Advancing along

bit of a pun there - as it is the Singer Advance machine I just used to give the sewing lesson on. It went pretty well - it has been not quite ten years since I tried to show someone other than Mark how to use a sewing machine - and I hope to get even more practice with that in the future here. The client and I made a small pincushion out of patchwork, stuffed and finished it. She gets to keep it to start her sewing projects with. She would like another appointment and is thinking about getting her own machine. Very good :)

I have another customer from my Etsy site who would like the pattern to make this kangaroo. I have to find it, test it again, scan it in and PDF it. I haven't done that with this one yet because it is quite difficult compared to the other patterns I put up in my shop. And - the baby is sewn entirely by hand. I am going to make the pattern available on a 'no instructions' basis. It will probably be the same cost as my basic pattern that has instructions - because it is a more advanced pattern.




In other news I am almost finished with Esme's second navy-skirted dress. I also found a 1943 sewing book at the library book sale today. It has beautiful two-color plates in it and a lot of 'save the garment' pages that just aren't seen in books from today. It suggests on one page that when a little girl's dress becomes too small in the shoulders or too short in the skirt cutting it apart and putting in a contrasting panel to the chest or cutting the skirt halfway around and putting a contrasting stripe in it to lengthen it. Very common-sense, but also wonderful to see down in text!