The Fairy Tale Quilt is filling up. I've added the straw and stick houses for the three pigs, a rickrack beanstalk with, at the moment, unattached leaves, a huge firebird off to steal the golden apple, and a lamp awaiting a genie. There's an awkward space under the brick house that I need to fill, and I still don't have a frog prince - a character I'm quite fond of, although with legs difficult to sew. All my characters are still eyeless, and the troll has lost his head. I'm looking forward to adding tiny details, once all the main bits are on, which should be soon now.
Still on the fairytale theme, I've completed another page for my tatty book - a grimly determined firebird this time! I'm really pleased with the colours on this one. Adding fine white stitches to the yellow apple seems to make it glow.
The four double pages are now complete and sewn together. I just have to work out how best to put a cover round them. Probably a bit of planning before I embarked would have been useful, but sometimes worrying about future issues means that nothing ever gets started.
Even the best plans can go wrong though. I started with what looked like the easiest of the clothes for the rabbit, and successfully completed the summer dress, but I wasn't happy with the material I used, and I'm not a fan of floaty dresses anyway. On to the gilet, which I made from some scraps of tweed that must have been donated to me, as I've never sewn with it before. All was going well until I tried to fit the shoulder seams - the back and front pieces didn't match. What had I done wrong? I managed not to panic, and turned to google instead. It turns out the pattern pieces are printed incorrectly in the book; an errata message tells you how to fix the pattern. But I had already sewn on the pockets and didn't feel inclined to start again. To make it work, I abandoned the inside facing and cut lining using the outer pattern pieces. This worked fine, until I had to squeeze the entire front of the gilet through the too-narrow shoulder seams. A bit of unpicking did the trick, followed by some rather unlovely resewing. I was quite proud of myself at the finished result, and the rabbit is at least bare no longer. I feel it may not ever get anything to match this rather fine article. In the spirit of only using what I have, the next creation will be made from an old pillowcase. Look out for pink spotted dungarees!
The silver lining in the cloud was that, when I googled the pattern, I came across the you-tube channel of Claire England, who demonstrates how to sew the patterns in great detail and with really useful tips. Just what a wobbly stitcher like me needs. Here's the link https://www.youtube.com/@ClaireEngland1
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