying something like this for myself with a self stripe fabric that I have - there'll be lines going everywhere!

I've gone Antique Singer sewing machine crazy!

What am I obsessed about at the moment? Antique Singer sewing machines, that's what.

At the end of last year I acquired two (more) antique Singer treadles. (Thank you eBay!) Added to my existing machines, that brought my total to four Antique Singers. A bit excessive you say? I hear you, I don't know what it is about them, but I start to swoon when I see a beautiful Singer. Add in a gorgeous cabinet, in mint condition if possible, and I might even start drooling.

Up until these latest two machines entered my house, I hadn't even been able to try out the other two. You can bet I'll be writing (a lot) more about these machines as I get to know them, but first I'll give you a brief history of the machines that I have, in the order in which they entered my life.

Firstly is a 2008 eBay purchase. It is a 1900 Model 27 treadle, in an absolutely gorgeous 7 drawer cabinet. The machine was in need of a bit of attention, so has never been tried. My husband took the machine out of the cabinet shortly after we got it home. It came with an almost complete accessories box and original instruction booklet, which was put somewhere safe. It'll surface again one day I'm sure. We did download a manual that was, if not identical, then similar enough to the original, so we wouldn't risk damaging the original when looking anything up. Unfortunately we were in such a hurry to clean this machine up that we didn't take photos of the machine before we did anything to it (and it's currently in lots of pieces), so the photos I have used here are scanned from our printout of the eBay listing.