Tag Archives: Accessories

claremont shopping tote

24/09/2019 2:59 pm \ 4 Comments \

There’s a new pattern in Le Shop!!

So, last Christmas I made a few shopping totes, one for Kelly and one for Sam’s lady L, and they were quite nice if I say so myself!  Kelly in particular carried hers around a tonne, bringing it around practically every week, packed full of her stuff.  She reckoned it was an incredibly useful size… 🙂  Shortly afterwards I received several requests from lovely readers who were interested in the pattern which made me feel, yeah we can do this, and; well, wedding sewing did put pattern-making on the back burner for quite a while but ta da! finally we made it happen… and it’s now live in our shop!

I asked Cassie to name this one, and she decided upon Claremont, after our favourite shopping centre.  Well, I should qualify; our actual favourite places to shop are like; Fabulous Fabrics, and Potters, and Spotlight, but well, you know  😉

Specifics; the Claremont is an unlined, shopping tote with box-base and cut-on handles, with two options for internal pockets . The base measures 30cm x 20cm (12” x 8”); the height of bag not including handles is 33cm (13”). The length of the shoulder straps enables a person to sling the tote easily on the shoulder and to still be able comfortably access inside the tote while you’re wearing it.  The cut-on handles makes for a very strong bag that can withstand a quite heavy load of shopping.

The totes I made for Kelly and L were quite simple with no pockets, however for the pattern itself we added pattern pieces and instructions for two internal pockets; an open pocket for your phone, and a zipped pocket for your keys.  I ran up a pocketed version for a birthday gift for a friend, using a really lovely Spindle and Ink canvas; this is called Flowering Gum in Bluestone and Stream.  Isn’t that a gorgeous name?!  It’s designed by Lara Cameron.

The pattern is available to purchase in digital pdf format; and also; in consideration of the fact that I understand that lots of people prefer paper sewing patterns, and/or do not easily have access to printing it out at home, or just don’t want to; we are also making available an actual paper pattern too.  

This is unavoidably a more expensive option, sorry! so sweeten the paper pattern deal; with the first five paper patterns sold I’m throwing in one of our pattern company labels.  These are produced by the Dutch Label company, and I currently only have the five.  Anyone who has  bought from them knows and no doubt loves the very high quality of their work!  I’m thinking of ordering more!

 

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box of socks; the June edition. plus a bag!

26/06/2019 6:54 pm \ 9 Comments \

Pair of no-frills socks, but look at those pretty stripes!  LOVE those bright pastels!!  Making these has dutifully used up some more of the leftovers from my advent jumper, from the Dingo Dyeworks advent calendar of last year…  pretty cute and frugal, huh? *self-back-pat*  and this yarn is so soft and divinely snuggly.

the box of socks is looking quite colourful!

Oh! and I also ran up a little bag, specifically for my sock knitting.  I’ve been using my pink bum bag for this purpose ever since Japan, which was… fine, I guess, but still not ideal.  It wasn’t really big enough, for one thing, and had zero pockets.  Hmmm, yes; ordinarily a zero-pocket bag would have its days very much numbered, except that I’m kinda sentimental about it since Mum and Dad gave it to me when I was quite a young teenager and it’s always been … well, one of those forever things, you know??  Anyway, I digress…  What I really wanted for my knitting bag was one identical to the one I made for Mum, blogged here.  So I rummaged through the old clothing chuck-out bag and came out with a pair of old chinos that I used to wear when the kids were really little. Haven’t worn them in decades and don’t really know why I kept these hideous things but probably for the usual reason, that the fabric would come in handy some day.

The new bag is terrible really; slapdash, ugly, just thrown together in a very uncaring way.  But man, it was so much fun to do a bit of rough, random, whatever sewing!  Quite a therapeutic project, in fact!   And/or cathartic!  Slicing, dicing and cutting on the fly, drawing straight onto the fabric, machine-stitching rather wildly, minimal measuring, if any.   FELT SO GOOD.  THIS HOUSE, IS CLEAN!!!

I used the back of the chinos, and gave the bag a “bottom”, so it can stand up by itself.  It is self-lined, using more of the same fabric from a leg of the chinos, and has five pockets including the two outside patch pockets with buttoned flaps, that were originally in situ on the seat of the chinos.  Inside, I stitched two new, rectangular open patch pockets to the lining, as well as the tiny and rather adorable coin pocket that I painstakingly unpicked from the chinos just because it was so super cute.

I slipped a few coins in there for … I dunno, just in case

The other pockets hold my kindy scissors, my notebook and pen, a wool needle, and my personal, basic knitting pattern.  Which is near-identical to the Patons one I’ve been using for years, but has one or two mods that I’ve developed along the way to make my own idea of the perfect sock.  Actually I recently re-typed it all into a new word document so I can print it out for myself any time, and now I no longer have to decipher the old photocopied one from the Patons pamphlet that is almost falling to bits from un-folding and re-folding, and has multiple crossing-outs and arrows and modifications and notes scribbled chaotically in the margins and on the back.  Hurrah!

The inside waistband of my old chinos had  a rather nice bias bound strip finishing, so I kept this and used it to edge the, also recycled zip for the bag,  Goodness knows why I once went to the trouble of ripping out and stowing away an old zip just in case, but hey.  I did indeed find a use for it in the end!

So, cute bag? or piece of trash?  completely rhetorical questions btw since I know that; yes it is a pretty rubbishy sort of a thing!  It’s nowhere near as nice as the one I made for Mum, which I did measure out, cut carefully, and sew somewhat meticulously, and also had really nice fabric going for it.  But it only cost me some thread and half a day, and it will do for now.  And I had a lot of fun making it!  Maybe I’ll treat myself to a proper one, one of these days.

couldn’t resist taking a picture showing my ever-present companion, wondering what the heck I’m doing…

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the mother-of-the-groom, plus a gorgeous bridesmaid

03/06/2019 6:55 pm \ 26 Comments \

So, I made my own outfit for Tim and Kelly’s wedding too, of course!  I’m posting about this outfit before the wedding dress, partly because I’m waiting for the professional photos … a social media blackout was imposed for the wedding, although of course I was far too occupied chatting to all our friends and relatives to even think about taking out my phone a lot of the time anyway!!  I did take a coupla snaps during our getting-ready period, and during the reception, but for about 99% of the day my phone stayed firmly silent, neglected and untouched in my bag.  And honestly, that’s the way important celebrations should be done anyway, I think!

