daily outfit Archives - Page 14 of 70

a cheerful dress

11/03/2019 3:47 pm \ 11 Comments \ Carolyn

New dress! And, how gorgeous is this cheerfully splashy fabric?!!! Ohmigosh, but I love it so much! You cannot possibly be sad whilst wearing this stuff. The very instant I saw it I was just like, YES. MUST HAVE.

SO! every year, my lovely friends give to me a Fabulous Fabric voucher for my birthday… and this year I treated myself to this truly lovely, fine, handkerchief linen, printed in a glorious array of golden mustard, tomato red, toxic-waste lime green, moody purple and a splash of tranquil turquoise thrown in too because sure why not? let’s just let alll the autumn-y colours join in the splashy fun! Not only are the colours absolutely luscious together, but the feel and weight of the fabric is quite perfectly and exquisitely summery. LOVE.

I didn’t actually use the actual voucher to buy this fabric, to be honest I used the real-life voucher to buy wedding dress lining, haha, as you do!! but I mentally made a note to myself that as soon as I saw something worthy I would spend the equivalent and that was going to be my birthday fabric. Confusing? Yes I know I know, hehe. Well I know what I mean anyway. Just very recently Fabulous Fabrics got in a fresh shipment, and I saw this, and knew it was The One.

The pattern is the Ariane dress, designed by C’est Moi Le Patron by Coralie Bijasson. The pattern is described as a gypsy style dress with shoulder princess seams, buttoned, with a gathered skirt & long sleeves with elastic in the hem. The instructions also include a note to insert piping in those princess seams, so obviously I did so like the obedient little seamster that I am. Well, I am the hugest of huge detail freaks so yeah. My piping looks black in these pictures, but actually it is a really deep navy, and the fabric is from a pair of Sam’s old work trousers. I’d previously used these same trousers to cut the lining for his and Cassie’s man D’s Christmas hats, blogged here.

Variations; the dress pattern doesn’t include pockets, so I added in some simple inseam pockets (my tutorial for adding inseam pockets here). The skirt is supposed to be gathered into the waist, and while I did initially do this it created some pouffiness that I decided I just did not need! so I unpicked that and instead pleated the extra width of the skirt into five tiny pleats on each side; just outside of the princess line of the bodice. Same for both front and back. I think that pleating/folding is a bit more age-appropriate than gathering… I can’t explain what I even mean by that! but maybe I mean it just feels a bit more “me”? Not that I even know what that means either, Anyway, I really like how this turned out!

The sleeves are long with elastic inserted in a hem. I love the sleeves, and especially pushed up to my elbow length like this.

Oh! the buttons! I almost forgot! SO, I’ve been covering buttons for Kelly’s wedding dress, 100, to be precise! Yes, 100, blinking, covered buttons. This took, HOURS.

But I absolutely adore how they look! and since I was using a particular colour fabric for the piping I thought it would be nice to have the same particular colour buttons for this project too… so I ordered some more of the 11mm buttons. I bought my buttons here. By the way; the “naked” buttons are actually silver, and for Kelly’s buttons, I’d covered a few experimentally and we thought the silver showed through the ivory fabric a little, giving the buttons a slightly grey tinge. SO I painstaking lined up all the bare silver buttons along bamboo skewer tracks and spray-painted them creamy-ivory before covering with our ivory crepe. The spray-paint I already had, leftover from when I made my Queen Rutela costume.

Spray painting the buttons is as fiddly as all get out and I’m not going to lie, actually quite a pain in the neck to do… but it does give some really good advantages. Number one, the silver doesn’t shine through a “porous” or very light coloured fabric, and secondly, and maybe even more importantly, spray paint makes the surface of the buttons a little “sticky” which is definitely a plus when you’re trying to put the buttons together. When I was covering the naked buttons, the fabric slipping and sliding about over the smooth shiny surface was driving me a little mad, and I really noticed a huge improvement with a grippier spray painted surface instead. So, while I didn’t really need to worry about silver showing through in this darker fabric, I did the spray painting gig again for these buttons too, simply for that grip factor.

So that’s it! I’m wearing the dress today.. and while I didn’t get a proper “out and about” picture of the dress, I did snap this… hehe, so silly I know, but I was randomly loving how the lovely floaty linen was rippling in the breeze. I’ll get a proper photo some other day because right now I am getting strrrrrapped for time!! to say the very least. In the meantime… it’s back to the wedding and bridesmaid’s dress for me! Panic stations!!

Details:

Dress; Ariane dress, designed by C’est Moi Le Patron by Coralie Bijasson in a floaty printed linen
Shoes; Zomp, from Zomp boutique

Posted in: knitting, Uncategorized \ Tagged: ariane dress, buttons, coral bijasson, daily outfit, dress

jasika blazer

02/03/2019 3:44 pm \ 22 Comments \ Carolyn

Remember in my 2018 end of year round-up I mentioned briefly I had made a Big Thing? Well this is it! A tailored blazer… this is the Jasika blazer, the newest design by Heather of Closet Case patterns.

