Wow, I haven’t been here for such a long time - things keep getting in the way - ordinary, everyday things: cooking dinner, trying to stay on top of the mountains of laundry, house guests, and head colds.

I’m making excuses of course, the truth is that I simply haven’t really felt like sewing or blogging or designing or posting on Instagram so much recently. I’ve been focused on different things (cooking, baking, gardening, decluttering, reading, watching all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls…) So, instead of trying to force it I decided to give myself permission to take a break for as long as I needed.

It worked - sort of. It was good to accept that this just wasn’t where my interest was for the time being, good to take a step back and not to give myself a hard time about it. I don’t want sewing or writing to become a chore. I want to do it because I want to do it - otherwise what’s the point?

There’s a catch though (there’s always a catch!) - now that I finally feel inspired to make and write again, I’m freaking out, because breaking a silence is scary. I mean, surely after taking such a long break I’d better have a good reason to come back to it, I ought to have something exceptional to say, right? Something profound. Or interesting at the very least. I don’t though. I’m sorry. Nothing remarkable here, just my ramblings and a realisation that I am happier when I am writing and making and designing. So without any particular agenda I’m going to try to get back to that. Here’s a pretty new dress that I made:

I sewed myself an Acton dress by In The Folds for my lovely husband’s 40th Birthday party the other weekend. I wanted to make it in a soft black linen, with the hope that it wouldn’t look too formal and I would therefore be able to wear it fairly often. I couldn’t find any nice linen though so I settled on this cotton silk blend instead. It’s actually really lovely, very floaty and drapey and soft.

Black fabric is so hard to photograph - sorry for the not very detailed pictures! Although you can't see it, the dress is beautifully finished inside - lined bodice, french seams etc. I can certainly see more Acton Dresses in my future, although I have might wait until summer now (it seems a shame to hide that beautiful bodice under layers of winter woolies!)