I like my money where I can see it - hanging in my closet

I've been sewing up a storm recently.  As I may have mentioned, Simon bought me a lovely Mother's Day present, a two day Mortmain sewing course at Badger and Earl.  Well, day 2 sort of ran away from me, and I didn't manage to actually finish the dress until just today.  The exposed zip just about killed me, and I had to have 4 or 5 goes to get it in properly.  It still doesn't quite look right, and I might still have another go, but later when the pain is just a happy memory.

Here's what it looked like on Sunday last week.

The zip's tacked in place with red thread.  In the end, the best way I found to secure it was to hand sew over the teeth and force it into place before sewing it twice.  Anyway, it worked in the end; have a  sort of close up.

I finished the hem as well; I'm taking advantage of the children being away with Simon.

I'm going to have to wait until they get back to take some modelled photographs, and I'll even brush my hair this time.  I should probably iron the dress too; for some reason it doesn't take kindly to being kept in a bag and then sulkily dumped on the sofa.

The pattern is an absolute dream to make, and I loved every minute of my classes with lovely, lovely Jane; and I'm definitely going to make it again, with sleeves and without sleeves, but with an invisible zip.  Just got to get the fabric together.  I might make it with contrasting facings too, now I've beaten facings into shape.  

The classes were at Badger and Earl, which is the most delightful sewing cafe/haberdashery/fabric/yarn shop a bus ride from my door.  We are going there for a fabric printing class next week, which will be great fun for all of us.  Jane wrote about the class here, and there's even a couple of photos of me with my tongue stuck out in concentration.  Look carefully and there's a modelled shot of me in the dress, in its previous length, where it makes me look slightly like Kimmy Schmidt coming out of the bunker.

Dammit.