I’m sewing again! I invested in a nice machine and have been busying myself hemming jeans and converting our eyelet curtains into track ones. I’m trying to keep a running total of how much I’ve saved in DIY to justify the cost.

Now I’m trying something challenging – dress making! It is a slow-going process because, really, there just aren’t enough hours in the day. When I was younger my mum made me take a sewing course because she thought it was a useful skill for everyone to have. I agree with her now but at the time I’ll admit it felt a bit mortifying! But because of that course and her help, I used to kind of know what I was doing. Now I’m far less confident and I keep having to google things to remember the way to do things.

But we’re making progress. I took the picture below of my pattern-pinning:

And this is the top half. I worked really hard to make sure it was symmetrical!

To take a break from the tricky stuff, we used the extra fabric to make a bag that required no pattern! Very proud of making this from scratch, even though it was pretty simple:

I love the way the fancy stitches on the new sewing machine make even quick projects look really good!