Over the weekend I continued where I left off on the last post.

I decided to put my yellow dress together first. I got quite far…

And then got angry, frustrated and sweary. I tore the zip out at least three times trying to get it to sit right. I find Sewing pattern instructions are really vague about this part. So I made it up myself which worked after unpicking the top section and making it fold over more at least three more times, that was until I put the cress on and because it was a little tighter, my fold unfolded and it became an exposed zip. I have hand sewn in a lining too so it won’t be an easy one to adjust so I think I will fix it with some topstitching. Not ideal. If I could find somewhere locally or online that sold 22″ invisible zips, I’d be tempted to buy one and take to my one day sewing retreat on Sunday, but so far, no luck.

Then the armhole facing bagged out. I think it probably stretched as I sewed it in and that looks horrendous. I only did one sleeve, and it looks like that will be fixed with topstitching too.

So I was a bit put off, and decided I needed to sew something else before I fell out with all forms of sewing entirely. I cut out parts for my Sesquicentennial quilt (including the panels which apparently are printed not square and vary slightly in seam allowance, wtf?) until I found that I posted my only piece of black solid with some others for book photography.I went and bought more solids on Sunday, but for the meantime, it got folded up and put to one side for when I want to make the maple leaf blocks. This will be a really quick quilt when I get going.

Then I decided to sew together Thumbtacks. Which turned out to be more complicated than I thought as there are no extra seam allowances on the triangles since it was stack and whack. I found a fix through trimming, and it worked well, so I sewed all 36 blocks together!

It’s smaller than I wanted it to be by about 12 inches each direction, so I am going to add some ivory borders with a pop of another Rifle Paper Co print between them. I think that will work nicely!