WIP Wednesday: the one with no WIPs (well, not quite)

In fact this week I have no WIPs. (Well, that's not entirely true. I have no WIPs that are active right now. The ones that I do have are long boxed up, or long since tucked into a corner of 'yeah, not gonna happen for yonks'.

I did finish a few things over the January long weekend:

I sewed together two quilt tops. The Plaidish quilt pattern, again with the Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star Society fabrics. The blocks were originally going to be just one quilt top, but I looked at the size, realised it was too large, and turned it into two tops with only the addition of a single block!

(1x 49 block quilt: 7x7 + one added block = 2x 25 block quilts: 5x5)

So that worked out really well!

One quilt top:

becomes two quilt tops:

Over the weekend I also finished a shift-dress that I started about 2 months ago. I made the dress with some linen that I won at a Frocktails a couple of years ago, and...finally...came to the conclusion that the style of the dress I was making didn't suit me. Shift dresses - that is, dresses that don't have a fitted waist at the very least - don't suit me. My shoulders are broad, and my hip-waist ratio nearly non-existent. I look great in things that have a clear waistline demarcation, which are clearly two pieces - a top and a bottom, or which show off my top half: shouders and breasts in particular. I have no butt, I have no waist - those things need to be 'faked' if I'm going for a classic hourglass shape.

At any rate, I gave up on the shift dress being a 'comfy dress to wear' - it's now my 'summer beach caftan' suitable for wearing over a swimming costume.

In order to make it comfy, I shortened the sleeves (they were hanging down to my elbow), unpicked the side seams up to the pockets on both sides so I had better leg movement, and re-stitched the edges around the seams and the hem. (Which was a bit of a mess, too. I have no idea what they intended, but whatever it was, it didn't work for me.)  

Then I overlocked just about every seam in the dress - and cursed that I hadn't done it sooner! Overlocking is a wonderful thing.

(I borrowed a friend's overlocker about six months ago; she hasn't asked for it back yet.)

Anyway, out of this fiasco, I have decided: no more shift-dresses. I don't like how I look in them and I need to stop imagining I'll look good in them. I need to go back to finding dresses that work for my figure and play to those strengths.

That said, I have the Elysia Bow and Flower Dress patterns printed out, and while they're not 'shift-dresses', they are looser-figured dresses, although they do have distinct skirtage. I was hoping to make them out of cotton quilting scraps, but that could get a little bit oddball. Hm.

I haven't taken a photo of it yet. Not sure if I will or when.