If there’s a nice professional picture of my outfit from the wedding, I will edit later to put it here.   But in the meantime these’ll do…

I used Vogue 1537, a Kay Unger design.  I bought this pattern ages ago and have always wanted to use it for some special occasion outfit.  What could be more special than my son’s wedding?!!

I knew in my head exactly the fabric I wanted to make it out of… textured damask or brocade ideally a nice warm light pink, though actually dark pink, would have been ok or anything even remotely pink would have been considered actually.  Yes, pink is my current obsession, I may have mentioned that once or twice before, hehe…. anyway, do you think I could find anything even vaguely pink? of course not! despite the fact that pink is allegedly the colour of the season and although I scoured through every single fabric shop in Perth and Tokyo, and even hunted through the offerings of several online stores with the single minded determination of a sniffer dog.  Ultimately a failed sniffer dog with absolutely nothing to show for a heckuvva lot of sniffing though, sadly…

I found a few damasks at Fabulous Fabrics, less than a handful of colour choices, and the colour that was the most acceptable to me was this ruby red silk.  Admittedly, it is a lovely colour.  I did consult with Kelly as to whether she thought it too bright – I didn’t want to be be too conspicuous!!  and luckily she gave it a big thumbs up  🙂

The dress has a fairly plain front, which I love! with a shallow scooped, wide neckline giving a 60s-chic, almost Jackie Kennedy feel to it!  The visual interest here is in the back; a deep low V with wide straps to hold the two sides stable, and which also fortuitously happen to hide one’s bra strap.  Handy!

 

The dress has neckline facings, and is fully lined with deep navy/gunmetal blue lining fabric, also from Fabulous Fabrics.

I bought the deep maroon zip from either Spotlight? or Fabulous Fabrics? … I can’t remember which now.  Often one store doesn’t have quite the colour I need so I’ll just quickly stop by the other and hope for a better match there!

I attached a small length of ribbon with a press stud so to hold the bra strap securely under.  Remember the lingerie set I made specifically to wear with this ensemble?  Now you can see why although my outfit is not navy blue, how it matches perfectly!!

The sheath dress as it is drafted turned out way too boxy for my tastes, in fact I’m willing to bet money that the model on the pattern cover has the dress nipped in at the back with a big peg or two! – and I ended up bringing it in through the back princess seams by several inches to give it a lot more shape through the waist.  I also had cut the dress longer by 5cm all round, and just had to trim the hemline off shorter around the front,  to make the shaping adjustment possible.

The coat!!  I do LOVE the dress but the coat HAS to be my favourite part of the ensemble!  It is single breasted, with three quarter sleeves, with arrowhead tabs and self-covered, decorative buttons – more about these infamous things later!, a deep, curved collar, and lovely deep deep patch pockets with flap openings.

It too is fully lined with the same navy/gunmetal blue lining fabric, and I stitched in one of my new labels…

spare button attached inside….

I loved making this, and wearing it, and I think I will be able to wear it again in the future, even over jeans or dresses for daywear every now and then.  I will see!

I went all out with the bound buttonholes…

oh the button saga! sooooooo, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I covered 100 11mm buttons for Kelly’s dresss, and thought what this ensemble reeeeeeeally needed was also self-covered buttons, because after all the entire thing is all in one fabric and some other non-self-covered buttons would have just looked a bit random, probably not quite matching, and just scream “homemade”.  So I ordered some 28mm buttons from the same vendor from which I purchased Kelly’s buttons.  And waited.  And waited.  And waited!!  For about three weeks! and I was just getting more and more worried, finally with only just over two weeks to go until the wedding, I thought that if they’d been lost in the post as I suspected they had, then I’d better order more NOW or the replacement order was just not going to get here on time.  So I contacted the vendor with an emergency request to send me some more 28mm buttons by the very fastest postage service possible with a tracking number, and she did so.  And to my great relief the replacement buttons turned up with just a week to the wedding!  Phew!!

As I did with the bridal buttons; I spray painted the bare buttons with red spray paint, leftover from my Queen Rutela cosplay; which helps make the smooth metal surface a bit “grippier” and easier to cover.  They covered up perfectly, and I could finally finish my outfit, in plenty of time for the wedding.  So relieved!

there’s that spare button!

Dressmaking details now, er addressed, haha; the following is story time… please feel free to stop right now if the sewing details are all that is of interest.  Fair warning:

So, the previous modelled photos are obviously a bit of a pre-enactment, and the above mirror selfie in which I am all made-up and coiffured as befits the mother-of-the-groom status about to be undertaken, was quickly snapped on the day while waiting for my uber, … it was such a busy day!!  In fact it was a super busy week beforehand too, come to think of it.  Kelly’s family came over from Adelaide during the week, and we had a delightful dinner at the Boatshed Restaurant with her parents on the Thursday night, actually overlooking the jetty where Tim proposed to Kelly which was nice!  Then on Friday evening, we had a big family dinner with both parents and all of our kids, and T & G who are the other groomsman and bridesmaid alongside Sam and Cassie.

On the day itself, Craig and I walked Clara early, then I had my hair appointment, then quickly came home and threw on my outfit and headed straight to the hotel to “get ready” with all the other girls! though obviously I myself was ready by that point, Kelly had kindly invited me to be a part of the girly fun and I was really excited to join in with them too.  Craig had already headed in separately for his own “getting ready” session and photoshoot with Tim, Sam and the other groomsman T, before he had to nip out and come back home to meet the dog sitter, pick up Craig’s parents and bring them in to the hotel where they were checking in for that night.

The hotel room where the girls were getting ready was a scene of quietly controlled pandemonium.  Kelly had booked a suite with a living area, coffee table and desk area; the coffee table was piled high with snacks, fruit and drinks and just general crap; and the desk was absolutely chocka with hair and makeup paraphernalia…  Flowers, dresses, shoes, and overflowing suitcases were stacked up in the dressing room.  Not to mention the room was bursting with people too!  Kelly, Cassie and G (bride and bridesmaids), L  and me (mothers of the bride and groom respectively), H (Kelly’s sister), the hairdresser, the makeup artist, Shosh the photographer and a male videographer whose name I was told but which is now lost to me in the excitement of the day…  everybody bustling and chatting and working and laughing and manoeuvre-ing around each other taking pictures… so much fun!

Cassie went and sat on the window sill to be out of the way, and she looked so pretty I couldn’t help snapping a picture…

we hung the wedding dress up in the window for Shosh to take some detail shots and I took a picture of her, taking a picture of the dress  #someta …

Kelly putting on her jewellery…  she was supposed to be wearing a bracelet belonging to an aunt for her “something borrowed”, but there was some miscommunication, I’m not sure what happened, but I ended up lending her my own bracelet … Shosh took a picture of me putting it on Kelly’s wrist, I’ll post it when I get it!

also, my three at the reception… my heart was fair dinkum bursting with pride when I took this one!

