There is no Grand Plan you see. I think that I have been deceiving myself and you with the whole ‘crafty queue’ thing. “Look how good I am at planning”, it says, “I don’t start anything new unless I’ve checked something off that list.” You and I both know that some of those things are going to be in that queue for a looong time. Does it matter? Should we allow some spontaneity into our sewing? Today, I vote for ‘Yes!’

Here we go then, one planned and one totally unplanned piece of almost finished clothing:

Now, can you tell which one was made using a pattern drafted by someone who knew what they were doing? The ‘trousers’ are my attempt to draft something slim-ish legged, the plan being to be a step nearer to a pair of home-made jeans. I’ve been more than a tad generous with the leg-length there and I can tell you that the combination of long jersey bottoms and laminate flooring is not a good one. I really don’t want another broken toe so I’m going to have to fix those pretty sharpish.

The top. Well, that was from a pattern made available by the inspirational ‘So, Zo…’. Brilliant instructions and a perfectly practical pattern. The only adaptations I made were due to the resources that I had available and vagaries of my body. The nitty gritty details?

• I cut an 8 and graded it to a 12 in the waist/hip area. There wasn’t enough fabric to cut the full length so I had to improvise… adding a little à la Renfrew band of fabric around the bottom.
• The trim is not truly elastic so doesn’t hug me as it might if I had used one of the suggested notions. However, I’m very much into ‘making do’ and the trim came from the same charity shop shelf as the fabric so it’s a bit of foraged fashion and it’s fine.
• Finally, for me, the straps had to be 14-15 cms from the side seam. Something to do with my very square shoulders I suspect.

My recommendations? Go download the pattern and while you are there treat Zoe to a rain forest friendly, fair trade, organic coffee.