The Trousedale square

I was shown recently how to make a mitred square when knitting. I think they're ace as they're not that hard to do but look really nice. My enginering minded boyfriend took one look at it and then decided that I should be able to make it so it mitres from all 4 corners. I thought that this was total rubbish and would never work. So I set to knitting one. I had to see if it would work or not. And damn his fab 3D spatial awareness, he was right! So I present the Trousdale square. I'm sure someone else has done these before but I've never seen one and then name has stuck in our house.

Bunnies

A few weeks ago we bought ourselves a couple of rabbits. Me and Spadger (the man) have been talking about getting a rabbit since we met. This then grew into 2 as 1 would get lonely. So here they are. Believe it or not that are from the same parents. Bernard takes after her mother (yes, her) who was a lionhead. Shortcrust takes after the father who was a lop. Neither of them got the lop ears though. Bernard is Spadger's and Shortcrust is mine. How cute!

The revolution is complete

So here is the completed revolutions dress by little print on Spadgercus. She loved it!


As you can see she was quite taken with the circle skirt and there was much falling over from all the spinning.


I sewed hooks rather than poppers/snaps to close the neckline. Mostly because my poppers are rubbish. To cover the ungainly hand stitching I attached a couple of fab big pink buttons. I might close the next one with buttons but that will involve smiling at my Momma. My 1901 Singer only does straight stitch!

Revolutions Frock Review

As promised then here is my review of the Revolutions Frock by Little Print Patterns from VegBee which can be found on her blog here

Fist thing then I cut out all the pattern pieces and taped together those that needed it. I then cut all my pieces from my chosen material. In this case it is a single duvet set I bought from a charity shop for the staggering price of £3.99 :o) it was reversible which gave me my contrasting fabric for the yoke and sash.



I decided to cut the skirt pieces first as this is the largest single amount of material and would cause the most problems if I messed it up. As you can see from the 2 sets of lines I almost did! The problem I had was that the material wasn't wide enough to accomodate the length of my string and I forgot this.



So with pieces all cut I started to sew. The bodice is lined and this gave me an oppertunity to practice clipping curves and turning everything inside out and pressing. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be and it gave a beautiful neat edge.



I then hit my first snag. The instructions said to cut 2 front yoke pieces and 2 back ones. The back ones being cut on the fold. I took this to mean 2 identical front pieces as there was nothing to say otherwise. This gives you pieces like this picture.



However, later on you have to lay them on top of each other right sides together. This doesn't work as they are not mirror images of each other. So I went and cut another piece but reversed the pattern this time and now they will fit together as the instructions say.



Which is exactly what happened. Now the bodice was finished and I was starting to feel pretty good about it all. I had a couple of issues with the top stitching as I followed the inside line not the outside which made it wonky and I had to re do it. There were almost tears at this point. But I stuck at it, re-sewed the lines and the bodice looked lovely. I should have sewn the poppers/snaps on then but as that is hand sewing I thought I would leave it till the rest is done.



After this everything was plain sailing, I mean sewing. The sash was attached and the ties then sewn to that. The 2 skirt pieces were then attached. The next step of sewing the side seams caused me a couple of problems getting everything line up wight as you are sewing the lining tigether and the side seams in one go and I couldn't get my brain around it. Once that was done all I had to do was attached the bias binding to teh hem. Unfortunatly I mis-measured and only had enough to do half. So I have left that pinned and will make some more this weekend and finish it then. So here are some pics of the "finished" product. All in all this is the most complicated pattern I've attempted yet and it was a joy to sew. There were a few issues but those owed a lot to the fact that I have no 3D spatial awareness and kept having to ask my boyfriend for help hehehe. Now I just need to learn to grade the pattern up to my size.

Bring on the Revolution

The Revolutions Frock by Little Prints that is. The wonderful VegBee has given me this E-pattern to test run for her. It is available to buy as a standard pattern here

Her website is here and is full of fab tutorials for sewing and general fun!

There have been a few hiccups so far but I aim to complete the dress today and will be posting a review here with pics!

Now scamper, check out her site! :o)