Handmade by Carolyn

Black, gold and beaded cocktail/ball dress

27/07/2010 9:40 am \ 8 Comments \ Carolyn

This is not a new dress (although I have finished my new evening dress and will show it here soon!) This is an old dress I made about three years ago, out of lovely matte stiff silk taffeta for the overskirt, very fine black tulle for the underskirt; and the bodice is gold satin with a beautiful beaded, embroidered and sequinned black tulle fabric overlay. There is black satin ribbon sewed as a decorative detail under the bodice and tied in a little bow, and I also added thin black satin ribbon shoulder straps. The beaded fabric was very expensive, about $80/metre from memory, so I only bought about 40cm, just enough for the width of the bodice! There were still some scraps, and the beaded tulle was decorated a little sparse IMO, so I cut out quite a few of the beaded/embroidered motifs from the leftovers and hand-sewed them onto the bodice after it was finished to fill in the gaps and make for a super-luxurious, fully sparkly bodice! The pattern I used was Burda 8046. I haven’t checked if this pattern is still available, but I’ll review it anyway…

Details:
Dress; Burda 8046, black silk taffeta, black tulle, gold satin, black beaded/embroidered and sequinned tulle
Sandals; Sachi, bought at some little boutique in Melbourne
Bag; gift from Craig, very early in our marriage

Pattern Description
Close-fitting strapless or halter neck dress with under-bust seam, and bolero jacket. I made the strapless version of the dress
Pattern sizing
European 32-44 (US 6-18); I initially cut size 38 (12) but ended up adjusting the bodice to be quite a lot narrower.
Did it look like the drawing/photograph on the pattern envelope once you had finished sewing it?
yes, except that I added very thin ribbon shoulder straps to hold it up…!
Were the instruction easy to follow?
very easy
What did you particularly like or dislike about this pattern?
The pattern is fine. It is very easy to sew up. I chose it because the shape of the dress fitted the vision I had in my head for this particular dress. I would have preferred a boned bodice with an internal foundation and waist stay and in retrospect should have constructed the bodice to allow for this… However I am perfectly happy with the outcome
Fabric used:
Fine black tulle for the underskirt, black silk taffeta for the overskirt. Gold satin for the bodice and a beaded/embroidered and sequinned black tulle for a bodice overlay. 6mm black satin ribbon sewed on as a decorative division between the bodice and the skirt. 3mm black satin ribbon shoulder straps
Pattern alterations or any design changes you made:
I added thin satin ribbon shoulder straps after fearing that bodice wasn’t going to stay up by itself…. They weren’t strictly necessary but I wouldn’t have felt comfortable without them…
Would you sew it again? Would you recommend it to others?
I would definitely recommend this as a very easy strapless dress pattern. Sews up very quickly. With added straps, it is perfect. Without straps… not so much
Conclusion:
I expect the halter neck version of this pattern is the perfect “very easy ball-gown” pattern, perfectly suited to a beginner project. The strapless version is easy, but as the design is not fitted very firmly at the waist I can imagine one would be constantly hoinking it up without added shoulder straps… although maybe a larger-busted woman wouldn’t have the same problem. I do love my dress however and have worn it to at least four or five formal functions with great success.

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: ballgown, Burda 8046, evening wear, Fabric warehouse, pattern review, Sienna

On growing old gracefully

26/07/2010 7:02 am \ 3 Comments \ Carolyn

Today met my girlfriends for a get-together and debrief after the school holidays…

{You know how when something is troubling you, a good bit of advice is to write a long letter to yourself where you can purge all the negativity out of your system? Then you are supposed to rip up same letter and toss it out? Well I just did that with this blog post. I had written a long rambling lot of introspective balderdash…. I knew it was kinda silly when I wrote it, and even my husband came home and advised me it was not worthy… the long and short of this is that the “blah blah blah” that was here before is gone from this blog. If you have already read the first draft of weirdness and scratched your head wondering where was the expected sewing, knitting and fashion, well I apologise sincerely. Sometimes one needs to vent. And vent I did. Sorry!}

Man… as an afterthought; what on earth am I wearing? back to business… today wearing the khaki and air-force blue colour combo I predicted would be my staple for this winter. Well, the denim is close enough to the “dirty” blue I’m loving; and the texture and colour of my scarf works just perfectly right for what I wanted, considering I dressed without much thought this morning. Some of my favourite ensembles have been the result of a rushed thoughtless random grabbing of separates…

