The triumph of hope over experience

I've just looked my title quote up and apparently Samuel Johnson said it upon hearing of a man who had remarried soon after the death of a wife to whom he had been unhappily married.  The reason it's my title is because I was questioning myself repeatedly this week as I once again became frustrated and defeated by attempted dressmaking. 

I don't know what it is with sewing clothes.  I'm good with my hands, I'm reasonably intelligent at understanding instructions, I'm good at using my sewing machine and tools. But somehow this all goes out the window when sewing clothes and I have about a 15% success rate. I think it is partly psychological: one thing goes wrong and the despair starts to creep in once again. And partly because things like a good fit and neat hems/edge finishing are much more important on clothing than on, say, a bed quilt. And yet I continue to get sucked in by patterns that promise 'Easy', 'suitable for a beginner', or Youtube videos where they effortlessly bind a neckline in knitted fabric without even measuring and it is looks fabulous. It almost always turns out to be a waste of my time and money.

So as mentioned last week, I had drafted a pattern based on a comfy t-shirt dress that I've been wearing a lot in this hot weather. I had some good quality cotton overlock that I got online, mainly for the colour but it happens to have whales swimming across it.  The next challenge after drafting the pattern was attempting to get the stretchy fabric to lie accurately on the fold for cutting out.  The front came out not too bad but on the back of the dress the whales are swimming a little downhill on one side. I have an overlocker/serger so sewing the seams and turning up the hems went fine.  Even stitching the hems with a twin needle came out reasonably.  Until I realised afterwards that my tension was still turned up to '9' from when I was gathering the neckline.  So my twin stitching is really tight and is going to break if the hem gets stretched.  Sigh.  The next challenge was to bind the neckline in self-fabric, basically using the same technique I've used a hundred times on quilts.  I watched Youtube to prepare, it looked easy. I cut a band 30.5" long, seamed it, marked the quarter points, and sewed it on with a narrow zigzag, then realised that my seam allowance was too wide and my band width was too narrow.  Trying to un-pick the narrow zigzag took ages and resulted in a few holes in the neckline so I had to cut the neckline a bit bigger.  Attempt number two with a wider band went much better - until I tried it on and it fell off my shoulders. Somehow my 30" band had turned into a 42" neckline, presumably because of stretching from the unpicking...  By now I am fighting strong urges to throw the whole thing in the bin.  There was no way I was going through all that unpicking again, so I cut the neckband off with scissors.  For attempt number three, I cut a really wide band (to make up for all the neckline I had cut away) and just folded and seamed it like a normal t-shirt neck, abandoning the attempt to bind the edge.  This came out alright, apart from I should have hidden the seam at centre back instead of leaving it on the sleeve like a dummy where it's on show.

After that it was fighting with sewing on the tie-belt casing (more stretchy fabric that didn't want to lie flat with edges neatly pressed under) and making the tie out of self-fabric.  And I have a dress.  From a distance it looks fine.  It took hours, I did not enjoy the experience, and DH helpfully pointed out that I could have just bought another dress (no I did not kill him).  Except I don't think they make this particular dress anymore so I probably couldn't have bought another one.  I am telling myself this is a prototype and if I am ever crazy enough to make another one, it would probably go better.

I finished the vintage tea cosy this week and we've already used it once for tea out in the garden.  It keeps the pot astonishingly warm, in fact the handle of the teapot became almost too hot to pick up. The tatted bits are various bits that I bought in a bag from the Lace Guild stand at the Makit show in Peterborough this year, somebody had been busy.

On my day off I finished the second bobbin lace sample from the course I went on.  I've mounted them on black card, tucking the raw ends through slits in the card, which makes for a really neat display.  I saw this method being used by one of the teachers, then you can slip the card into a plastic holder and put it in a ring binder. I went back and re-mounted some of my older samples onto black card as well so my sample binder looks a lot smarter than it used to.

This week I've been working on the shingled overhangs that fit on to the balcony rooms of my Japanese dollshouse. There was a lot of sanding trying to get the mitred corners to fit correctly as my balcony rooms hadn't come out exactly square/the right size to match the pre-cut roof pieces.  Then you have to make the shingles from four-inch squares of very thin wood veneer that delights in falling apart when you try to cut it.  I stained batches of shingles in different colours to give some variety, and stuck them onto the overhangs.

After trimming the shingles flush with the overhangs, you glue them onto the balcony rooms. Which is quite tricky as there is no good way to clamp them while the glue dries.  In this pic, the right hand roof has been done, and the lefthand roof is drying.  The corners came out fairly well apart from one on the left which I think will need some remedial shingling.  The final step is to fit decorative beams underneath each corner.

I booked our flights to Japan this week for next spring, so we really are heading back for a second visit.  So I may be able to pick up some bits to go in the dollshouse although it's a funny scale. I'm still trying to learn some Japanese but finding it very difficult because my memory isn't what it used to be when I was younger, and it's just not sticking in my head very well.  I've got a rough itinerary planned out but need to start working on the details.  We are going to start off in Tokyo, then have a stop in Osaka on our way to the island of Shikoku where we will have a rental car for several days.  Shikoku is a little more off the beaten track that the places we visited on our first trip, and is famous for its 88-temple walk.  We will see a few temples but definitely not all 88!  I'm looking forward to visiting Tokyu Hands again (a sort of cross between a Hobbycraft and IKEA) and probably Nippori fabric town in Tokyo.  Something to look forward to.