This week brought what we hope will be the last of this year’s “Winter” storms.  There were tornadoes in the area, but luckily none too close.  While the storms were raging outside, I was working on completing this little gem.  He took about a month to complete and his name is, of course, Tempest.  The chart is a free Teresa Wentzler design.  For some reason, I cannot seem to stay away from her lovely charts.

I bought a mat cutter a while back with a Christmas gift card and finally got the chance to try it out by cutting mat boards for this piece.  It was much easier than I thought it would be and I will be doing all my own framing in the future.

On the sewing front, I recently completed a couple of dresses for my sister-in-law.  She had started these two dresses over a decade ago.  A few years ago she let me borrow (store) her copies of AS&E.  Inside a couple of the magazines were the pattern pieces for these dresses, however, they were both missing half their skirts.  The back skirts were attached, but the front skirts were nowhere to be found.  So, I thought I would attempt to finish them for her newest daughters, but it was going to be a challenge.  I started by purchasing some black fabric that would match the black in the sleeve and collar scallops.  Then, I cut the back skirts in half, horizontally, and used the part I cut off of each for the top of the front skirts.  Using the black fabric, I made lower skirts for both dresses and assembled the dresses in the normal fashion.  The only difference in the two is the Scotty dog.  The red plaid dress was just screaming for a Scotty and so I embroidered one on with my machine.  Here are the results.

She was very surprised 🙂  I think they turned out lovely.  Thoughts?