Starting the lining...

The collar is slowly getting there. Each time I look on another sewing bloggers website, they astound me with how quick they can dash out another outfit. I do hope that you aren't finding my progress too slow in comparison. On the upside, at least you get to see a lot of steps in the progress!

You can see in the photo above that there is only a tiny bit not sewn. Hand sewing definitely takes a long time. I think it's less stressful in the end, because you only do it the once. Obviously if you are a bit more patient with the sewing machine you might only have to do that once, but well, that just isn't how I work. Perhaps I do would do better, if I ever took the trouble to use pins. I don't even know where my pin box is anymore. I guess that's an achievement of sorts. Everything you've seen so far has been constructed without pins. I don't even use them to cut out!!!  as

I thought the elves deserved a change from that fiddley collar so I let them have a go at the lining. 

I'm glad that I used the fabrics this way around, as I think from this distant, the lining looks very busy and would have been overpowering as a outer fabric. I think the next step should be to add the sleeves. Unfortunately I had yet another mistake whilst cutting out. (No doubt some of you are thinking ... should have used pins! but that wasn't the problem.) With the wadding making the material thick I decided to cut the pieces out one layer at a time, and subsequently managed to cut out two left sleeves! Argh! I now need to get those elves to quilt a bit more material as I've run out....

These are the buns I used to tempt the elves last night. They are raisin and cinnamon with a heavy dusting of caster sugar. My husband, Ellie and I ate them fresh from the oven and they were lovely and hot.

I thought you guys might be interested in sewing who the end product is going to. This is Ellie. She is two, and alternates between being a little devil, and well, I won't say angel, but fairly close to it.

I've also been thinking about my next project, did I mention before about how long I spend daydreaming about making things.... This one needs to be for Nancy just in case she thinks she's been missed out. I'm not going to make a coat, as knowing my luck, she'll have grown out of it before I even finish it! I'm thinking about dungarees and a little blouse. The last set of dungarees I made, I didn't bother with bottom fastening for an easy change. Having wiggled her in and out of them for the last three months though I'm beginning to think that might have been a design fault. I don't want to use those horrible hammer on poppers (has anyone ever got those things to stay on!) , and I've never had any luck with the sew on strip poppers, so I'm going to need to think of a more enterprising way of allowing bum access. (Sounds terrible...)