Details:
Dress; Cue, found secondhand and refashioned here.
Jacket; Ezibuy
Scarf; knitted by me from various wools
Leggings; Metalicus
Boots; Andrea and Joen; from Uggies

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: dress, Ivy and Maude, Knitted, my views, scarf, Sienna, Wardrobe Refashion

Casino Royale party, with DIY necklace

25/07/2010 6:22 am \ 6 Comments \ Carolyn

Remember back in April I went to a fashion parade and mentioned a stunningly over-the-top necklace? I had initially thought of a DIY but my jewellery making skills are not fabulous. So I went back to the store with some friends a while back and had a closer look at the necklace; with a vague view of suggesting it to Craig as a future birthday gift and discovered it was a Tom Binn’s design and was selling for $1695, well NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!! With my usual ~~stingeiness~~ selfless concern for the family finances (he he!) I decided to persist with the DIY after all. And remembered this tutorial by the amazing Maegan, whose blog is heaps inspiring, she is very beautiful, stylish and creative too… so every time I’ve been to op shops and secondhand stores I’ve checked out the jewellery selection, but I’ve come to the conclusion Australians just do not get rid of half-way nice jewellery at all but only truly junk jewellery… so eventually I ended up in Diva where I bought five cheap new necklaces, and also supplemented with one I already had. And here is the result!
Last night Craig and I went to a Casino Royale party and I decided the event was ripe for excessive bling and luxury and wearing the new necklace… And I love my new necklace and it got lots of compliments! And I want to work on it some more and make it even more OTT!
Below is the outfit I wore to the party; glam, no? We certainly had heaps of fun… All the guys were in tuxedos and all the girls were super blingy and I wasn’t the only one in a fur… This fur coat was given to me by a friend of my sister-in-law’s who had inherited it from a great aunt and who wanted to get rid of it, can you believe it?!… I wouldn’t wear new fur, but PETA-supporters rest assured this is a very old fur coat, older than all of us…
This kinda drab black velvet dress I’m wearing? I did get this in an op shop with a view to altering it but haven’t got around to it yet and this is the “before” look. It’s on my to-do list…

Details:
Dress; from an op shop
Fur coat; old old old, given to me
Shoes; Nina, from David Jones
Necklace; made by me from six other necklaces
Earrings; Sophie Kyron

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: accessories, DIY

Australiana Alphabet cross-stitch

24/07/2010 9:14 am \ 12 Comments \ Carolyn

I stitched this during the year of 1993. It was the year we were living in Adelaide, my eldest two were tiny, Craig was away a lot and I spent many evenings alone in the lounge room with this on my lap and a very strong lamp positioned to beam over my shoulder, concentrating on these tiny stitches. I can remember I set myself a goal of completing one letter each week, and managed to stick to this schedule successfully; I find I always work better to a deadline than to any other motivation…
I had a good friend over there doing one of these same cross-stitches for herself at the same time I was doing mine. I can still remember it took me over an hour to sort out the embroidery threads that came with the kit; to give you an idea the colours included brown, light brown, very light brown and very very light brown, dark brown, very dark brown and black/brown, and very light mushroom brown, dark tan, tan, light tan and very light tan. Not to mention grey brown, light grey brown, very light grey brown and very very light grey brown! Laugh! And that is just the browns! I’m not even going to start on the greens… I still have the thread cards on which I’ve carefully printed out all the colours and also copied the letters needing each one alongside.
It has a different native animal/bird/flower for each letter. I’ve included a couple of close-ups of some of my favourite letters; I always loved the colours of the Urchin and the Goanna, my husband favoured the Numbat and Tim like the Australian flag.
Gee, it’s been a long time since I did any cross-stitch, and I once enjoyed doing it but now I’m completely over it. Still I’m pretty happy I’ve got this concrete reminder of what was a very content time for me, when I had a very domesticated life at home with my kiddies.

For those interested in what the letters stand for, here goes:

A; the Australian flag, B; Brolga, C; Cockatoo, D; Dainty Field Mouse, E; Echidna, F; Flannel Flower, G; Goanna, H; Honeyeater, I; Ibis, J; Jabiru, K; Koala, L; Lorikeet, M; Magpie, N; Numbat, O; Orchid, P; Platypus, Q; Quokka, R; Rosella, S; Swan, T; Tawny Frogmouth, U; Urchin, V; Violet (native); W; Wallaby, X; (e)Xtraordinary frill-necked lizard (bit of a stretch, that one!) Y; Yabbie, Z; Zebra Finch

