This is one of my more recent creations, made in the last few months. I was inspired by Prada’s Autumn/Winter 2008 collection of black lace “suits” (see below). Yes, I realise its taken me quite a while to get around to it…

I had managed to get black lace from the remnants bin on a foray to my favourite fabric shop, Fabulous Fabrics. The top is Butterick 4985 again, view B (nipped in at the torso as always), but with sleeves hijacked from a dress pattern, Burda 7897. The bottom of the blouse, sleeves and the edge of the collar were edged with black border lace. The skirt was constructed by making the lining from my trusty ol’ favourite Vogue 7303 out of gunmetal blue bemsilk. I then used the same pattern to cut out a partial front and back skirt from the lace, then got creative and added random strips and pieces of the same lace around my dressmaking dummy (Bessie) to “fill in the gaps”. I oversewed the joining seams with a wider black border lace and left the long strips hanging down past the hem of the skirt. The final effect is of a slightly random raggedy handkerchief hemline. I didn’t bother hemming or finishing the lace, as it won’t unravel.

The blue lining was chosen because I liked the interesting contrast under the black(also because I had a perfect size length left over in my stash which needed using up!). I managed to find the perfect buttons to match this colour at Calico and Ivy; beautiful tiny heart-shaped, blue shell buttons; there are four down the front of the blouse. All in all, I’m very pleased with the final effect, and I felt quite dressy enough when I met some friends for lunch at the this month’s Globe Fashion Friday!
Other details;

Camisole; Country Road

Shoes; Micam by Joanne Mercer,

Hobbs

Photo below from Prada Autumn/Winter 2008 collection, www.style.com, see here