The Late Night Sewist

Hi!

I really believed that I had posted something in September, but wow… It has been two months exactly since my last word here!

The truth is that I would post so much more often if I could somehow automatically type my thoughts because usually there is a whole story in my head with each item I make but in reality as you can see, I am having a hard time to keep up even with this self set goal of a post per month.

But it is quite indicative that the last post is from my last holiday and this current one is again written while on holiday. It just illustrates so well the lack of time for blogging in my life right now. Thankfully not for sewing, but I definitely make my choices when it comes to sewing time vs blogging time.

Again, not to give any false impressions, the amount of holidays that I get from my work is not much more than the minimum what is required by the law, but thanks to the same law I have accumulated a number of days from the time pre-baby #2 and this means that I do have exceptionally lot of time off work in 2021.

So yes, I am on holidays again and this time traveled a rather long distance to visit a place I spent 3 months in during my studies – Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. I was there 16 years ago the last time together with a long time close friend of mine, doing our clinical placement before graduation. Needless to say, when you are 20 and have been sent to an exotic island with a decent scholarship in the middle of January while all is under snow in Estonia and you find an apartment on the main street of the city just off the famous Las Canteras beach, you make memories. I actually think this experience was truly life changing for both of us. My friend met her now-husband and I got inspired to travel more which resulted in my own endeavours in Cyprus and Greece for altogether 7 years. Since my friend also lived in several places in the meanwhile, I never got back until now that she has been living in Gran Canaria for about a year again.

I made three pieces in preparation for the trip and I am hoping to be able to take some photos while here for future posts. But why not first make a note here about a dress that I made in summer but never posted about. Especially since the fabric is somewhat coming home as I got it in a really sweet and funny way.

I have mentioned that I have a couple of fellow sewists with whom we chat almost daily, mainly about fabrics, patterns and sewing but also share some life stories. One of the ladies vacationed in Marbella in spring and when she visited the local fabric stores she gave the others a real-time overview of the shop and fabrics. I remember having to attend an online meeting in any minute and actually confirming the details of the purchase while already in the meeting. So I was sitting in Estonia and she bought the fabric for me in Marbella! I made it into a Butterick 6723 dress pretty quickly and wore it during the summer and of course it was one of the first items that I packed for this holiday as well. I really like this fun animal print and I feel a bit like laughing at myself when I wear it. You can`t be too serious when you have all kinds of jungle animals all over your dress!

So today as I wore my Jungle Dress as I call it, it occurred to me that this fabric is back to its roots in a way, down the memory lane as myself when I stood in front of that old green block of flats where I last was so many years ago. And as if this was not enough, my leather jacket is also from Spain, our trip to Bilbao and Basque Country in 2019!

I guess you can imagine that I am having a great time and what makes this vacation extra special is that I am here without my children or husband, who so so kindly agreed to stay back and do the daily drill while I truly relax. Believe me, just being able to sit and eat uninterrupted is a blessing!

Since the fabric is viscose it does wrinkle easily but at the same time feels really nice on the skin. The dress itself was really quick and fun to sew and I like that the channel for the elastic is sewn to the bodice as opposed to just leaving it hang on the inside. I used up all of the fabric and there was none left for the sash, but I got lucky and found a suitable belt instead. However, initially I also planned to make the sleeves of version B, but did not have enough material. Now I think that it looks better this way because the sleeves are quite full already, if they would also be longer and involve a tie they might steal the show a bit too much.

For quite some time I also contemplated whether I should use brown or green buttons, but went with the first, thinking that it might end up childish. Now I have been wearing the dress at work during the summertime.

In the following days I will be able to check out at least two local fabric shops and of course I am really excited about this and hoping to find something nice that I can share with you the next time!

Until soon!