Diane, it's 8:22 pm...

It's that time of year again. Game of Thrones quotes are ubiquitous, Pumpkins are being unceremoniously piled into the nooks and crannies of every supermarket and FASHION is trying to sell us the idea of warm jumpers that stop at the under boob.
Well, I refuse to fall into these sticky traps.
Winter is Coming and this year, I'm not that into it (gasp!)
Ok, ok... I'm sort of into it. But reluctantly.

Recently I've ditched sewing for knitting. Even more recently I've ditched knitting for sewing. What on Earth is causing this promiscuity with my hobbies?
Well....... firstly I just couldn't fathom exactly what I wanted to sew. I've wanted to try making a shirt for ages, purely because RTW just don't cater for my fleshy landscape (I guess it's a bit like turfing Mt Everest... too many footholds and craggs.) but my appraisal of my own skills determined that NO WAY would I be able to whip up a shirt that was anything other than a plaid mess. Actually, the whole process of fitting the bastard thing would probably result in one of my eyes spontaneously ejecting . Soooo, sewing went on holiday for a bit.
Step up KNITTING. I got my needles out and dusted off my lust pattern the Ginny.  I'm a bit of a sucker for owls and I figured the pattern would be enough to keep me entertained while i relentlessly knotted a zillion stitches into a form fitting winter worthy cardigan. It was going well.... AMAZINGLY well..... TOO WELL,

Vincent and his deformed brother Percival

I'd polished off the rib in a few hours, Vincent the first owl emerged with perfect stitch count and then..... well, Percival, owl number 2 became a victim of David Lynch. David Lynch buggered my cardigan. Fer real.
Specifically we've been re-watching Twin Peaks because AMAZING (Side-note... NEW SERIES WHooooooooooo, maybe.). So engrossed was I in the shady doings that I lost a few key stitches..... twice. So on Friday I cast Ginny aside in deep despair and flounced onto a chaise lounge with hand to forehead.

At around this point in time I read  Lladybird's post on her Mabels ; aside from being a pretty inspiring sewing wizard, she'd also just made a shirt. The signs were there. The shirt had to be made.
The last couple of days I've been whipping up a plethora of toiles to get my Simplicity 1538 fitting like a Boss.
I can't say I've enjoyed the repetitive process of tracing, altering, cutting, sewing, pinning, retracing but it is quite a leveling thing to do. The prospect of having a shirt is exciting. So far I've taken 1" out the overall length, pinched a bit out the front arm scye and added it into the back, changed the gathers into a box pleat and done a 3" sway back adjustment ( Seriously, no wonder shirts never fitted. I only found one website that dealt with a alteration of such immense size over at Miss P, in fact without her wisdom, this shirt would be in the bin right now) Ugh. I'm finally on the home straight of cutting out my serious fabric (and it is pretttttty serious fabric) but I shall leave a picture of my first muslin because I think it illustrates perfectly why I never became a fashion designer.
Do you find you have any CRAZY BIG alterations that seem to be necessary?  Do you ever worry the perfect fit is eternally elusive?

Seriously sexy fabric mixing