Christmas Dress 2015

This year's Christmas dress! I've made one every year for the past few years. This year's dress is made with vintage children's fabric (cotton), self lined in the bodice and lined in satin in the skirt for extra puffiness. Pockets for stuffing extra food away for later.

The print is actually tiny blue flowers with little green leaves.

Worn with the usual Christmas mouse earrings, although they're a little blurry here.

1940's robe in satin and lace

Over the past 3 years I have regularly pulled this fabric out of a plastic bag, looked at it, despaired, and put it away again. It's an insanely slippery satin which feels like silk and I knew it would be a complete pain to cut out and sew.

Last weekend, inspiration finally hit.

 The pattern is Butterick 5152

 

The fabric is not exactly 1948-appropriate, but I think it works pretty well!1970's does 40's??

I didn't have quite enough fabric for the length, so I used some black lace for the yoke detail and for a band around the lower edge of the skirt. Apart from that I made no alterations.

These close up photos show the colour most accurately - it's quite a magenta/purple tone and not as pink as it looks in some of these photos.

I LOVE these sleeves. They're incredibly full and billow around like mad. They remind me of a wizard's cape/cloak.

 

The lace is stretchy and adds a lot of weight - perfect for twirling about and sweeping dramatically up and down the hallway (or anywhere really)

Oh! And my hair is purple! I spent two days bleaching the black out of it, dyeing it a permanent purple colour, banging my head against the wall because it didn't work, and then covering up the lot with Paintbox Purple Haze. Success! 

My hair is now quite fluffy because of the bleach but I like being fluffy.

 

The End.

 

But I can't make shoes

For day to day wear, I can make most items of clothing; dresses, coats, trousers, t-shirts, skirts etc. And one of the reasons I started this blog was to stop myself from shopping so much. So often I would find myself in a shop holding an item of mass-produced, over-priced apparel and thinking, "Pffft. I could make this." So why didn't I?? Sheer laziness mainly. And I'm not keen to let my sewing skills go to waste.

My crystal ball tells me I have several new (bright!) projects coming up over the next few weeks...


...but I don't see any sudden acquiring of shoe-making skills, hmm...

I really like these. They're available on ModCloth now. They're not leather. They're cheap. Would it be so wrong?

By the way, I really like the fabric in the center of the first picture. It's a huge satin remnant I picked up in a bargain bin. I love the way it photographs - it looks blurry with movement. That's just the way the pattern on the fabric looks. I'm trying to decide between turning it into a long dress similar to the cream florals, only with a squarer neckline, or a knee-length style with a full skirt. I don't really enjoy sewing with satin but the colours and pattern were too good to pass up. As for the others, stay tuned!