Cassie made her own dress, and it turned out just beautiful!!

oh did I mention I made the other bridesmaid G’s dress?  She looks absolutely lovely yes? I think so, and I’m so grateful to her for her charm and natural beauty, making my dressmaking look far better than I deserve.  To be honest, I wasn’t very happy with this dress, it was actually a bit of a nightmare and once or twice I nearly despaired of it and seriously considered heaving the whole thing in the bin and starting over from scratch… however it came together in the end and on the night G’s radiant demeanour made it look far more lovely than I could have hoped for!  Thank goodness for gorgeous young girls!!

   

Essentially, I used the same patterns I used for Kelly’s dress; the bodice from Vogue 9239 (above left) and skirt modified from Vogue 1032 (above right), all custom fit to G.  Style-wise, for G’s dress I obviously cut the skirt pieces so as to not have a train, and the back pieces are cut so as to have straight up princess seams at the back and not have that weird seam curve in to centre back.  I made the initial muslins to include that curve and we all agreed that it was, ah, unattractive…  The front and back skirt pieces were all cut so as to have a straight-as-possible waistline seam at the top, attaching it to the bodice.  I altered the seams on the bodice so as to join up to the skirt princess seams, and of course did a FBA for both G and K.  Both girls I had to custom fit quite extensively from the pattern, and I think I did a pretty good job here if I say so myself, because the fit is spot on!  We discussed the neckline for G, and settled on a wide, off-the shoulder V neck, which is absolutely lovely on her.

The slightly stretchy, navy blue crepe was bought from Homecraft Textiles? I think? and unfortunately it was pretty awful to work with.  It did NOT want to iron flat and smooth and just seemed to shrink back slowly into a natural, very slight crinkle that just looked like it needed a good press all the time.  So you’d give a good solid press, and an hour later it would once again look just like it had been rolled up in a plastic bag for the last few days.  Also the neckline, despite extremely careful hand-basting and stay-stitching and under-stitching, just wanted to curl outwards, both front and back, in a way that fair dinkum drove me absolutely crazy and almost broke me, to be honest.  I’m pretty sure I shed actual tears over this, at least once, although it’s all a blur now because I had “moments” over just about everything to do with sewing for this wedding #iwishiwaskidding.  I tried everything I could think of to fix the aforementioned curling, ultimately the only thing that worked was a very subtle hand-done gathering stitch along the under-stitching line, which I drew up just very slightly and fastened off each end at each endpoint of the V, front and back.  Sounds like a pretty tacky way of dealing with it, I agree, but I was desperate and in the end this actually seemed to do the trick.  Hallelujah!

I did the narrow rolled hem by hand, which took about as long as you’d imagine  #aLONGTIME The navy/gunmetal blue lining fabric from Fabulous Fabrics is the same that I used for my own outfit, navy blue zip from Spotlight.

When she was dancing she did a few twirls that really brought the dress to life for me and it really made me so very happy to see it looking so absolutely lovely in these moments… so I asked her to do an extra one for me at the end of the evening.  Thank you G, for making this thing look actually amazing!!

 

Ohhh! I also made a tie for Craig! using leftovers from my outfit, so we can be all lovey-dovey match-matchy, hehe #SOnotus  Well, I just thought it would be a nice idea.  And while I had doubts he might actually want to wear it, he did, which I thought very nice of him  🙂

Of course the tie is properly made, with a padding, and an underlining as well as a lining because I do actually know how to make a tie! Also, many years ago I made a free pdf pattern for Burdastyle, it’s not a very sophisticated pattern by today’s pdf standards, but I’m thinking about polishing it off and making it more up-to-date for today’s seamster with much higher pdf expectations!  However it does work perfectly well and my instructions, while sparse, do work! particularly if you’re not a beginner.  Anyway!  I slimmed down the shape because you know, even fashions in mens ties change and the width of that one is… well, wi-i-i-de in a most unfashionable way!

Aaaagh! One last thing, before I forget!  I am sooooooo behind here… this one is not even wedding related?!

I made a new walkies-bag for Clara, to hold all her poo-bags and treats, here she is in all her haughty supermodel glory…  I used the leg from some old jeans, the loop at the top is harvested from the double top-stitched side seam of the jeans so it’s super sturdy; and I also used one of the zips from the large bag of randoms Mum gave me a few years ago.  It’ll be a miracle if I can actually get through that bag, but I’ve made a bit of headway over the years!

Hey Clara-banana!!!

So that’s all! at least until the wedding dress post, and that is going to be a HUUUUGE one, I’m sorry!  I’m afraid that one’s going to take quite some time for me to put it all together… #gatheringstrength

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rope market bag

27/12/2018 2:41 pm \ 7 Comments \

< So this is embarrassing… I made this bag in October… last year!  It has sat up in my laundry, only awaiting the handles; and the following draft post has been sitting forlornly in my drafts folder ALL THAT TIME.  But no more!  I finished the handles last month, polished up the draft post and just bunged in some pictures and bammo…  DONE!  Finally! >

hehe, anyone who knows me knows that I don’t make bags very often… it’s the one luxury I BUY! but I saw this tutorial by Amy over at Heather’s blog Closet Case patterns and just thought it was super chic and cute!! Coincidentally, when I pinned it I found that a few years previously I had also pinned a similar tutorial written by Erica over at honestlywtf.com! Guess it was a sign… for me to get on and DO it!

 

I’ve been carrying my shopping in generic carry bags rather than plastic shopping bags even before the placky-bag bag came in, because I’m such a bag snob, hehe, and while I do have a quite a lot of perfectly serviceable plain ones stashed in the boot of my car I decided I wanted a nicer one for when I wanted to look more classy-like in the supermarket.  Probably just because I wanted to give this awesome tutorial a go more than anything else, to be honest…

I bought 3 bundles of this cotton rope/cord from Bunnings and just had at it… my first fold is 20cm, and I started sloping the sides after just 10 rounds, because I wanted my bag to be wide, but flattish.  The longer your first fold, the wider the bag, widthwise, and the more rounds you stitch before sloping the sides up, the “fatter” your bag will be.  My bag itself is two whole bundles of 25m, and then I decided I wanted leather handles rather than rope ones…. I had a small scrap of deep chocolate brown leather from when my friend V was cleaning out her stash.  I punched the holes for the stitching using the leather tool I bought from Skinhuset in Copenhagen during our visit there a few years ago, and handstitched using a leather needle and deep chocolate brown Gutermann’s upholstery thread.

