Sew What? Introducing My Latest Creation

After so many lovely comments about Friday's Helga-tastic red suit I thought I'd better make something to wear from his pristine length of crimplene I bought from last week's jumble sale.

I used this 1969 pattern which Ronnie sent me a couple of months ago.

Tucked away inside the envelope was the original advertisement for the pattern cut from Woman magazine. They suggested "teens may wish to lop inches off the skirt". Why should teenagers have all the fun? These 45 year-old legs also fancied an outing.

I used some of the contents of bag of braid I bought at a car boot sale earlier in the Summer.

I recently read a blog post in which the writer argued that dressmaking wasn't a frugal hobby as the fabric and notions cost a lot of money.

How deluded were they? I've never bought any new sewing supplies. I inherited the cantilevered sewing box Jon's Mum and I'm always buying bags of thread from car boots and jumbles for pence.

 My sewing shelf was rescued from a friend's skip, painted white and wallpapered with shop samples. All the tubs, tins and jars are second-hand and stuffed with buttons and zips and braiding salvaged from clothes destined for the rag bag or bought from car boot sales. Even the industrial-sized reels of elastic and bias binding were boot sale buys.

Most of the books and magazines were charity shop finds. If there's a publication I fancy I'll sell a couple of books on Amazon to raise the necessary funds.

My Easy Sewing Toyota machine was a present to myself five years ago. I almost drove myself mental using my late Grandma's Singer, they might be fabulous looking bits of kit but with arthritic shoulders  a nightmare to use so it (and Jon's Mum's machine) are masquerading as doorstops instead.

 Expensive hobby my arse! This dress cost less than 30p to make and took a couple of hours of my Sunday afternoon which I'd usually just spend blog reading or catching up with Saturday's Guardian.

Worn with 1960s Tartan wool cape (£4.99, Age UK), 100 denier opaques (£1, Dorothy Perkins bargain bin, 2009), 1970s green suede boots (£4.99, PDSA)

Linking to Patti's Visible Monday

Come back tomorrow and I'll show you some of last week's finds.

See you soon!