A short history of dressmaking

About 37 years ago, on the first day back at school in september, I looked excitedly at my new timetable and was thrilled to see an hour a week of sewing.  Now I was a second year - no longer a kid, and armed with a length of purple corduroy, thread and zip, I could barely contain my excitement - I was going to make a 'straight skirt'!  It was going to be beautiful, and I was going to look very grown up in it, and I was sure it was the start of a lifetime of dressmaking.
By the end of the year, after hours wrestling with taylor's chalk, unpicking seam after seam of tacking (too big according to the teacher) with a 'quick unpick' which wasn't and and finally trying to figure out how to thread the machine, which didn't look anything like my mother's, I went home with some tattered pieces of fabric and the zip still in it's packet.
Eight years ago, I wondered just how difficult it could be to 'run up' a sun dress (people who sew always talk about 'running things up') and, armed with some pale blue fabric and matching thread, enthusiastically went for it.  The dress was so awful that it went straight in the bin - both my mother and daughter said it looked like a mishapen nurse's shift.
Four days ago, I thought, I really have to crack this.
I have FINALLY made a simple, purple corduroy skirt with a zip!  It took a bit more than the two hours the pattern promised - but I've done it!!
If at first you don't succeed.......

Meanwhile, I heard from Cath who has finished the 'Trip around the World' quilt she started at our workshop earlier this Autumn - the person she made it for wanted lots of pink!_

Beautiful -well done Cath!
She's also made an appliqued quilt for her granddaughter

How lovely is that?