 

I also wanted some little internal pockets inside the bag; one side has a zipped one for keys and the other has an open,  more accessible one for my phone… these are made from a stiff, cream-coloured cotton broadcloth, actually the same stuff I used to make my rag-doll Sally… and I just zig-zagged them down inside the bag.  Because there’s all the mad crazy zig-zagging going on on the outside of the bag already, you don’t really notice a little bit of extra zig-zagging for the pocket attachments.  The perfectly matching “rustic” chocolate-brown zip came from an old pair of jeans that I previously cut up for another project…

so that’s it!  I really really love it, and think it will come in handy not just for shopping, but just for anything and everything, really.  So far I’ve used it precisely once, when I took it to my local Australian Sewing Guild meeting, to hold my sewing stuff.  It worked!

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the bumper Christmas edition

26/12/2018 3:19 pm \ 10 Comments \

So, every Christmas I like to make a small mountain of stuff for my loved ones; this year was a smaller mountain than previously, mostly because I embarked upon a sorta epic making-adventure of a more selfish variety, ahem … but more about that particular project in a future post!  But I did still manage to make some bits and pieces for others!  btw, I was too busy to take any photos on the day, woops!  but I’m hoping to get some modelled shots here sometime soon  🙂

Items 1-5; it’s always difficult to think of something for the boys, something “useful”, because boys are never just about the pretty things like girls are. Also, because I actually prefer practical and useful myself too, always.  I recently discovered elbe sewing patterns through instagram, and noticed that she had very kindly made a free pattern available; the Sorrento bucket hat.  Freeeee!  So generous! and I thought it would be fabulous for my guys who do wear hats all the time. Craig, for one, who has been wearing the same sad shabby hat for about a decade now, ahem. Yes, since I make stuff it has indeed been a point of embarrassment, hehe  ;D  A hat also seemed like the perfect gift for Cassie’s man D, notoriously difficult to buy/make for.  He loves fishing with a passion and was apparently in need of a new fishing hat, according to Cassie.  Great timing!

Tim’s hat

I had to measure everyone’s heads… awkward! but well, I guess everyone’s used to my strange stealth-measuring attacks by now!  Cassie helped me out by stealth-measuring D’s head… she said she did it while he was sleeping which made me laugh to imagine that!  Fortunately he says it fits him perfectly!

D’s hat…

The boys’ hats are all made from Spotlight’s cotton drill, it’s hard to find fabrics that are both masculine and interesting, but luckily Spotlight currently has these camouflage prints in a wide range of colours. SO AMAZINGLY LUCKY!!!

Craig’s hat…

I opted to interface the brims with medium weight fusible interfacing, and they are all fully lined; Cassie’s with a stiff white cotton, the drills I used for Craig’s and Tim’s both have an olive-ish cast to them so I used an olive poplin from my stash for them, and Sam’s and D’s are both more blue-ish so for them I cut up the trouser legs off an old pair of Sam’s navy blue work trousers.  It was exactly the right shade of navy blue, and also a really nice weight for lining a hat.

Sam’s hat…

And I found this old label in my notions basket! the very last one! leftover from when I used to sew their names in their school uniforms! I had a little giggle putting this in, and Sam too when he saw it in there on Christmas morning.

Cassie’s hat…

I also made one for Cassie using some of the leftover fabric from her Christmas dress for this year…  more on that later!  Cassie’s floral linen is very lightweight compared to the cotton drill that I used for the boys’ hats, so I fully interfaced all the pieces in this one, including the lining, with medium weight fusible interfacing.

This is a free pattern so obviously you can’t complain, and I’m not! because this is a fantastic little pattern! However one thing I want to note for if I ever use this the future… the pattern specifies 30cm for fabric and 30cm for lining. Yes, this is technically correct; but personally I prefer for the brim lining of a hat to be of the same fabric as the shell, because you can see it while you’re wearing it. So if you’re cutting out all 4 brim pieces from the outer fabric, 30cm is enough, but just barely! and only if you throw all grainline specs out the window and are super vigilant about miserly pattern placement! I did make sure to cut the band pieces on grain though, I think you have to for the hat to look nice.  If you want to cut the brim plus brim lining pieces all on grain then you’d need at least 40cm, or 50cm to be safe

I made all my paper pattern pieces full size, which I HIGHLY recommend; because when you are cutting out fiddly little pieces like these on the fold, and in multiples; then they rarely come out identical to each other.

Best thing; everyone seemed to love their hats! I might even get around to making one for myself one day 🙂

Items; 6-7; I was going to make hats for Tim’s fiance Kelly and for Sam’s lady L too, but when it came time for choosing prints for them, well I chickened out!  There were loads of gorgeous prints in Spotlight, pretty, feminine and cute and probably lots that they’d love, but well, you know, choosing a print for another girl is quite a personal thing, and I was nervous they wouldn’t like my choice. Eventually I hit on the idea of making a reusable shopping bag for them.  Yes, these are in a print too, that I chose, but a bag is definitely “safer”!

During the last year, it became illegal for supermarkets here to give out single-use shopping bags, and now everyone has to remember to take their own shopping bags for their groceries… of course there are lots of branded reusable shopping bags you can get but everyone likes a cute one to hang up in their kitchen, yes? Kelly and Tim have recently done up their kitchen and btw, it looks AMAZING!!! it’s all dramatically jarrah, black/white, stainless steel, and grey blue; and they also have a lot of indoor plants there. So I chose the above fabric for Kelly’s.

For L; well she loves baking, and she loves cute stuff, so when I saw this bright and fun doughnut print I knew instantly it was perfect for her!  

I made my own pattern, based upon the measurements of the little bag holders in Coles checkout stations. My own experience is that the stitched-on-strap style of handle is a weak point in shopping bags, the first thing to go; so I designed the bags to have cut on handles, and to be reinforced with a facing.  It is a bit of a fabric hog to cut it out like this, but I’m thinking it will prove to be a much stronger and robust design than separately cut and stitched on straps. 

  I found some pieces of stiff plastic film to line the bottoms of the bags, and for the groceries to sit on.

Item 8; Cassie specifically requested that I make a dress for her this year, and we went to Fabulous Fabrics together to look at fabrics. They had this divine pink hydrangea print in a cotton sateen, and Cassie wistfully fingered it and mentioned she would love this if it was in linen. We looked at a few other prints and she pointed out a few others, which I tucked away in my head for the future, mwahaha. But just imagine my joy when I went back in to actually buy something for her, and saw they had actually JUST got the hydrangea print in, IN LINEN! PERFECTO!

