Project: Simplicity 4597

... or rather, I'm making this.

{ Simplicity 4597 Gardening Tote, Aprons & Visor }

Best friend, Jemma, she of the Twinwood Festival in August, is a wonderful gardener. She adores puttering around in her veggie patches or re-doing her flower bed by the patio for the nth time. So last year, for her birthday on May 25th, I thought I would make her the above tote and one of the aprons. Unfortunately, I'm still making them.

I don't have an awful lot of sewing experience, not from commercial patterns anyway. I've made a couple of dresses, both with help from Mum, a pair of trousers that I adapted into a Star Trek uniform when I was about 13 and that's actually about it. Most recently I've been making things from the Tone Finnanger books Sew Pretty Homestyle and Sew Pretty Christmas Homestyle. I can't wax lyrical enough about how wonderful and easy the projects in her books are (nor how pretty!).

And I think I got very very scared by the pattern which I don't think is easy and involves pleating and ... stuff. Poor Jemma's been waiting over a year for her present and I finally decided to grow a pair and make the damn thing. I'm surprised by how well I've been doing. I've only had to rip 1 seam out (despite actually, if I was being incredibly picky, needing to rip 5 or 6 due to stoopid cotton twirling as it seamed), my pockets have been pleated, a little too much so now it's too small for the side of the tote, but I can work with that. All in all, it's going together nicely. So far. I'm only on the third instruction so there's plenty of room for disaster yet!

In the hope that I do actually finish it by Friday so I can post it off to her in time for Tuesday I've also made a pig with wings as I'm sure she thought she'd receive this present when pigs started flying. I love the pig so much that I'm going to have to make myself one too!

Thanks for stopping by,