Green Garden Dress

Youngest son:  Mum, are you going to wear high heels today?
Me:  I don't know yet.
Youngest son:  Are you going to wear a dress?
Me:  Yes, I'm going to wear my new green dress.
Youngest son:  You can wear your green high heels then.

They are all in training around here!

This is a close-up of the fabric of my new, green dress.  The fabric was a bit of a lucky dip.  I was picking up remnants from Little Workers one holiday.  None of the remnants had much "bolt" appeal.  Thery were all tightly wrapped into little rolls.  I pulled out a few green and yellow pieces for only a couple of dollars each.  When I got home and unwrapped the fabric, I was delighted to find this rose print.

I am also wearing my new necklace, bought with birthday money from my Mum.  Thanks Mum!

Here is the dress.  The top half is from the pattern I drafted when trying to sew Vogue 1174 last year.  Now that I have made it with contrast piping, I am not sure that the piping lines are all that flattering for a small bust.  The fabric is lightweight cotton, so I thought a gathered skirt would be best.  The skirt is a rectangle, gathered about 2:1, using my cheap gathering foot.  

I did build a foundation and included a waist stay; however, the dress did not go together as nicely as I would have liked.  The piping is cheap and nasty stuff from Spotlight.  It buckled and waved when I sewed it in.  I trying putting a little tension on it, but then I ended up with the fabric gathering onto the piping.  Not every day is a couture day, so I decided to go with the satisfaction of completing a project quickly rather than labour over the details. 

I also wanted to say that my thoughts and prayers are with all those affected by the earthquakes in Christchurch.  It seems a frivolity to talk about clothing when such events are occuring.  Water and power are the priorities and I wish I could send you some of ours.  Flood, cyclones, bushfires and earthquakes.  It has been a hard start to the year for many.

The ultimate twirling skirt

I love finding our about independent pattern companies, so I was most excited when a friend recently introduced me to farbenmix and Studio Tantrum patterns.  These are patterns for children.  My friend gave me the Redondo skirt pattern and I loved it so much that I then went out and bought their book "Sewing Clothes Kids Love". 

I made this Redondo skirt for my daughter.  She loves it, but much prefers to wear it as a strapless dress over leggings.  She tries to turn everything in her dress-up box into a strapless short dress, so that is obviously her style preference!

The pattern is essentially 2 pieces, an upper flounce and a lower flounce.  Five full flounces are sewn together to make the skirt.  I cut the pieces on the bias so that I could get them out of a fat quarter, which seems to have worked okay.

Here it is, being worn as a skirt, on the streets of Tokyo.  I had bought my kids brightly coloured jumpers to minimise my chances of losing them in a crowd.  As it seems almost everybody wears black in Tokyo, this was even more effective than I had anticipated!

A cyclone and a muslin

It has been a week since cyclone Yasi blew through and I now have power back to my house.  We all got through okay, with no-one injured and only minor damage to the house....a few trees landed on the house, damaging gutters and one casement window broke.  It wasn't all bad.  My sister and her family evacuated to our house and it was lovely to have them.  I rediscovered the pleasure of a candle-lit bath.  A forced holiday from television and computers is probably a good thing now and then, and I didn't need to make excuses for not vacuuming, ironing or washing!

The day before cyclone preparations began in earnest, I whipped up a very quick muslin of this interesting design from "Pattern Magic Vol 3 - Stretch Fabric Material".  This book is listed for $50 on Amazon, but it only cost me $20 in Japan.  If you go to Amazon you can see some images from the book.  Admittedly, Amazon are showing only the more wearable designs.  Some of the others are pretty kooky!

I had lots of jobs that I really should have been doing, so I picked the quickest project to try. It is basically 2 circles sewn together.  The bottom circle has a hole for your body to go through and the top circle has a hole for your head.  Two slits are left open between the circles for arm-holes.

Initially, I thought that the top was wearable, probably best made up in a neutral colour, to layer over other neutral coloured knits.  I liked the back neckline.  Now that I have seen photos of me wearing it, it won't be getting beyond the muslin stage.  Never mind, it was a quick, fun play-around.

This is the tree that landed on the front of the house.  Some kind neighbours helped us remove it. 

 This top does feel a little like a super-hero cape.

 From some angles, the back looks quite lovely.  From others, not so much.

And lastly, a photo of our cyclone bunker.  We moved our very heavy, jarrah dining table into my sewing room (I did have to do some tidy-up to get it in there).  Fortunately, we did not need it, but we did check to see if everybody could fit underneath.