Howdy!  So I’ve been suffering badly with the dreaded lurgy lately – which has been a bummer, to say the least!  It’s taken me so long to get on and actually finish this dress.  I think I started it at the end of November…  wow… just worked that out myself.  It DID take me ages!

The pattern is the Cami Dress by Pauline Alice.  I was a very lucky girl for my birthday in November, and got given a bunch of different dressmaking bits.  This pattern was one of the presents – bought from my local, Backstitch.

And the fabric for this dress was picked up from Backstitch too.  This wasn’t part of my birthday present – instead one of my cheeky lunchtime purchases.  It’s called Cosmic Blue by Atelier Brunette.  The design on the fabric is amazing, and can only be described as tiny Pac-Men printed all over!  The colour is quite stunning too – very eye-catching.

I have to say I am pretty bloody proud of myself for finishing this dress.  Making it involved learning quite a few new techniques.  So I’m pretty pleased that everything turned out ok and wearable!

New techniques were:

• Buttonholes and buttons
• Gathering fabric (for skirt)
• Inserting a standard zip
• Making a collar

To learn each of these techniques I used a combination of checking through my selection of dressmaking books, and also searching through YouTube videos too.  One of my favourite books at the moment is Love at First Stitch by Tilly Walnes (of Tilly and the Buttons). Such an amazing book, which includes some patterns too.

This is going to be one of my work wardrobe staples now… and I can’t wait to get on a fabric buying spree to make more!!!  The only thing I think I might change is to make it a bit larger on the bodice to allow plenty of room for boobies 😉

On that note…. THANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT!

Peace and love

Jen x

Evening lovelies!

Tonight I give you another very gorgeous By Hand London Flora dress.  This is a dress which I made in super fast time to wear to a very special wedding in August last year.  It was like real life Great British Sewing Bee!!  I try to avoid making things in a rush to a deadline, because it kind of takes the enjoyment of sewing away… I guess it can become a bit of a chore.  But with this dress I didn’t mind at all.  I made this in a few days (evenings only) and was just a weeny bit proud of myself!

I figured that if I was rushing a dress then I ought to follow a pattern which was familiar to me.  I had just made a Flora dress for a wedding earlier in August, so it made sense to make another one.

So to start the project… the fun task of fabric shopping! I knew I wanted a nice lightweight fabric – probably slightly lighter than the Flora I made before.  So I opted for a gorgeous Cloud 9 voile from the Palos Verdes range, called Miraleste – bought online from M is for Make.  Shipping was very fast – which was ideal seeing that I was under massive time constraints!

Pattern pieces were very quick to knock up, as I already had them cut out from the last dress – including the adjustment to the back to stop gaping.

I had a minor punch up with the invisible zip – and have to say that this tutorial on the By Hand London website was an absolute lifesaver!  I think I ended up in a straggle because I was rushing so much.  But I got there eventually!

Because the voile is lovely and lightweight, it is that tiny bit sheer and see-though.  And I didn’t really want to scare other wedding guests(!), so decided to line the dress fully.  I just used an ivory poplin from John Lewis, which worked beautifully.

I also decided to shorten the back of this dress.  The pattern gives quite a deep dipped (not to be confused with deeply dippy – god bless you Right Said Fred) hem circle skirt.  But I wanted to alter that for this dress, just to have it slightly different!

I was really so pleased with the finished dress. The fabric was a pleasure to wear!

Anyway, enough from me!  Here are photos so you can see for yourselves 🙂

A little glimmer of summariness on this Blue Monday!

Shoes are from Kurt Geiger, and my favourite necklace ever (was a birthday gift from Husband) is Alex Monroe, bought from Liberty.

Peace and love

Jen x

Back in August I attended the wedding of an old school friend of mine, at a gorgeous hotel in St Albans.  I decided some time beforehand that I wanted to be good enough at dressmaking to be able to make my own dress to wear on the day of the wedding.  I had only been sewing for a few months, so the very idea of this seemed a tad daunting!  But I knew I wanted to make my outfit myself.

I opted for the Flora Dress (variation 2) from By Hand London.  I’m not really one to go for anything super girly usually, but this dress jumped out at me.  I think it was the neckline which sold it to me – I loved how classy it looked.

Once the pattern arrived I got to work with sourcing my fabric.  I found this quite hard!  Mostly because I’m quite picky with patterns and colours.  Then I came across the fabrics for sale from Sew Over It.  So many gorgeous ones to choose from!! I’m always drawn to blues and greens though – I guess because they suit me – probably because the colour contrasts against my hair!  So I ended up going with this vintage blue & cream floral fabric. It’s a lightweight cotton, which I figured would work well with the pattern.  I thought the vintage look would really suit the style of the dress.

Before the fabric arrived I had a bit of time to knock up a toile.  This was really helpful as the back of the dress was a bit gapey on me –  so I was able to fix this before starting on the posh new fabric.

I also decided that I would try a new technique on this dress – one which I hadn’t tried yet. This was to fully line it…!  I bought some plain ivory coloured cotton poplin from John Lewis in Cambridge.  It meant more work to do this, but figured that the finish would be worthwhile.

Sewing of the dress went really well.  I followed the pattern instructions as well as the sewalong on the By Hand London website.  This was so so helpful!  I’m quite a visual person so I always find that pictures help.

I also had the task of inserting an invisible zipper… This was covered in my course so I had already had a very small amount of experience of putting invisible zips in.  So I wasn’t entirely excited about putting one in!  They can be a tad tricky!  I used the tutorial on the By Hand London website to keep me on track.  I did have a minor heart attack at one point, when I thought I had sewn it all on the wrong way!  Turned out it was ok though 🙂

Then I got to the point of hemming.  The instructions recommend hemming by hand – so I duly did so.  I had never done an awful lot of hand sewing – I guess I have a vague recollection of doing a few things at school.  I did my research on blind slip stitching to find a how to guide.  I knew it was going to take a while, and I had moments beforehand where I toyed with the idea of machine hemming to save time.  But I went ahead with doing it by hand – and I am so pleased that I did.  It took probably a whole evening to do this – but I did it from the comfort of my sofa and found it to be a pretty relaxing experience!

I gave the whole thing a good press once it was finished, it looked so beautiful!  Very very chuffed with myself!

Wearing it was kind of exciting – I mean, the fact that I made it and all.  It fitted beautifully – I made in size 8, and made the alteration to the back to stop it gaping open.  The fabric was a dream to wear too – so soft!

This dress was slightly out of my comfort zone as I don’t really wear much that is too girly… and this dress is definitely very floral and feminine.  So decided to team it with a fairly chunky gold ‘wide collar’ necklace from Warehouse and my Carvela ‘Klunk’ sandals from Kurt Geiger.

I also had my hair put up by a very amazing hairdresser, with this chunky French plait.  Absolutely loved it!!

It was an amazing day with hilarious friends – fun memories made!

Anyway, hope you like the dress.  Shortly after this, I got to making another Flora dress for the next wedding of the season.  Photos of this to follow very soon!

Peace and love

Jen x