Well, what a project! I really really enjoyed making this; sinking my teeth into my most involved and meaty project in ages! since I’d pretty much fallen into the lackadaisical habit of quick and easy “ordinary” things for quite a long time prior. I was very ready to take on something a bit more contemplative, careful and slow-fashion-y, and this was a really nice thing to ease back into that… I’m so glad Heather asked me to test for her again!

The Jasika blazer is described as a classic tailored jacket, made utilising modern speed tailoring techniques, with fusible interfacing and minimal hand-stitching, but rest assured, purists! there is still hand-stitching where it counts! And I do really appreciate that the process for making this blazer is nicely catering to the modern-day maker that still wants to sew timeless classics for themselves but might be time poor, and so might prefer to do as much by machine as possible.

Materials: I used a length of lovely raspberry-rusty silk/wool tweed given to me by my friend L when she cleaned out her garage, and it was perfect for the job! I love the luscious colour; I think it’s a good one for my colouring, and of course the texture is totally divine… I lined with black polyacetate lining fabric, another longterm resident from my stash; and mostly used the tailor-made (ha!) interfacing/notions package that Heather is stocking specifically for this project. This kit contains fusible woven and knit interfacing, horsehair canvas, padded sleeve heads and shoulder pads and cotton stay tape. Boy, but this is a really fab little kit too and I SO appreciated this! It’s not always that easy to get quality tailoring bits and pieces like this in Perth so it was just brilliant to have them at hand, to help me get a really nice finish to my blazer. Because you really want this to turn out as good as you can get it; a tailored blazer is quite the time-consuming project and it would be nice for the materials to be worthy of your time!

I dithered on whether to use my own label, or the Me-Made from Closet Case patterns. Cassie said why not use both, why not indeed…

I honestly can’t remember now whether I bought the perfectly matching button from Fabulous Fabrics or from Spotlight now. I scouted through both shops, and bought candidates from both shops too! so much agonising!… and now its provenance is lost in the hazy mists of time… I did really take my time with the buttonhole though, and made a mini double welt one, so as to match those pockets.

Oh! Pockets… I LOVE all the pockets in this blazer! I jammed every single one of them into my blazer, in order to test all the pocket options for the pattern of course! Not that I’m a complete pocket-whore or anything, o no! There are three; a single welt breast pocket, a double welt hip pocket, and a double welt with flap hip pocket. I’m actually toying with the idea of opening out the lining and adding an extra, internal welt pocket to the inside of the jacket too… but that will have to wait until I get a few more, ahem VIP’s; and by that I mean Very Important Projects, out of the way! #drowninginweddingsewing

We’re not supposed to reveal a project before the pattern’s been released, which is sometimes so hard to do… I did however sneakily wear the blazer out for real, once, one coolish day (below). Fortunately for me, it’s been quite summer-y and not conducive to blazer wearing, and I felt sorry for all the northern hemisphere testers who have no doubt been dying to wear their splendid new blazers! The pattern has been released just at the right time for us in the southern hemisphere, yay… how often does that happen? not very often! Though, it was 35C when I was taking all these photos… my husband thought I was bonkers putting on tights, boots, woolly top and blazer in this heat. I was like, but it’s a winter thing, I have to look the part, even if I’m legit dying! Aah, the things we do…

Not only did I thoroughly enjoy making my new blazer, I’m really quite proud of how it turned out, and am very much going to enjoy wearing it too. I might even be… dare I say it? looking forward to winter?? Going too far?? maybe!!

Details:

Blazer; the Jasika blazer, Closet Case patterns, raspberry/rust will/wool tweed
Skirt; Vogue 1247, purple denim dyed brown, details here
Top; modified Nettie, Closet Case patterns, ivory wool/mix, details here
Boots; Roberto del Carlo, from Zomp boutique

White dress; the Inari by Named patterns, in white ultra-bobbly stuff, details here
Caramel leather sandals, from an op shop years ago

Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: Closet Case files, coat, daily outfit, jacket, jasika blazer

lilac sandals

24/02/2019 1:36 pm \ 13 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve made some new shoes!! the easy way… by doing a workshop! 😉

Lisa of the Shoe Camaraderie came back to Perth to host more shoemaking days, which of course is rather wonderful news for an avid shoe-lover/maker like me!! I went to her inaugural Perth workshop back in August of last year, and had an absolute blast making these ivory lovelies… so of course I had to sign up again… I managed to talk Mum and Cassie into joining me this time, we went along together and all had a fabulous time… BTW though, just want to pop it in right here; the workshop was across the road from the Wild Bakery and that place is DANGEROUS!! I walked out with a nutty brownie that I’m sure must have had about 10,000 calories. I nibbled at it over a couple of days though and it was indeed worth every naughty, delectable bite 😉

Anyway! This style of my new shoes is called the Cosette, and the leather is the absolutely prettiest, most divine shade of lilac/pale blue you can imagine. Quite heavenly. When Lisa told me she had sourced it from the Fabric Store, I was just like OH OF COURSE. Such a beautiful store…. honestly, if a branch ever opened up here I would be totally broke, and staggering home with an obscene quantity of fabric ever week.

