So how do you follow up a first post? Don’t say it – with a second.  This is how popstars/musicians feel releasing their second album – under pressure! Remember the doyenne of cool Natalie Imbruglia’s first song -Torn? Yes? But can you remember her second? No – me neither. However, I will press on regardless for that is what perseverers do. I’m actually improving too – please notice that the pictures have been centred this time. Not rocket science I realise but small steps for the technologically phobic (or ‘User Error’ as the husband refers to me – so rude).

So, I’ve been busy – there’s nothing like reporting your results on a blog to increase productivity. Also, ‘See What I Made’ don’t run any workshops in the summer so it’s always a good time for our own projects. I’m very keen to do some tutorials and number one will shortly be on the tutorials page -how to line your pencil skirt in a whole new way. Well, it’s new to me anyway, everybody else might have been doing it that way for years.

I found some brilliant London skyline lining in my favourite Aladdin’s cave of fabric on the Goldhawk Road in Shepherd’s Bush and, confident I had some denim in my fabric locker, headed home to make a super sleek, Marilyn Monroe style denim pencil skirt to be documented at each stage for my tutorial. Without the pointy boobs and beauty spot though.

I finished the skirt and hung it up ready for it’s first outing, which was church last Sunday. I paired it with a fluorescent yellow top and leopard print shoe boots so I really was feeling like the dog’s whatevers and ready for anything. I was late, no real surprises there, so hurried in and sat down. It was then that I realised that the split up the front (which looked so promising while I was mincing around my bedroom, admiring the spanx effect of this skirt) had shot up to my pants and the pointy bits on the hem stuck straight out like two missiles looking for a target. I had to sit in a very demure fashion with my hands in my lap for the entire time. Demure is not a word I’ve ever used in a description of myself and I doubt anybody else has either. Fidget would be more appropriate but I couldn’t do that either. So I sat, very still, hands on lap protecting my modesty, and wondered why on earth this fabric was so stiff and unyielding that I might have need to call an ambulance crew to strap me into a stretcher and hoist me into a standing position for the last song? It dawned on me, while I should have been listening to what really was an excellent sermon, that the denim, which I had pulled out so hastily in my enthusiasm for getting a blog post out, was in my cupboard because I had bought it a few years ago to recover our camping chairs. This was just before I decided we couldn’t fit them in our car and bought new ones. Laughing  in the face of sustainability.

I have learned a valuable lesson – choose your denim carefully. I’ve since found the denim fabric I was thinking about in the first place, a bit further down the pile – firm in texture but lovely and soft, like jeans should be. Not like someone ripped the awning off your caravan and turned it into a skirt.  If I get tired of it, I’ll turn it into a hammock but in the meantime, I got a tutorial out of it and it really does look good (although only while I’m standing up) so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

In the words of Marilyn herself “clothes should be tight enough to show you’re a woman but loose enough to show you’re a lady” She didn’t say anything about showing your pants in church though…

Eek! How exciting – the very first post on our brand spanking new See What I Made blog. I had no idea quite how much mental energy this would take but I’m hoping that once I get started I’ll be on a roll! This must be how an artist feels when faced with a blank canvas – terrified!  A few weeks ago I was churning out sewing projects like I was on fire, coming up with multiple blog posts a day (in my head) but now, having spent at least three weeks trying to work out how to add a facebook icon to our sidebar, I’m totally over it.
One thing I have not tired of, however, is thinking about what to do with the many metres of African fabric I have purchased in a frenzy this summer. It must be something to do with my African heritage – to look at me, I’m Irish through and through, dark hair, freckles, pale skin, purple veins near the surface – the whole kit and kaboodle, but last week I had a conversation with my Italian dentist which went along these lines;

Me: I’ve got six wisdom teeth and one of them is annoying me.
Dentist: Eet is nat passible, only Africans have seeks wisdam teeth. (He may have done his training in Jamaica.)
Me: ( looking sceptically at my pale freckly arms) No, it’s true, I do.
[After X-ray]
Dentist: hoh ma gatt, you have seeks wisdom teeth!
Me: I know- sure I told you that.
Him: you need to check your family history…

Hmmmm, this may explain my obsession….Anyway,with the first piece I bought, I have made a pencil skirt, my other big love this summer – with trainers, like a middle-aged Eliza Doolittle (the pop-star, not she of the bad grammar and common ways).

I was so excited by the skirt that I decided to make a jacket with what was left over ( I bought a lot – I couldn’t help myself). It’s quite stiff cotton because of the residual batik wax and also the fact that, much to my great sadness, it’s not 100% cotton (although it’s just too cool to lose much sleep over) but it needed a bit of something to make it a bit more substantial for a jacket. I decided to pad it a bit with some very thin polyester wadding and a contrasting blue-poly cotton backing fabric. (Note to self – stay away from naked flames.)  I don’t know how quilters do it; after what felt like two hours of sewing up and down and back up again, I finally had my fabric quilted and ready to cut out.

I made this little cropped jacket but before I got as far as adding the trimmings I showed to my husband, who is actually a very good and much relied upon fashion critic, although only by me. He looked at me in my half made piece of tailoring and tilted his head to one side – a sure sign he was coming up with something witty and amusing (in his own opinion). Eventually his thoughts were complete; ” you look like an African woman’s oven mitt”  What?! All this effort with the flammable fabric,the wadding and the sewing up and down. I was spitting polyester feathers. However, I shall rise above it – my jacket is finished, a fetching orange trim has been added, the whole thing has been bias bound and I am ready for action.

The urge to wear them both together is enormous but l am resisting – unless I get invited to a fancy dress party, in which case I will be there as a Northern Irish Winnie Mandela.