Dearest Needleworkers....

I began writing this post very late in the evening, by the light of a new lamp which I took from Sergio’s house… it sheds a wonderful orange glow around the room, alongside the street light nearby, and allows me to feel enveloped in a warmth and comfort – when usually I’d have only candles on. I’m ‘treating’ myself! Having a lamp on after nightfall is quite an unusual affair… but I need a pick-me-up, so the lovely light and the writing are helping me to put my mind in order before I lay down for the night…

This week has been a storm of emotions and fuzzy-mindedness, amongst a really good momentum in my sewing. Yesterday I picked up a ‘pair’ of fabrics: an overly-designery (women’s) fitted jacket, and a beautiful-but-too-small skirt of 40% silk. The two textures, colours and patterns fit well together, and I just got a really good tuned-in idea to bring them together.

As ever, I didn’t particularly design it, or prep any sketches or suchlike; I just started pinning the part of it which I knew roughly might work – actually not knowing for sure if the waists of both jacket and skirt would match up! - and it all came together from that starting point.

I love working like this! I say this a lot, but I love chatting and writing about this phenomenon of how a thing will come together as if by magic, but in fact, by the real life happening of our co-creative union with all things. I love proving to myself that cosmic-collective-co-creation is real and is the underlying force behind all things/ all people…

Like the other project I recently finished – my grey linen and white cotton fishtail skirt – this one came together very quickly, and seemed like a super easy and super beautiful ‘concept’: as if the different aspects were made to be together (but somehow got tangled up for a while in two quite different forms!)

I like very much this idea of fabrics coming from different places and realities, but winding their paths over land and sea, and eventually colliding in a new place – The Arthouse in Guardia Sanframondi, Italy – where they can be deconstructed and reassembled into the marvellous new garments that they were destined to be!

I had some really lovely moments whilst making this dress in particular: I noticed that the lower, horizontal stripes part of it was only tacked to the upper skirt. It wasn’t sewn firmly in place, and behind the seam, I could see a whole inch of extra fabric; what a nice surprise that I hadn’t noticed before… But even better: when I started unpicking the loose stitching, it revealed that the skirt had originally been quite a bit longer – at least 4 inches/ 10 cm – and it had been folded and roughly stitched, to make it much shorter.

Letting down this tacking gave the skirt the perfect curve, length and dimensions, which fit just perfectly with the new bodice part I was making. Wow. This was such a welcome surprise and overall result. It really motivated me to finish the project, as it gave the whole thing an unexpected boon of quality and dimension.

The sleeves I cut off rather overly-confidently, perhaps. They ended up looking like they were a bit eccentric, but I often love quirky ‘mistakes’ like this. Because a cut or a style doesn’t look conventional, it can initially feel a bit uncomfortable – like it’ll be jarring to anyone looking at it for the first time. But I liked it, once I’d sewn around the new arm holes at the shoulders: I took a length from the longest part of each of the sleeves (that I’d just cut off the jacket part) and used it like bias binding, to finish the rather roughly-cut arm holes. They JUST fit around the holes, with a wee notch taken in at the shoulder.

Part of this project I did on the sewing machine, but without electricity or my powerbank; I enjoy sometimes using the machine by hand – I turn the wheel with my right hand whilst feeding the fabric under the needle with my left. This works really well for long seams like hems and waists – and I used it for both sides of the bias binding – then used the powered machine (with my Ecoflow powerbank) for a double-sealing of the new arm hole/ bias binding.

It took quite a while to decide what buttons to use. I’d chosen another button, but then looked at the back of these big ones, and liked it better than the front – and it kept the right size for the buttonhole, which saved sewing up more (I sewed up the old buttonhole at the waist of what was a skirt before). Along with a new popper/ snap for the waist part of the new dress, and a bit of rearranging of fabric there, the garment is complete!

What do you think? I find it a rather flattering form, this sort of ‘50s/ early ‘60s style of flared skirt and collared, sleeveless top… and these fabrics particularly, for me, have a beautiful combination of fun, elegance and confidence. Reviewing the project has also given my mind the focus it needed, to calm it before bed, and is a great exercise in self-appreciation at the end of the day: recognising our own achievements is a really important part of the creative process, I feel.

Later in the week, after leaving the dress for some days, I’m able to better see too, how to refine the garment; to leave it the very best that it can be, in this incarnation. The buttons down the middle of the bodice meet in a particular way with the skirt at the waist, and I was humming and hawing over how this can be resolved: the old skirt had a pocket here - where the side closure previously was – and I was trying to figure out where the fabric of the pocket can be cut out and released, as well as whether or not this extra part of the middle of the dress requires additional buttons/ poppers.