Mavis Glover: Flushed with Success

In my last post I shared my excitment in making a cute, hand embroidered dress for my lovely granddaughter Martha. After working on interior projects it was great to work on the much smaller scale required for a two year old. Flushed with success I dashed out to purchase a metre of this striking Babushka fabric that I had spotted in our local branch of Hobbycraft.

I loved the fabulous jewel colours that I knew my favourite little model would really suit. So once again, armed with a really old pattern I borrowed from my niece and a bit of design input from me, I set about producing my next designer dress.

So, after making decisions about colour and hem trim, I managed to come up with the complete garment.

Both my daughter Lynsey and Martha were delighted with it and Handmade by Martha rustled up a coordinating pair of slides to add the finishing touch.

"Thank you Grandma"

When, on one of my regular visits to my local branch of Boyes to gather haberdashery supplies, I spotted a range of black and cream coordinating fabrics that made we want to make yet another outfit.

I know that I should have made my selection there and then but instead I went home to look at patterns and consider my choice. Sadly, when I returned ready to make my purchase I had much less choice and my favourite one (at the bottom of the pile) had sold out.

My Selection

I was rather disappointed that there were none with dark backgrounds but settled on the three above. I wanted yet another change of style so decided to use this 80s pattern in the hope that the finished dress would look more current than the one on the front.

I cut out the pieces but wasn't happy as I really wanted more of a contrast for the collar, but that was as far as I got that session.On a Wednesday I turn into "a lady that lunches" and while in Yarm I popped into another branch of Boyes and to my delight I found the exact opposite to the Billingham branch - they had all dark backgrounds and no light ones! For the sake of 30cm of fabric I got the combination I wanted and set off to start production.