I might have mentioned before that I loved watching The Great British Sewing Bee, and this year's series was great - I'm really happy that Heather won - did you see her final couture dress?!?! But it's the first series from last year that really planted the sewing seed for me, and I think it's great that some of the contestants have gone on to grow their sewing careers. Lauren now owns and runs her own haberdashery shop in Birmingham, and has also written a book to be released later this year.
I've been reading Tilly's blog for a while, and I love her voice and her attitude to sewing, about making it fun and not scary, and I'm placing most of the credit for actually starting my blog on watching her Folksy talk.
Anyway, back to the party. The first project in Love at First Stitch is a simple scarf called Brigitte, and Tilly challenged us to make one to wear to the party today. So it would have been rude not to really.
After the success of my denim bag last week, I felt in a confident sewing mood and really quickly ran up a scarf made from part of an Indian cotton voile shirt that I haven't worn for years, but the fabric was too pretty to get rid of. (I'm trying to use up bits from my stash while I'm practising before I go splashing the cash on 'proper' fabrics - upcycling is still cool right?!)
I've also borrowed Rachel from House of Pinheiro's idea of adjusting the pattern size for the scarf. Tilly's version is quite wide and long, but I just felt for me with short hair and a smallish head, a big scarf looks a bit weird. So mine is narrow enough to tie comfortably round my head or use as a neck scarf, but not quite long enough to use as a belt - an oversight to be corrected next time!
I think it also looks good tied round the handles of my bag...
Part of the handmade aesthetic that I love, and that Tilly and others promote, is about making something your own and not slavishly following patterns (although this is fine too, and I'll probably follow step by step whenever I make something for the first time), but having the courage to add your own spin to your makes. One of the suggestions for the Brigitte scarf is to add decorative topstitching, and it just seemed like a nice finishing touch. Now I'm a bit limited by my sewing machine only managing straight and zigzag stitching, but actually, with the pattern and colours on the fabric anyway, anything too fancy would have been OTT, so I just went for some fairly big zigzags in bright pink as a fun contrast to the blue/green/purple of the cotton.
I ordered my copy of the book from Amazon last week and am currently waiting for the postman to arrive. Very frustratingly, he sometimes doesn't deliver until really late in the afternoon, so I'm hoping that's not the case today! I'll be reviewing the book sometime next week probably...or maybe sooner, I don't have much planned for the weekend!
In the meantime, here's to Tilly and the massive success that Love at First Stitch is bound to be - enjoy the party everyone, and happy sewing! x
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