For the patten, I cut up an old favourite little tunic dress, that she had discarded a long time ago; it is a simple but very pretty little T-shirt style, with a high rounded neckline finished with bias binding, raglan sleeves folded up at the hem, and a centre back zip, and I always thought she looked gorgeous in it. The new dress did seem a tad short when I’d finished it, but otherwise I was very pleased with it. Then she tried it on on Christmas morning, and it was Super Short!  Turns out 26yr old Cassie likes to wear her dresses a little longer than 18 yr old Cassie did, haha. who knew?!  😉  Anyway, fortunately I had extra fabric, even after making her matching bucket hat, so I extended it with an extra piece attached underneath the hemline. This is a technique I’ve used on several of my own dresses in the past, I do think it makes for an interesting hemline detail, even if you don’t need to add length.  To make it look more like “intentional design detail” rather than “whoops, need to add length because it’s scandalously SHORT” I folded and stitched a series of tucks, and love how this looks!  A hidden bonus is that this adds some weight to the hemline… and I think linen dresses can often benefit from a little extra weightiness at the bottom.

Items 9-2000, might be overshooting the mark but just roughly guess-timating there; so I also like to make something both useful and fun for my extended family members, and this usually ends up being an edible something … this year it was gingerbread pussycats! So of course we have our own three darling little fluffykins, and I hit on the bright idea of icing the gingerbread puddycats to symbolise The Girls.

I’d made huge batches so this took quite a long time, but turned out pretty cute I think! The kids were tickled pink!

My recipe is adapted from a free recipe from Taste.com, and my own lemon icing is a sort of hybrid royal icing/ regular icing. Sophie has green eyes, so I painstakingly picked out the green cachous from a multicoloured jar. I couldn’t get black food colouring! so settled for dark purple-y/blue for Sophie, and sky blue for Zoe, who is a greyish blue point with blue eyes. Zoe was by far the fiddliest pussy cat to recreate!

Mischka is a mischievous fuzzy wuzzy ginger striped pussy with amber eyes, so I tried to capture her cute and perky nature with a riotous striped icing.

It’s funny; everyone immediately said, “but what about Clara?” and there were lots of jokes as to why she was excluded from the fun but of course the real answer is perfectly simple… I don’t have a dog-shaped cookie cutter! Maybe next time, haha.

I buy these airtight thingies to give them away in,  see, practical and useful are my middle names!  Each one perfectly fitted 16 gingerpussies.

So, I blog very very rarely about the meals I make; but this year Craig and I decided to cater for the entire extended family lunch, which is a BIG undertaking. We ambitiously planned for a rather (for us) long and involved menu and I’m so proud of us for pulling it off that I thought I’d share … we made all the various dressings and everything!

the makings of maple carrots…

pumpkin and couscous salad…

German-style potato salad…

BBQ asparagus, zucchini and snow pea salad…

veggie rosti with smoked trout; we doubled this recipe and made one with the smoked trout and the second one with smoked salmon

peach and raspberry trifle…

and cherry and nougat semifreddo

the recipes are all from the free Coles cooking magazine that they put out every month. Fair dinkum, this is hands down my favourite source of recipes at the moment… I love it!  We also had a ham that I forgot to take a picture of, and Vintage Cellars had high-end champagne going for half price so I bought a dozen of these… honesty, it all felt very special and went so well, we had such fun, and we were so chuffed everybody at our party had such a gorgeously happy day too!

So that was Christmas this year!! it felt rather epic and stressful all month leading up to it, but now it’s the morning after, and I’m feeling peaceful and relaxed with a happy post-party glow, the house is clean and back to normal; and most of all I am SO GLAD that I did go to the effort of making as lovely a day as I could for all my amazing family. It’s always SO worth it 🙂  Until next time!

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the Zora Queen Rutela

26/03/2017 11:33 am \ 37 Comments \

OK, I’ve done some pretty involved and intensive projects in my time, in fact more often than not, lately! and this one definitely ticks that box too.

Quite a few months ago, Cassie mentioned that she wanted us to go to ComicCon together this year, and furthermore, she had already chosen a good costume for me to make…

source

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This is Queen Rutela, the queen and elder of the Zora; proud, elegant and graceful aquatic-people who reside in the Zora’s Domain in the Zelda universe.  If you’ve never heard of Zora, it’s ok, that’s perfectly normal because this stuff is the very height of geekiness and so far from the mainstream it’s a little embarrassing …  However! you have now!  She is a rather tragic character;  the story is as follows: Queen Rutela was the wife of the late King Zora and mother to Prince Ralis.  During the events of Twilight Princess, Shadow Beasts invade the Zora village, so Queen immediately sent her son to Hyrule Castle for his own safety and to inform Princess Zelda of what was going on, prompting the invaders to make an example of Queen Rutela by executing her in front of her people.

I liked the idea of going as Queen Rutela for several reasons, partly because she’s a mother so I felt she was age appropriate for me, also her story moved me because it is so sad, she’s so protective of her son and so motherly, it tugged at my heartstrings a bit.  But mostly, well, let’s be honest, because her attire and bearing is just so beautiful and I relished the challenge of giving a good go to making it!  Also, the Zora have always been my favourite species in the Zelda universe  🙂

ANYWAY!  here we go…

Firstly, the dress.  More accurately it’s a 3-piece ensemble, I made an ankle length petticoat/underdress, a skirt, and a long tunic top; all using white polyester stretch stuff (some leftovers, some new, variously from Spotlight, Fabulous Fabrics).  The plain, strapless, ankle-length petticoat is one I made many years ago, so long ago I’ve completely forgotten the pattern I used.  I never thought I’d say that, because I tend to remember patterns FOREVER, but not this time!  The skirt has the other “skirt-y” layers on an elastic waistband, and the tunic top is a drastically modified Nettie bodysuit, basically my go-to Tshirt pattern.  The sleeves are in two parts, a close-fitting “under” sleeve that is wrist length, and the “over”sleeve has a very high sleeve cap and a bell-shaped bottom edge that is gathered and “pouffed” into the under sleeve, then point-stitched in place to get artistic-y folding.  At the shoulder edge, the extra fabric in the sleeve caps is pulled in with three sharp darts; making a jutty-out sort of shoulder cap… that’s a technical term there, btw.

I stitched frilly “gills” to the side underbust area.