Mum made a pair of caramel Astrids, and Cassie made a pair of caramel Freyas. They both look amazing!!

these are Mum’s shoes; from her instagram

I’m just going to say it; I really really appreciate, not just that Lisa comes over here with such a cool and very fun workshop idea and a chic and elegant product, but also that she offers such a huge range of styles from which to choose. It’s pretty impressive, actually… she’s so good at keeping everyone going, explaining the steps the whole class needs to do, as well as helping individuals when you need it too… and at making absolutely sure everyone in the class ends up with a finished pair of sandals by wine and cheese time. Yes, there is wine and cheese at the finish of the class. What more could one want?!!

Obligatory progress shots…

…cutting a bazillion teeny skinny strips….

… a pair of little lilac centipedes….

I love that my name is hidden in my sandals! even though no one will ever see it, I know it’s there 😉

just admiring them on the last… nearly finished!

And done!

So, you’re supposed to let them dry for 24 hours before wearing them, but I slipped them on ultra carefully for a quick photo for instagram…. ooo I know; how very naughty! but I seriously COULD NOT resist! That heavenly colour! And then immediately slipped them right off again, stowed them reverently in their little cloth bag and dutifully allowed them to languish for a week.

Will I do another workshop if Lisa ever comes back to Perth? I expect so!!

This how I wore them today in their very first ootd, the first of many I’m sure… and even Sophie thinks they”re pretty cool! look at her checking them out with envious admiration!

Details:

Dress; our Carolyn&Cassie Perth dress, in brown linen, details here
Shoes, made by ME also!

can I please have some lilac shoes toooooo?

Posted in: shoes, Uncategorized \ Tagged: daily outfit, shoes, the shoe camaraderie

unicorn

15/01/2019 11:32 pm \ 10 Comments \ Carolyn

So I’m knee deep in wedding-dress biz, which I LOVE, of course! but I took a little time out just to make something fripperous and frivolous and quick and easy, just for me. Think of this as like a tiny serve of sorbet in the middle of a lengthy degustation…

Cassie bought this adorable rainbow unicorn printed cotton canvas from Spotlight for me for my birthday last year, and there was just just enough to squeak out a cute and totally age-appropriate little skirt, yay!!

I adapted Vogue 8363, an old favourite that comes with great pockets… I didn’t have enough fabric for the pockets so I cut those pieces from a small piece of white cotton canvas from le stash. Basically the pockets are this pattern’s saving grace for me since I rarely make use of any other of its features. In fact, now I’m wondering, have I ever used any of the views in the pattern in the purest sense even once?? and I think maybe NO! I’ve always tended to make a sort of cobbled together version that incorporates various bits of several views. I like for mine to have; a) those fab deep pockets, b) a one piece front, and c) to open with an invisible zip along a centre back seam… and this skirt pattern allows for all of these things, with a bit of swift and sneaky pattern piece finagling.

Lining; normally I probably wouldn’t line a summer skirt, but in this case while I was trying it on in the process of making it I discovered the wrong side of the fabric had an almost indiscernible rough texture that somehow caused the skirt to stick to my undies and ride up slightly … yes! very VERY weird! So I decided to line, and super-luckily I had the perfectly sized piece of mint-green lining in my stash already, inherited from my grandmother’s stash … my tips on making a lining for a skirt here

I agonised over what button to use! this one seemed cheerful and not twee

Oh, and I made a new little T-shirt too. I’d seen this rather gorgeous apricot-y pink, slubby cotton jersey in Spotlight too, seen it on several occasions actually and staunchly resisted it because… well because I have a rather, shall we say, substantial stash already?! But it was soooo pretty! and well one day they happened to have a cheap remnant sitting there, cut for another customer who changed her mind… so in a weak-willed moment I snaffled it up! Ooo so naughty. But it was just such a pretty colour! I assuaged the guilt by cutting and making it up immediately.

The pattern; my own, if you can give such a grand title as “pattern” to cutting out a few vaguely T-shirt-shaped pieces and bunging them together. I very much like the high boxy collar and the slightly curved hemline.

