Okay, so while I was perusing the million and one blogs for the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway I got a few ideas for keeping myself accountable.  There was an awful lot of ‘Work In Progress Wednesdays’ which is probably great if you don’t have a day job, but for me, Friday is the start of my creative week, so I’ll be having Finally Fridays, probably all by myself, but who cares, it saves me having to invent a funky button for it ;o) 

I also signed up for the Summer Of No Pants a few days ago too.  To reassure all my UK readers, I will definitely be wearing underwear all summer, all year round in fact!  In theory I will not be wearing trousers, only skirts and dresses, however practicality trumps pretty clothes, so trousers for work it is – I walk around too much, and crawl around on the floor too much for anything else!  My legs may scare people on a long term basis too…  Thus, I will be aiming for the summer holidays, and in fact I have some shorts I’m intending to make for then too, so we’ll just go with the sew-along type challenge of making 4 dresses or skirts in 4 weeks!

I mentioned these patterns and fabrics I bought a few weeks ago, and they happen to fit the challenge perfectly. 

Dress #1:  This will be using the halterneck view.  This will be further down the line of things to be tackled, as it required fitting and things, and I’m not sure how to do that yet!

Dress #2, will be using the regular strap view, like the woman on the cover is wearing.  Like #1, this will require fitting, although as it’s pretty much the same bodice pattern, once I’ve cracked one of them, the other should be easy, right?

Dress #3 has no pattern.  Well, no pattern in the formal sort of a sense.  I’m planning on making an adult sized version of this dress.  I think my biggest challenge with this is working out how to wind the bobbin for the shirring elastic for my sewing machine, the dress itself should be easy…

Skirt #1:  I’m going to make the shorter one of these 2 skirts, although I may make each layer a tad bit longer than it is at the moment, it may be a little too short as is, but the longer one is just below knee length, which I’m not too keen on.

I’m not really a big accessory person, but I do like my shoes to kind of match the rest of my outfits, so, having seen an idea at the Little Birds Craft Market a couple of weeks ago, I decided to get a plain pair of ballet pumps and make clip on bows from each of the fabrics from my skirts and dresses, as they all have white in them somewhere:

For my other works in progress, here’s my super secret project as it was early this afternoon.  This is as much as you’ll get to see until it’s all done and dusted now, and as it is, the fabric is all cut out now…

And finally, just to reassure the beary fans that I haven’t forgotten the bears:

I’m not telling you about my plans for these yet though, you’ll just have to wait and see :oD

Right, now I’m back off to do battle with some fusible interfacing that’s refusing to fuse…