Fiddle Faddle

When I showed Corlie my practice glasses case, she said she thought it needed some sort of padding or reinforcement. To protect the glasses, that makes sense. I thought I'd do a practice run before tackling the real deal. Just as well I did, because it turned out to be much more difficult than I visualised!. The first one, with a loose stiffener, is a lumpy mess. For the second one, I ironed the stiffener to the fabric. It's better, but adding the lining still resulted in lumps. A different approach entirely was required. For the third one I used felt. I used fusible web to fuse it to the fabric and the lining. All this has taken a lot of time and I'm still not sure I've got it right. Sigh. I don't think I'm a perfectionist at heart.

Needs Tatting

It's a little strange to buy fabric based on the scraps that will be left over. I bought lilac satin to make a nightie so that I can use the off cuts to line my embroidered glasses case. I do like the colour (the colour of the jacaranda trees that are flowering here at the moment), but the nightie is very plain. Tatting, it needs tatting:

The motif, lurking in my stash, is from The Tatted Artistry of Teiko Fujito.

Crochet Progress

I'm making progress on the crochet top. I think it'll look better when it's blocked, at the moment it's rather dense and solid.

I took some time out of crocheting to practise tatting tallies or clunies and then trying muskaan's little butterfly with tally wings:

Four Shirts

Right, that's four new work shirts for Jack. Hopefully that's the job done for a few years. I won't count on that though, because there are a lot of hazards around here, from barbed wire fences to welding sparks.

Shirt one already has some weird stain on it and it's only been worn once!

Roses

I've almost finished the third shirt:

It's pretty much the same as the first shirt, so here's a picture of Jack's climbing roses for variation:

I also took a photo of a weaver's nest in the tree outside the diningroom window. The weaver builds an intricate nest. It's fascinating to watch the male fly back and forth with grass fronds to weave with.

Mine is not a great photo, you can see some better photos here or look up weaver bird on youtube, to see the bird in action.

I Give Up

On the Post Office, that is. My daughter kindly posted me thread to redo the crochet top that is too small,  That was in June, and I still haven't received it. I suspect it is languishing in a parcel mountain, formed when post office personnel went on strike. I need an 'evening project' to work on, so I've started redoing the top using a thread I bought locally.

 It is labelled as 'microfibre'.  I assume that means it's completely synthetic, which is not ideal for competition, where natural fibres are 'recommended'. On the plus side, it is shiny, which I hope means makes it suitable for 'evening wear'. When, or if, the other thread turns up, I'll make another top using a different pattern.

Binding

I took some time off shirt-making to sew myself a Summer nightie. I wanted to bind the neckline with wide ribbon, instead of using facings, but couldn't for the life of me work how to do that neatly. So I had a look on the internet and found this tutorial  on So-sew-easy. I followed the directions and voila, perfect binding. Isn't the internet marvelous?