I haven’t sewn ‘normal’ clothes for myself for a very long time. In fact, the last thing I made was probably my wedding dress, and I’ve been married for nearly 33 years! I’ve done lots of sewing – curtains, blinds, 17th century clothing (I was a re-enactor for years!) and costumes for plays and pantomimes. But clothing to actually wear day to day? Nope! This lockdown period, because of the coronavirus pandemic, has given me plenty of time to pull out the sewing machine again and really get to grips with some new techniques and skills. I started off by making new covers for an arm chair. I used the old cover as a rough pattern, but it had shrunk, so I enlarged it a bit. Turns out I enlarged it a bit too much! It took a lot of fiddling to get it to fit properly – it’s still a bit baggy, but overall I’m quite pleased with the result.
I then moved on to making cushions for a rocking chair I bought second hand ages ago. Hubby cut the foam for me and I then set about adding some batting to even out the lumps and bumps (wish I could do that for me!). I then covered the cushion with some old sheeting before making some removable covers. At last we can sit on the rocking chair without getting a numb bum!
Just as I finished the rocking chair, a plea was put out by the local jeans factory in Cardigan (the one that made jeans for Meghan Markle) that they needed sewers to help make scrub tops for the NHS. That was quite a challenge. I’d never done a crossover v neck before, but I worked it out eventually and made 20 tops – not a lot, but better than nothing!.That got me started on the whole making clothes idea, so we’ll see how it pans out. The whole thing could be a complete disaster!
Cardicwtch 