… not because it is the last day of self-stitched September natch, which would ordinarily make it a day of yay!-ness. No, today is the last day of school for my son Sam and we attended a mother/son service together in the school chapel this morning. It was pretty moving and I will admit to the lump in the throat and a few odd tears… One thing the boys do is to present their mother with a rose, and it was a pleasant surprise to me when the colour of the rose Sam gave me accessorised my ensemble so well … fortuitous, or what! We had morning tea together and strolled around the garden and chatted. So a sorta emotional morning; but nice and sweet emotional, not horrid emotional, so that’s OK.
Thoughts on the dress:
You’ve seen this exact ensemble before, when I introduced this dress here on the blog. I was pretty happy with how these raspberry pink sandals went with it, really says “summer!” I think. I just may have been saving this dress for this special occasion this month… 🙂 It received several nice compliments from friends, which is always a plus, hehe. It is super comfortable to wear, and the skirts ripple and swish most satisfyingly around your legs as you walk, and in the breeze, so I’m pretty happy with it. I can see it getting a lot more use for barbies, parties and get-togethers over the next few months as the social season starts to kick in and roar into life. The last few years my party dresses have been relatively colourless (the three lace dresses I wore recently during this month; the pink, the beige-and-silver and the beige-and-black, are all ex-party dresses from previous years) So you can see this super-saturation in colour is a big departure. Good to have something different once in a while, yes? I reckon it’s always wise to be well prepared with a fab party dress way in advance of the social season. The last thing you want is to be madly running up some complicated number in panicky desperation mere hours before a big event. Much better to have worked through any problems of a pattern and/or fabric in a stress-free environment… and I’ve already discussed the teething problems I had with this pattern! But it all worked out to the best in the end; realistically if I’d ended up with the planned white version working out then that would have been yet another colourless party dress, right? So it was meant to be, I reckon.
Details:
Dress; made utilising the twisted front design from Pattern Magic by Tomoko Nakamichi, teal silk jersey and with a yellow lycra petticoat of my own design underneath, details here
Sandals; Pedro Miralles, from Soletta shoes
Self-stitched September; I was planning to write some claptrap insightful meaningful thoughts on my feelings about self-stitched September this time around, but hmmm. I don’t want to say this the wrong way… I really appreciate the great community that Zoe sets up each time, and there is a little core group of people that always make it worthwhile. We leave supportive comments for each other and I look forward to seeing what everybody has been sewing and how they put it together. However I did receive one dodgy comment when somebody called me a show-off. That made me think I didn’t want to do it any more. But when I start something I see it through, so I finished off the month, in hopefully as non-show-off-y a way as I could.
I’ve written before about how one tiny seed of negativity can sadly and wrongly wipe out a whole host of positivity. It is wrong and it shouldn’t be that way. But it just is. So I am a bit doubtful if I want to go there again.
But to finish on a positive note; the other nesting black swan I mentioned has successfully hatched her brood today (or last night maybe, in between yesterday’s walk and today’s walk anyway…) I was thrilled to see four cygnets in this batch… So it is baby season in a big way down at the river… here are some more brand new families that I have seen over the last few days. Please enjoy the baby bird cuteness!