Later edit: Sorry, should have looked this out before, the design is copyright (1984) by Allura Design, PO Box 533, Artarmon NSW 2064, Australia

SaveSave

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: cross-stitch, handcrafts

TGl Friday

23/07/2010 5:09 am \ 3 Comments \ Carolyn

Today was meeting friends for morning tea, and another friend for a walk later (and afternoon tea afterwards, no doubt!) It’s a tough life. My office work can wait until tonight, methinks… and it would be a crying shame to waste a beautiful day like today. Of course if I said that every day I would get absolutely no work done whatsoever…! but meh.
This is the “Weird Bodice” dress from last winter, that I love for its flattering olive shade, flattering for me, that is; and cute flippy skirt, but has a strange bodice design that needs covering up. I went for some cheerful happy colours to go on over the top. I’ve always had a thing about red, and have always worn a lot of it. I think it suits my hair colour. This winter it seems to have dropped off the fashion radar, apart from the currently all-the-rage LRD (little red dress for evening wear). The shops are filled with drab putty neutral shades, and the ubiquitous BLACK. Seriously, I was out with a friend a week or so ago, and we passed a boutique where everything on the racks was black, and I mean everything. It was a marvellous thing, well, it certain had us marvelling, but not in a good way. Are Perthies so boring in our colour choices, that an all-black shop would stay happily in business? (bearing in mind it was in a high-ish rent area too) Bizarre…

Details:
Dress; Burda 7897, olive bamboo/cotton mix
Cardigan; Metalicus
Scarf; Frangi, from Tie-Rack
Tights; Kolotex
Shoes; Django and Juliette, from Zomp shoes
Bag; Gucci

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Burda 7897, dress, Fabulous fabrics

“Plenty long enough” socks

22/07/2010 3:12 am \ 6 Comments \ Carolyn

So these are socks I knitted this winter, using leftovers. The top part (my favourite part) is the leftover Grignasco yarn from here, below that is the last remnants of the Patonyles wool (the shrink-tastic one) and the lowest part going down to the toes is some new sock yarn I bought this year for this purpose; a brand called Koigu, 100% Merino wool made in Canada. Up until I spotted this yarn I didn’t know Canadians were into Merino like us Aussies and Kiwis here, so there you go…. learn something new every day…
Like my twee little name suggests (and please accept my apologies for the weak humour) I made these socks easily long enough for my foot and then a little more some, just in case of a reoccurrence of the dreaded washing machine shrinkage.
Although this. Will. Not. Occur. (gritted teeth, shaking fist threateningly at washing machine)

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Knitted, Patons knitting book C11, socks

“Snow Bunny” beanie

21/07/2010 5:49 am \ 5 Comments \ Carolyn

I know, I know, the name I’ve given my new beanie is kind of ridiculous and inappropriate, given today’s weather you can see in my photo here; blazingly brilliant sunshine in clear periwinkle skies… it’s OK, I’m happy to have the irony in my life. I love the sunshine absolutely, but I can imagine those of you lucky enough to get snow in your winter must be hiding a chuckle at what our Perth winters are like… When we do finally get some grey miserable days with storm clouds overhead (which we will) my beanie will seem more fitting, but I wanted to show it off for today since I just finished it the night before last… and the truth be told I whipped it off for the rest of today because my head got too hot…
This beanie is a plain ordinary beanie, no bells or whistles, made with Patons Jet, a wool/alpaca mix. I bought ten balls of this at the beginning of winter, so expect to see some more projects in this yarn before winter’s out.

Thankyou ladies for the sweet comments you left about my Mum yesterday, she is a beautiful lady and I consider myself the lucky one to have her in my life.

Details:
Beanie; knitted with Patons Jet, colour 100
Tops; both Metalicus
Skirt; Vogue 7303, bottle green cotton velveteen
Tights; Metalicus
Boots; Fornarina, from David Jones
Bag; Gucci

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: hat, Knitted, own design, skirt, Spotlight, Vogue 7303

“Jewel” knitted waistcoat

20/07/2010 6:18 am \ 7 Comments \ Carolyn

Here is a waistcoat I knitted for my mother, ooh, probably about seventeen or so years ago. Round about the time Kaffe Fassett was having a big impact on the creative textile world. I took this photo of her wearing it the last time I went down to stay with Mum and Dad in the country.
The waistcoat is made up of about twelve different wools/cottons/blends in a variety of berry and jewel colours to a Kaffe Fassett “triangles” design I saw in one of his books, and the shape and knitting pattern of the waistcoat is my own design.