Creating

Only a very short post this week. I am busy trying to finish Butterick 7729 before the end of the month, and haven't taken enough pictures along the way to write both an in-progress and a completed post. Taking the time to properly draft a bodice front with a full bust adjustment greatly improved the fit of the second mock-up, and rotating the armscye slightly inwards had the double benefit of making the shoulder seam the correct length and also absorbing the excess fullness from the sleeve head. I had to remove some length from the bodice once it had the weight of an attached skirt to pull it down, but I'm pleased with the final fit.

Still needs buttons and other details

(Please excuse the mismatched belt. I've ordered a covered belt, but it hasn't arrive yet, so instead I used the belt I had made by the same firm for my Rosalind dress - also a mid-1950s Butterick pattern.)

The most important part of this project isn't going to be the completed dress, however. When I started it in mid-August I wrote that "I need to be making something to maintain my sanity", and that has definitely been the case. It's been a tough couple of months. My mum, who is in her nineties, fell at the end of July and was in hospital for a month - and very poorly for some of that time. She is home now, but unable to resume her old routines so has carers coming in. There has been - and still is - a lot to set up, and as her only relative, I've been doing it all. (A friend who is in a similar situation memorably summed it up as "Being an only child is not the problem, it's being an only middle-aged adult that you really need to worry about"!)

Amid all this, sewing a dress, even (or perhaps, especially) one which has taken a lot of work, has provided welcome respite. I'm a natural worrier, but many times I have found that tasks such as drafting pattern pieces, marking darts accurately, or constructing a collar with the correct turn of cloth have absorbed me so completely that my brain has had a rest from the hamster wheel of doom that I can get stuck on. There's just something about making, that steady progress through a series of steps, that acts as a reset. And I'm very grateful to have it.