I’m a little late to the party but have decided to participate! With 2 simple pieces and then a more challenging 3rd piece.

Here’s my choice of fabrics;



On the left, a fine stretch suiting to make into my TNT Kwik sew pencil skirt
Middle, silk crepe de chine covered in bows, begging to be made into a pussy bow blouse!
And on the right, silk chiffon which will be made up into the Love Notions Harmony Blouse (either with the flutter or petal sleeve)

I’ve cut and begun sewing the skirt, only to discover I’m all out of my favourite stretch lining, so while I’ve finished the outer skirt, it will have to go aside until I can go and buy more.
Tomorrow’s job will be to cut out the Harmony blouse pattern and fabric.

I’m a little late to the party on this one but declaring my intention to sew 50 metres this year! Last year’s effort was derailed by COVID lockdown sucking all my creativity 
Last year I also downloaded the Cora fabric stash app and spent hours photographing and cataloging my stash. So my stash currently sits at 305 metres/188 pieces... not including my silk fabrics for painting on, and a few other bits and bobs. I also recently moved house! So unpacking all that fabric has given me a renewed desire to make things from it! There’s no many pieces in there that I love.
Still a bit of stuff to unpack into my sewing room, and a quilt to make for my best friend’s baby... then looking forward to making some things for me again!

Has anybody made the Dogs in Sweaters pattern?
I've got another quilt to make for a friend with a baby due end of Feb. I'm undecided on whether to go for a geometric style (she loved the recent one I made for my other friend and has told me so repeatedly  )  or the above pattern - she also loves Daschunds!

Has anyone made this one before? How difficult is it for a beginner-intermediate quilter? Appears to be standard quilt piecing, not sure whether that is easier or harder than FPP? In the end I didn't love the FPP with the other quilt, I liked that it was foolproof to follow, made getting it together easy when I was low on brainpower (covid lockdown  ) however it was virtually impossible to unpick things if I made a mistake.

Thoughts?

I recently made a couple of face masks in silk satin (masks are still mandatory where I live and probably will be into summer, I’m getting bad “maskne”)

I tried the trick of soaking in gelatine and I must say, it’s an absolute revelation! Makes it so much easier to sew. You just need to be able to rinse out the gelatine once your item is finished, so might not be suitable for every application. You will go through a lot of gelatine though, I used powdered, haven’t tried the gelatine leaves. I assume gelatine substitutes will work just as well for any vegetarians not keen on using the real deal.
I used the instructions here

It seems poorly drafted for such a classic style. Low hem starts from the side seam (not on the child’s version though?) and it hangs terribly in the back for all but a couple of the examples.
I also seriously dislike the way the front is drafted, it looks terrible unless it’s buttoned up.

Lot of poor fabric choices (and poor fit) amongst that too, which you can’t blame the designer for - but I wouldn’t be putting them on my website for the whole world to see!

Thanks Manuela! I’m really happy with it, so nice I just keep on stroking it  worth all the time I put into it!
I’ll take some photos tomorrow for you   Hopefully if I’m lucky the sun will be out and give me better lighting, so you can see the colour better!

I agree with BriarRose - acrylic paint will change the hand of the silk too much. Especially as its a dance shawl?

I would be inclined to try discharging it - provided there is somewhere on the garment (seam or hem maybe?) that you can test out the colour remover to see what results you get. I have had good results with Jacquard's Discharge Paste/DeColourant on some commercially dyed silks. The results vary depending on the colour and what it was dyed with, so you definitely need to test it first. It's a paste so could be painted or stencilled on for an interesting design, you then iron it to remove the colour. Some colours won't discharge fully to white, some won't discharge at all.
You can also get a colour remover that you put the whole piece in and boil to remove the colour, called Thiox (Dharma Trading sell this as Dyehouse Colour Remover) however, you could get different results on the fringing to the silk, as there's a good chance the fringe was dyed with a different type of dye, and is probably a different fibre as well (not silk I assume).

My other thoughts are that a design stencilled on in gold or silver would be lovely. Rather than using gutta or acrylic paint I really like Jacquard's Lumiere fabric paint, it doesn't leave as much of a hand on the fabric and is much thinner than gutta. If you heat set it with the iron it will be wash fast. Also cheaper to cover a large area than metallic gutta.

In my mind I could see something like a gold damask design stencilled around the edges of the shawl might look nice, and only around the edges, wouldn't change the hand of the fabric too much?

This is lovely! Great colours. May I ask if you used a pattern? I didn’t know I needed one until now