After four days of tedious, boring, fiddly mending, I need a project that is fun and creative and enjoyable.

Funnily enough this one I’ve also been thinking about and sort of procrastinating about for a long time, but for completely the opposite reason than the damn cardigan facing, but for the completely opposite reason.

This is an old skirt in some sort of crafts-woven wool mix fabric that I bought at Spitalfields Market ages ago, from a small-scale maker. I still like it but at the same time I feel it’s getting a bit boring. Needs more bling, more pizzazz. So I’ve been thinking about decorating it somehow.

But how? Applique? Lace? Embroidery? Too much wide-open choice, too many options, so I’ve done nothing.

At one point I bought a small bit of glorious patterned silk fabric that I thought I might use for some kind of applique, but it never felt quite right, so the project has been languishing at the back of my brain.

Inspiration is never going to simply appear so I just have to get started. I’m thinking of organic shapes in a vaguely flower-like design, centred around the right side seam. (Sloppy photos today, sorry – I was focusing more on the design than on documenting it properly.)

Going all in on the patterned silk would be too much of a good thing, I think, so I bought wool in matching colours to combine it with. The silk gets to set both the colour scheme and the overall tone – blingy! – but some of the “petals” will be in wool. In a way it will make it visually noisier but also less overwhelming I hope.