I've been away ...

Well, not really away - just absent from the blog. Not that I ever was a very frequent blogger. I'll try to improve, honest!

Since I last posted - I've moved! 

Not very far, only a couple of miles away, so there's no big change. I now have chickens rather than ducks - four of them, one of which is sitting on a clutch of hopefully-fertile eggs. 

I had a stall at the village social club towards the end of April during a fundraiser coffee morning - a girl in the village is going to work in an orphanage in Uganda for her gap year, and needed to raise money for her air fare, expenses, health insurance and so on. I was so pleased to be able to add £80 to the total. She has now raised the required total and will be off in a few weeks' time. 

My sewing mojo disappeared for a while, returned, faded again. 

I have huge success sewing for others and helping others to sew. In March I made several stretch lace camis for a pregnant friend, curtains for a neighbour and, of course, stock for the fundraiser. 

60s inspired colour-blocked dress
made and modelled by a 15yo.

Over the Easter holidays I taught and supervised a teenager doing some work for her GCSE portfolio - she made herself a beautifully-fitted 60s-style colour-blocked shift dress. 

I finished off a prom dress started (somewhat over-ambitiously, she confessed!) by a mum in the village for her daughter; she looked like an apricot meringue when we'd finished, but that was what she wanted. 

Heck, I made a spring coat for a good friend who often cooks and bakes for me - a PINK spring coat, no less, out of a wool mix, top-stitched, lined, pockets, tie-belt ... she received many, many complements and lots of questions about where she had bought it ... 

I made a shirt - a 'shite shirt!' - for a friend who mended my shed; he was so tickled by it that he wanted to wear it to a formal reception - naughty naughty!

Yet whatever I tried to make for myself looked little better than a sack. OK for nighties, pjs, dressing gowns - but that's all.

Depressing, very depressing - especially when I used to be able to pull a pattern out of the packet, make it up and wear it with minimal alterations (in my case, just length alterations).

The difference is in me, physically, and to a (perhaps) lesser extent, in the pattern companies' products.

More to follow.