Oh! I’m getting ahead of myself… those frills were formed in the following way; I clean-cut the eyes using my rotary cutter, then holding the edge just slightly and evenly stretched out, passed it over a candle flame; which melted the edges just a little and set them in a naturally curly frill.  I took a little bit of practise to get this just right, with the right degree of frill and with minimal scorching!  Fortunately, those bits that looked a bit charred black just crumbled off when I rubbed them between my fingers.

Once I’d made the three parts of the dress, I shrouded Bessie in plastic and newspaper, dressed her, masked off the bits that I wanted to remain white, and sprayed the skirt, then the top utra-carefully and judiciously with poppy red enamel spray paint (Bunnings)

The colour is a little brighter than ideal, I really really wanted a warm, dusky coral pink, but with spray paint you’re unfortunately stuck with whatever is in the VERY limited pre-mixed range…  🙁 /

Spraying was pretty scary, my application isn’t perfect, and there is a blotch on the R shoulder that is a bit heavy and which was pretty devastating for a while, but I had no choice really but to accept what I’d done.   As it turned out I shouldn’t have worried too much because you couldn’t even see the blob once my headpiece was on!

Next, the fin/wings… I cut four-layers in light grey polyester organza, and simply stitched all layers together by skinny zig-zagging around all edges, and slip-stitched it in places to the top of the sleeves.


Next, the jewellery; and this bit was lots of fun!  It’s a long time since I’ve played about with jewellry-making and I really enjoyed it  🙂 I used Super Sculpey modelling clay, jewellery wire and gold metallic acrylic paint (Spotlight) and some really lovely turquoise glass jewels (Fabulous Fabrics), and baked my pendants in the oven before painting them, and stringing them together.  It’s hard to see the exact details of the Queen’s jewels in the short footage of her that there is, and what’s more, the details seem to vary from picture to picture, so I took a little creative license and designed my own, closely inspired by what I knew of the Zora style, and the arrangement that I could see from the footage.

The body-lace fastens at the small of my back; the necklace is supposed to sit out very wide on her shoulders, and I managed to get this look by stitching rings halfway along my shoulder, and the necklace clips onto these, wide on each shoulder.  I also made a “beaten gold” collar/choker from interfaced gold metallic jersey (Spotlight), hand stitched radiating lines over it, and stitched the last pendant to it, then stitched white vinyl “petals” (Clark Rubber) around the lower edge.  This closes by press studs at the back.

Headpiece: it’s simply a long tail in the same polyester stretch, stuffed with Hobby Fill (Spotlight). I inserted fins of fabric-covered cereal-box cardboard into the side seams, and I took the precaution of spray-painting the cardboard ivory first because the polyester is kinda see-through, and stitched it to the rim of a red swimming cap, also catching into the stitching a white plastic face-mask (Spotlight)

Now for the hair!  This took quite a bit of nutting out…. I’d stretched the bathing cap/head-tail/face mask contraption to Mr ‘Ed, my foam head, above.

For the hair I used skinny foam noodle (Clark Rubber) and stitched the top bit of the hair through all layers.  This stuff is pretty bouncy with a mind of its own, but I damn well forced that sucker to be what I wanted it to be with firm and masterful stitching to get the folded part/hair at the centre top. Take that, foam noodle!!  BOW TO MY WILL…

The blonde “coral” hair was easier and actually lots of fun, like being in kindergarten again… I snipped it into lengths, and painted the bits with various mixed shades of pale yellow, shaded with addition of lilac and metallic gold.  I wanted the hair to be in shades because we all know a flat colour just looks fake and, well, flat, any painted thing always looks so much more vibrant and real and rich when it has several different shades in it.  Going to this much effort sounds complicated and maybe even unnecessarily involved, but I whizzed through making the hair, loving every paint stroke.  I strung them on yellow thread and stitched them to the cap through all layers, and painted part of the top layer of hair in the same way.  There is 35m of noodle in this thing… I can hardly believe that myself but yes, really!

One “strand” came off while I was pulling the thing onto my head, aaaaagh NOOOOOO! which was a bit of a worry, obviously! but I had plenty of “hair” and luckily every other bit stayed put.

The final step was to spray-paint the top side of the head-tail with the same poppy-red spray paint.  Scary!! but I was super SUPER careful… On another note, this picture below gave me a laugh! the head looks hideous, the stuff of nightmares!!!  Zoe “looks” terrified but of course she wasn’t… she’s knows what’s real and what’s not.  Even on Saturday morning when I emerged from the bedroom in full costume plus makeup, all the cats just looked at me, maybe a bit quizzically! but they still knew it was me.

Oh, wait… doing the make-up was the final step, of course!  I painted white dots around her brow line, just like in my inspiration pic, and then trimmed away the mask.  Cassie suggested a strip of Hollywood tape on my nose, which helped keep the nose piece firmly in place throughout the day.  Also, with amazing luck, Priceline had a 40% off all makeup sale in the days beforehand so I got some white translucent face-powder and rather horrible bright red rouge-y stuff for the matching poppy-red circles under my eyes and lips.

   

The photo at the top is my first attempt to photoshop myself into a fake background!  pretty good, huh?!  this actually took me aaaaaaages… hehe, #photoshopnoob Well, I felt like Queen Rutela just HAD to appear in Zora’s Domain or it would be, well, you know, just like an unfinished and half-done effort, so I decided I just had to do it!

I didn’t get any photos of me actually at ComicCon in Perth unfortunately; we were just having way too much fun! plus my gloves made it impossible for me to operate my phone!  However about a million people asked to take my picture, which is not as weird as it sounds, it’s just the done thing at ComicCon when you dress up; everyone does it!  Also it was highly gratifying when people recognised my character, totally made my day!!!  Every now and then I would hear a call; “Queen Rutela!!!!!” which was really nice!

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a whole swag of bags (portside by grainline)

26/12/2016 11:25 pm \ 32 Comments \

I haven’t felt like blogging very much, but absolutely must otherwise I’m going to get SO far behind… it’s time to get back on the wagon.  I’ve been super busy busy BUSY, sewing up Christmas and birthday presents; including this bunch o’ stuff.

Luggage, or “travel sets’.  This was my choice for a lot of my pressies for this year.  I made three complete sets, plus four extra toiletries bags.  Everyone (said they) loved them!
Pattern; the Portside travel set by Grainline Studio.  I bought it during their Thanksgiving sale and got going on it immediately…  It’s a nice little pattern for three pieces of luggage, a duffle bag, which is quite large,  a “dopp kit” which is what we would call here a dilly bag or a toiletries bag, and a “pouch” which is a nice and handy, flat little purse-thing that you could store phone/device chargers, keys, cards, or just any small things that you don’t want getting lost as they knock about in the duffle bag.

