A New Pincushion and SSS Day 10.

Here is a little pincushion that I just whipped up - no  , of course it is an echidna. This little fellow ( or girl - who would know) hangs around our house about once a year for a few days before snuffling off somewhere else. This is such perfect timing because at the moment we have a Japanese exchange student staying with us for a few days.

Now SSS stands for Silly Sheep Saga. Last week we bought two whizz bang self shearing sheep ( SSS! ) - dorpers. A certain someone reassured me the paddock was sheep proof. The next day my youngest DD tell me the new sheep are in the next door neighbours  paddock. I checked this out and found a 10 metre gap in the barbed wire fence big enough for well sheep !The next day we spent 3 hours chasing sheep trying to get them back.Have I  mentioned I live on the side of a mountain , that the next door neighbours paddock is about 50acres with NO fences. We finally got them back to our property only to discover that a certain someone had fixed the fence and the sheep although they tried could not get back in !!Oh the irony .  They then ran off into some bush and haven`t been seen since. ( Don`t worry there are lots of waterholes and lots of green grass - they will be very happy ) . The only relevance to sewing here it that after 3 hours of running up and down hills etc I declared the next day to be a sewing day and neglected my motherly and housewifely duties . I made very good progress on my pintucked simplicity tunic and hopefully will have another finished garment to blog and wear. Cheers until then Janine.

Simplicity 2418 and my sewing mate.

This is my little dog Toby and he loves being with me all the time including sewing. I wanted to show this photo as he has FINALLY learnt not to just plonk himself down on my fabric and pattern pieces  -hooray . Ask him how he learnt this ! He still needs to learn though to give me space while enjoying my cups of tea and chocolate. He comes and sits right next to you and just stares the whole time .

I completed Simplicity 2418 - a pattern that is still in the current pattern catalogues ! It is the cowl neck version. Although rated easy I had to think carefully about the yoke attachment which has you sew the wrong side of the back and front pieces to the right side of the yoke - also there wasn`t much difference between the wrong and right sides of my fabric so I had to be careful.
I took the advice of pattern reviews of this and sewed size 10 instead of my usual size 12 and also took the side seams in by 2 cms instead of  1.5. In the end I didn`t really need the self fabric belt as doing these adjustments meant the top was not too baggy. I also used some `satin` bias binding around the `sleeves` which I did enlarge to accomodate my size 12 arms . I will definitely be making view B - sooner rather than later. I am going to do a more complete review over at Pattern Review ( love that site - I always check it out before sewing any patterns these days ) Cheers Janine.