Getting my money's worth

I made another mission maxi dress last night. My friend is having her graduation party today in Coventry so naturally I wanted something I could comfortably travel in. Most of my clothes do not fit me anymore  because I have been at the cakes. As you can see from the pictures, it is obvious that I have added a couple of pounds.

Mr.Dibs has been  making funny little noises about my weight gain....muttering here and there. I ignore him of course. He recently decided actions speak louder than words, and registered me for the Great North Run in September. It is a half marathon, and he says he will do it with me. hmmmmm. Last week he dragged me to a running shop, to get me fitted for running shoes. 30 minutes and £100 later, I had a pair of running shoes. Now, the only reason I am going to run that half marathon, is because of that money. I need to squeeze £100 worth of running from those shoes, just as I am sqeezing my money's worth out of the mission maxi pattern.

 

 I used a jersey fabric I bought last year in Utrecht when I went to Holland. It is quite soft and drapey, quite different from the fabric I used for the last mission maxi dress, which was thicker.  The fabric I used last time got a lot of love from alot of you. As I said, I got it from Walthamstow market, in the first fabric shop on your right when walking down the market from the station. I can't remember the name of the shop. They do have alot of border prints, so if the fabric I used is sold out, I'm sure you will see other nice border prints.

I have somehow lost the pattern for the neck and armhole bindings for this dress, and cut new ones using an estimate of what I thought the original width of the binding was. Unfortunately when sewing it, I found out it was really small, so I had to unpick the stitches. Halfway through the unpicking, I decided to stop, because, sod it, it was 2am, and I had just finished a bottle of wine, and I was not thinking straight. Unpicking stitches in a knit fabric is seriously not cool. I cut off the neck binding,because the wine whispered it was the best thing to do, then cut a really wide band and used it as the binding. The result looks like a cowl neck. It is not the end of the world as I thought because my friend and her sister-in-law quite liked it, so, yes, like a phoenix, my damaged dress rose out of the ashes, or is it from the ashes?

 Ok, this last picture captures perfectly my mood in the garden. My garden in London is quite miniscule, so I was excited to be in a really big garden, and I was literally jumping for joy. Now if you will excuse me, there is wine to be drunk, and cake to be devoured. To heck with Mr.Dibs and his weight gain mutterings, 5 more slices of cake today won't make any difference. Or will they?