Fabrics; all fabrics and bits and bobs are from Spotlight, except for the lining of Craig’s set, which is from Homecraft Textiles.  The shells are constructed in thick, strong nylon drill from the upholstery section, intended for use in outdoor cushions and furniture, and all pieces are interfaced with the thickest, iron-on interfacing I could find.  It stands up by itself rather nicely, and it should be nice and tough too!  I lined everything with thin, waterproof, plastic-coated fabric, so the bags can be wiped clean inside.  The interior of a dilly bag should be wipe-cleanable and waterproof in any case so your fabric doesn’t get stained and dirty from makeup/shampoo/toothpaste leakages, and I decided to use the same stuff for everything because I was thinking they all might want to sometimes use the duffle bags as gym bags, or alternately as beach bags.  I just wanted all pieces to be both practical and tough.

Tim’s; made first.  All grey/black/white, very masculine which at first I thought perfect for a professional young man.  I actually made a matching grey/white dilly bag for him to start with, then suddenly felt all that extremely tasteful grey-and-white was all a bit plain-y plain blah blah blah, and decided it desperately needed an injection of FUN somewhere… we’ve been in sore need of fun around here lately… and Tim is naturally a pretty fun-loving kinda of a guy.  When I saw this black/white Darth Vader/stormtrooper fabric in Spotlight, well it all just fell into place.  I had bought some Star Wars Lego key rings for gifts when we were in Copenhagen last year; and had some leftover, and thought C3PO made a good zip pull for Tim’s bag.

Kelly’s set is all tropical palm print.  Also fully lined with the same thin, white plastic waterproof fabric.  And may I say… if only Spotlight had had this fabric in when I was planning my raincoat! I would not have resorted to using a shower curtain.  But they didn’t. Oh Spotlight. you crazy hit-n-miss, lucky dip of a fabric store, you.

I also made a full three-piece set for Craig, for his birthday… the grey is the same as in Tim’s, and I bought a dirty camel-brown for the contrast, and a dull, air force blue webbing for the trim.  I love these sludgy colours together, this one is actually my favourite colour combination out of all the sets…  I didn’t like the thought of a white lining for this set, too stark; so went hunting for a “browner” alternative; and found this great, beige plastic at Homecraft Textiles.  Actually, Homecraft Textiles had a really great range of waterproof fabrics… I’m seriously contemplating going there to get some raincoat fabric, hmmm.

In addition; I made two more of the Star Wars dilly bags; pretty much identical to Tim’s, except for the zip pulls.  One was for Sam, and theother for Cassie’s boyfriend D.  Unfortunately I only had one more of the Star Wars key chains, R2D2, which I put on Sam’s dilly bag; I had to promise D that if we ever got to Copenhagen again I would definitely get another key chain to finish his off to perfection!

I also made a pink flamingo dilly bag for my friend P, who LOVES hot pink and wears it a lot, thus the choice of this fabric.  It’s funny, I wouldn’t have chosen this otherwise but I kinda fell in love with it while making it, and ended up utterly adoring it.  Actually, it’s been pretty hard to part with any and all of these, for real  🙂

Finally, I made a second palm frond dilly bag, for another friend, M.  She’s been so kind and sweet and generous to me all year, and I just wanted to make something for her.  The only thing I’m super ashamed of is that I ran out of time and only just finished this one on Boxing Day, so it was a little late.  Eeeeeeek!

I enjoyed making all of these.. the only difficulties I had was in getting the hardware, I cleaned my local Spotlight out of their entire supply of 25 and 35cm white and beige dress zips, 51cm white “chunky” zips, and also all their swivel clips and D-rings; completely! and had to visit Homecraft Textiles for more.  I like the plastic swivel clips a lot; I know metal ones would be more “classy” and sure I could have found some online, but I just wanted everything lightweight and easy care, and I think these plastic ones are far more practical.

Some thoughts about the pattern and its construction… it is a good pattern, it works, fills a niche, all that; but I made a few minor little upgrades/mods/changes to the way I constructed mine, which I thought were an improvement to the outcome too.

As follows…

When sewing the side edges of the duffle bag and the dilly bag; start and stop the seams 1.2cm (1/2″) from the bottom edge… doing this makes it far easier to stitch the bag bottom piece on to each.  Trust me, it really really does.

pictured here is the lower corner of a lining bag, but the same tip applies to the shell also

Also; before the stitching the lining bag to the inside of the zip tape: secure the linings to the duffle and dilly bags, between the shell and the lining bags, up the side seams and the four upper corners, as well as the bottom of each duffle bag.  This helps further to keep the lining tamed firmly in place inside the bag, and not billow inside of the bag whenever you take things out.

Zips… the bane of our existence,  no?  Never the right length… for the duffle bag the pattern calls for 53cm zips, the closest I could find here in Perth was 51cm.  To  cover up the shortfall, I made a little inset bit to slip into the end of the seam covering the bottom of the zip.  I think this looks really nice.

Likewise, the pattern calls for 33cm and 23cm zips; here they only come in 30cm and 35cm; and 20cm and 25cm.  So for the 33cm; I bought 35cm zips and just cut the bottom ends off; and for the 23cm zips, well Spotlight ran out of the colours I needed and for several of the dilly bag pocketes I had to resort to a 20cm zip instead and made similar inserts to cover the bottom edge in the same way.

I added a little tab to the bottom end of each dilly bag zip, giving you something to grab at that end when you’re zipping it up.  It’s just a short piece of the same webbing that I’d used for the duffle shoulder strap, folded in half and stitched in with the bottom of the zip.  This helps a lot when you’re closing the bag.

I also lined inside the side pockets of the duffle bag, and also the side pocket of the dilly bag. It’s just neater and nicer, and more complete that way, I think.

To line the dilly bag pocket neatly… after stitching the upper side piece to the upper zip tape, lay the lining piece right side to the wrong side of the lower zip tape as pictured below, and stitch.

Proceed as per the pattern instructions, by topstitching the lower side piece over the lower zip tape

Not a mod, just a self-evident necessity; for the dilly bag I found I had to clip the freakin’ heck out of the top pieces, to get the top to fit in to the curve of the front/sides.

stretched out to the utmost…

Now, it has to be said; the complete absence of metric measurements in the Portside pattern is pretty annoying.  When I saw this I was like, really?!  I mean, I can forgive that in a pre-70’s vintage pattern… but not in a modern day pdf, sold internationally.  It’s not a deal-breaker for me, but still, this is just not good enough.  Sure, it’s not hard for us pattern purchasers to convert all the measurements ourselves and jot them directly onto our pattern, that don’t forget, we had to print out ourselves too; but when you’re paying $14 for it… well, I just don’t think you should have to do that.

