21.7.17
Thanks, Anneke!
This bodice for this fancy-pants dress was drafted using this wonderful tutorial from Anneke Caramin's super blog! Seriously, if your basic block is just itching to be manipulated and you've got dart rotation on your mind then WAIT NO MORE! Anneke has done a handy tutorial on her blog post which is really easy to follow. Thank you so much, Anneke!
I followed Anneke's tutorial for the bodice and waistband but I changed it up a bit by just adding a simple circle skirt. I made this dress to wear to my friend Catriona's wedding in St. Andrew's in May and it was a fun dress to wear for ceilidh dancing!
I was having too much fun at the wedding to have the foresight to take pictures of me wearing the dress where you can properly see it but here is a shot of my friend Grace and I showing off our shoes among some confetti just to prove I did actually wear the dress to a wedding!
18.7.17
Pinstripe Salope(tte)
It’s a funny old pastime, putting a picture of yourself on the world wide web wearing something you’ve made, standing on a pile of books, and smiling into your camera which is balanced on a precarious tower of boxes on top of a bread bin.
And I’m a little rusty as it’s been a while since I’ve updated here! Mostly because I seem to find it harder to get photos of what I’ve made these days, through a combination of having less time (or a perception of less time anyway), forgetting to ask people to take my picture when I’m wearing something I’ve made in a nice location, and being less enthusiastic about constructing make-shift camera tripods from household objects when everyone else is out! Oh well! I’ve also definitely sewn less in the last year or so too, and when I have sewn something I’ve not necessarily found it interesting to blog about.
But here I am, taking advantage of a quiet morning and some nice light to get some snaps of this dungaree dress which I made around April/May I think.
The pattern was rubbed-off a second-hand dungaree dress I bought a while ago and adapted slightly. I like the oversized length and I think the bottom section makes the overall pinstripe effect look more balanced. The fabric comes from Gold Fingers and is a lovely thick wool blend with a very smooth lined underside. I initially bought it with fantasies of pinstriped trousers in my mind but then the idea of these dungarees came to me! I still have enough fabric left for the trousers so hopefully those will happen too!
It was my 30th birthday last week and I celebrated with my family in Portugal for a few days which was very very lovely. One of my ‘ambitions’ for my twenties was to learn to make my own clothes so I’m really happy to be able to say to myself that I have done that. So now I need some new sewing goals for my new decade.
And as birthdays are the kind of moments when we get all reflective, I also need to remind myself that life is better when I make time for my funny old pastimes!