All done

Phew! I finally finished the mattress covers for my brother's caravan! I have of course procrastinated over these. First I had to get the more urgent projects out of the way and lets face it, when it comes to a 'have-to-do' project, anything is more urgent, lol. Then I had to wait for the continuous length zipper to arrive at Spotlight. (and wait....and wait....). Then, when DB rang to ask if they'd be ready for the weekend, I had to play imaginatively with the zippers that were in store, eventually coming up with an arrangement butting 2 zippers end to end (pullers in the middle) to get the length. Finally, after facing the fact that I needed to get these finished at some point, I readied myself to tackle them.

In reality these were just very large box cushion covers. They shouldn't have been difficult. However, DB and DSisIL had chosen the fabric from hell.

Seriously.

I mean, this fabric has knocked satin from the top of my 'hate-to-sew-with' list. It even put the 'creep' factor when sewing velour to shame. A walking foot might have helped, but I don't have one for my machine. Instead, I had to go for loosening the presser foot pressure by quite a bit. (Much looser and I'd have been darning, lol) To top off the sorry saga, I ran out of upholstery thread but another Dsis came to the rescue by buying some on her way over to visit, which meant I could get the danged things finished tonight and I can deliver them tomorrow morning.

I should acknowledge I learnt several things doing these:

- when it comes to a 'have-to-do' job, it's better to just bite the bullet and get on with it! Whilst trying to summon up the willpower to start these I sewed nothing else. I felt guilty even thinking about other projects. Think of the wardrobe I could have had! (Unless I'd procrastinated on that too, lol.)

- I need kneepads if I'm going to crawl around the floor measuring and cutting out large rectangles. My knees reminded me I was not that young anymore after the couple of hours it took to cut these out. I also need a bigger lounge, or no furniture, if I do this again.

- it is a good idea to open the zipper when you sew the second side of the cover to the boxing strip. Yes, I really did forget this one.

- it is not a good idea to sew large amounts of bulky upholstery fabrics on very hot days!

Unfortunately this fabric doesn't count as from my stash. One of my urgent projects did however.
I had to sew a wrap skirt for DD1 for school last week after the shock of what the uniform supplier wanted to charge for a simple skirt. I took a pattern off the too small version, sized it up, (realised too late that I could have got DBro, the pattern-drafter, to make a pattern for me...) cut and sewed. Luckily I had 1.8m of a perfect navy in the stash bought for this purpose last year. I was working out pockets, pleats etc as I went and I'd change a few things if I was to do it again. Hopefully I won't have to tho, as I took a tip from the suit-hire outlets and sewed the waistband in seperate pieces. If I ever need to let it out, it's a simple sideseam stitchline. :)

Now to find where that mojo is hiding so I can get onto some sewing for me tomorrow.