Monday, September 22, 2025

In Sickness and Sewing

Ugh.  All the malefolk in the family had a head cold and I caught it last, starting on Thursday.  Kind of putting a damper on Wonderful Husband's birthday on Friday.  He will be getting a rain check for cake and nice dinner later this week.  Last night I thought I actually felt human again - only to have that myth dispelled overnight.  Ah well.  Sleep is for the weak, or something.

I am still trying to get a functional braiding foot and connector set for my very basic low shank Singer sewing machine, so the second dress from the roses fabric remains on hold until that arrives.  However, I did manage to cut out the gathered variant of that dress in a different fabric and spent pretty much all of yesterday sewing it.


This was a third of a yard of quilting cotton I got at the CTA sale; there's enough left that I might be able to eke out a little handbag for Addy to carry her things in.  When sewing for dolls, the scale of the print you're using is important!  The pattern is, once again, Kindred Threads' Cape Island Dress.

The neckline of this dress is a touch wider than I like; I have to arrange it carefully on my Addy doll to keep her shoulder joints from showing.  I might try making it again and stay-stitching the neck pieces first thing, so that handling them doesn't stretch the bias any.  The pleats in the waistband make stitching it to the skirt a bit tricky, and I dislike the second row of gathering stitches in the skirt and bodice pieces being outside of the seam allowance.  I know it's period, and that often the visible gathering stitches were left in (I've seen, memorably, a First Lady's dress that still had them in), but I don't like it, and taking them out after everything was sewn was annoying.

That said, the pattern went together well, and will probably go together faster the next time I make it.  When I'm not 90% made of mucus.  And I'm very happy that I live in a US state that isn't willfully stupid about science, because I've made our family appointments to get our flu and covid shots next weekend, to help minimize future illnesses.

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