Now it looks messy…. should NOT have to do this….  

… I’ve only just noticed this; that under “gather your supplies” the list includes “sewing machine”  ;D

…  but I don’t want to end on a down note.  Overall I’m pretty happy with my decision to buy and make it, well obviously, since I’ve made so many!  Maybe I should … er, make one for me?!

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all Aussie adventures

16/09/2015 12:54 pm \ 68 Comments \

MY OUTFIT IS FINISHED!!!
And I am showing it all together here for the first time.  Can I just say right here; wooooohooooot!
The challenge, as laid out by Nicki of this is moonlight, should you choose to accept it, and I did! was to make for yourself an entire outfit using ONLY locally sourced materials.  Sounds simple, right?  It has been anything but!
I’m very grateful to Nicki for conceiving this brilliant and very thought-provoking challenge, and for inviting me to take part.  This has been one exceedingly amazing ride, has blown my mind more than any other dressmaking challenge I’ve ever done, and really pushed my creativity to the limit.  At the beginning of the year I seriously did not think I would be taking my outfit to the levels I did…. I thought for sure I would be giving myself a pass on some things, for example;  thread, and allowing myself to use regular Gutermann’s thread.  As time went on though I toughened up, embraced the idea of going the whole hog; and I’m very pleased that I did manage to rise to the challenge and make the maximum possible from locally sourced products!
In fact, I’m quite proud and extremely happy! :))
For the challenge, I made:
a knitted alpaca cardigan/jacket
a merino felt dress
merino felt and pine shoes
a merino fleece bag
merino fleece undies and bra
In a nutshell, every single blinking thing I have on here is made by myself, using pretty close to 100% south-west Australian sourced materials

Those of us in Western Australia; Sue, Megan, Nicki and myself, have had to be quite innovative in our approach, I think.  I mean, forget zips, thread, elastic… there is not even any freaking fabric made in WA!  This was our single biggest hurdle, I think!
However, we are extremely fortunate in that we have wool available to us; lots and lots of wool!   Australia has the world’s biggest wool economy… did you know that 80% of the world’s apparel wool is from Australia? and Australian merino is the world’s best quality woollen fibre.  22% of the country’s wool production is here in Western Australia (source)

Hardly surprising then that all four of us have used wool as the majority component in our outfits.
My dress, bag, underwear and shoe tops are made from Western Australian merino fleece.  I made my wool felt fabric from the fleece as outlined in this post.  My dress is made from natural undyed merino fleece felt, and I hand-embroidered the fleece all over with locally handspun, undyed merino yarn.

Anigozanthos manglesii

The embroidery design is my own; a random arrangement of of kangaroo paw motif, for our Western Australian state floral emblem.

My underwear features the only “colour” in my entire outfit; I dyed the decorative yellow edging and ties using sour grass picked from my own garden, as posted here.
All the other fleece, yarn and wood in my outfit I left in its naturally coloured state.

My cardigan is alpaca yarn, from the Fibre of the Gods, a tiny mill operating on a farm in Toodyay.  This establishment produces alpaca yarn on their own property, from the fleece of their very own alpaca herd.  I bought some of their yarn directly from off the farm and knitted my cardigan, as posted here.

My wooden shoe soles are hand carved by me, using Western Australian pine.  The pine is grown by Bunnings on their own pine plantations down south and milled by Bunnings in Manjimup.  I made my shoes and my bag from my merino fleece as outlined here My bag and shoe tops are also merino fleece, with a grid pattern made of naturally black sheep yarn.

And that’s it, in a nutshell!
Well, typing it all out like this has kinda brought it home to me for the first time; I am wearing a pretty-close-to 100% homegrown outfit, top to toe, for maybe the first time in my life!  I’m kinda amazed, even at myself.  It’s a little mind-blowing to me.
Final thoughts: I’ve learnt a tonne doing this challenge.  Firstly, our local industries are precious and need our support.  That goes for everywhere, not just here in WA!  I personally am going to put more effort into supporting our local products regularly.  I mean, I’m definitely not giving up my more “regular” sewing, but I am going to do this challenge again.
Secondly, that if you really put your mind towards doing something, keep yourself focused on getting a project done, to overcoming obstacles, then you probably can do it.  Sometimes you need to sleep on it, think outside the box a bit.  I learnt a lot as I was going along, and several times had to improvise a solution to a problem.  There were moments when I questioned my sanity in doing this, when I wondered if my ideas were even going to work… a felt dress? unlined? felt underwear? sounds like the vision of a lunatic, or at least a recipe for disaster, for sure… well OK even I can admit that felt underwear is not really a practical nor a workable thing!  … do NOT recommend.  😉
Also, I had lots of fun!! I LOVE a challenge and this challenge really stretched my capabilities; which is the very best sort of challenge, in my opinion!   I thought hard and long about each aspect of my outfut and tried very hard to honour the materials, to minimise my waste and to make something truly Western Australian in feel and flavour as well as provenance.
There were also moments when I realised I had to accept a small defeat; in the case of this outfit; the glue holding pieces of wood together in my shoes (from NSW, Australia), the nails holding the felt to the soles of my shoes (China) and the cotton jersey liner for my undies (China).  They are very tiny elements so I’m not going to beat myself up over them too much.
I guess the important thing is that I gave everything careful consideration,  and really thought about provenance and the possibility of substituting local products in as many instances as I was able.  As well, I wanted to produce something stylish and lovely, that I knew I would love wearing and feel proud and happy in.  I genuinely love my outfit, and feel pretty pleased with my efforts!
Lastly; maybe I’m on a bit of a post-challenge high, but I’m quite excited about attempting this again next year… in fact I already have ideas and plans!
Mad? maybe, but quite happy to be so!

Details:
Cardigan; the Caramel cardigan, in Fibre of the Gods natural alpaca, grown, shorn, washed, carded and spun in Toodyay, Western Australia and hand-knitted by me, details here
Dress; my own design based upon Burda 8511, made from merino felt made by me and hand embroidered with locally handspun merino yarn from Bilby Yarns, details here
Shoes; my own design, pine soles from Bunnings hand carved by me, felt tops made by me from merino fleece bought at Bilby Yarns, details here
Bag; my own design, in felt made by me from merino fleece bought at Bilby Yarns, details here
Underwear; my own design, knickers derived from the Tried & True knickers pattern by the Makers Journal, in felt made from merino fleece bought at Bilby Yarns, details here

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