Now it’s back to the wedding dress!! I’m posting progress shots in my stories on instagram, if anyone would like to follow along… 🙂

Details:

T-shirt; self-drafted, pink cotton jersey
Skirt; adapted from Vogue 8363, cotton drill
Sandals (above); ariel, from an op shop years ago
Thongs (below); fipper, bought in Bali on our holiday

When one wears one’s sparkly rainbow unicorn skirt, then obviously one must go for an elegant and graceful unicornly leap over some puffy cottonball clouds… 😉

So, if I am taking my own picture using my remote control and the timer I can time my jumps to the shutter click perfectly! I’ve got the whole process down to a fine art! However, when I ask Craig to take the picture, this happens…

faaaaaail!!

Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: daily outfit, own design, skirt, top, Vogue 8363

a knitting advent-ure

29/12/2018 1:07 pm \ 24 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve knitted a magical, rainbow, unicorn of a jumper/sweater!

But, what is this, Carolyn?? I didn’t know you were into magical rainbow unicorns?! Well, of course there is indeed a story behind this…

my little “troll” progress keeper was my constant companion and cheerleader… 😉

So, in the past few months, idly hanging around on youtube I randomly got into the world of knitting youtubers, and watched a few videos… I think it was Katie of Inside Number 23 who introduced me to these wonderful things called knitting advent calendars … I thought they sounded like such a fun idea! at roughly the same time I’d been to Calico and Ivy checking out all the wool and other yummy eye candy they always have in there and seen and admired some gorgeous wool hand-dyed by a local lady going by the name of Dingo Dyeworks, and I mentally tucked the name away. Later on, in search of an advent calendar, I found that the same Dingo Dyeworks had produced one for this year. SO naturally… I bought one!

day 1; and I’m ready to party!!!

The advent calendar came in the form of 24 cute little boxes, each with a mini skein of wool inside; the colours of which were a complete mystery. There is also a 25th box, which is much larger and contains a full-sized skein of the same sock yarn, but I decided to base my “advent”-ure project on the 24 mini-skeins. The only thing you knew about them was that they were all on the Dingo Dyeworks “ridgey-didge” base; a fingering-weight 85% fine merino 15% nylon superwash, which I’d checked out in Calico and Ivy and liked. SO I laid my plans… to make a jumper, or sweater. I bought from C + I a skein of similar gauge yarn in an undyed cream colour and did a few swatching experiments, made a few calculations and a plan, decided I could indeed make a whole jumper from sock yarn. I knew knitting just a little bit every day would be perfectly manageable, and fairly painless. In fact, I always find the lead up to Christmas so full of stress and madness that I welcomed the thought of carving out a little bit of time in each day, to just devote myself to a quiet, happy and mindless project just for me.

If you follow me on instagram, you might have seen my daily “unboxing”, a single example of which is above… I had so much fun just opening the yarns and seeing that day’s colour! Honestly, even without the daily calming and meditative knitting session, and notwithstanding that I now am the proud owner of a divine new jumper – the texture of which is so baby-soft and so squishy, and basically too too heavenly to even describe… just opening the days’ little box each morning was also such an enormous joy for me. I also posted a picture in my stories each day of the day’s progress. If you want to see them all, I’ve saved the whole process in my permanent stories, called “advent”-ure, at the top of my page 🙂

day 3… 🙂

I started from the bottom, and knitted the same number of rows on each sleeve and the body section each day, and then when I got to the appropriate place to start the yoke, joined them all together and continued in the same way, decreasing raglan style up to the neckline.

day 14…

Before opening the first skein I wasn’t 100% sure there would be enough yarn in each little skein to do the width of stripe I wanted, in this case my plan was to “fill in” between the stripes with a few rows of the undyed yarn I’d bought for the cast-on… but after day one I’d happily determined there was plenty! in fact I estimate I only used roughly a half of each skein, even for the widest sections.

day 17…

I’d decided to just knit each colour as it appeared and not second guess anything at all! so the delicious Unknown of it all was exciting and fun; but I have to admit there were one or two days I was like “whaaa??” However I’d checked out the Dingo Dyeworks advent calendar from 2017, which was so so beautiful, and I just had to put my trust in this years’ being beautiful too.

day 20…

It is a little different, to be sure! and while not all the colours were what I might have chosen and there was even a coupla days where I truly wondered where this was all going! Would this advent-ure be irredeemably unicorn-ly?! However I’m very happy to admit that my fears were unfounded and I feel like my finished sweater is now one of my loveliest and, dare I say, the prettiest that I have?! and the colour-story worked out quite beautifully in the end. I’m still about 99% convinced days 16 and 17 were mixed up! but that’s neither here not there really, since you can’t really tell that in the end result.

aaaaand, day 24!

Knitting on this every day was, as I’d hoped, a calming and peaceful, meditative and fun! interlude in the lead-up to Christmas for me, so I am so glad I decided to do this … yes, it resulted in a smaller pile of me-made things I could give my loved ones; I bought a few presents for my family this year and I refuse to feel guilty about that! and I still did manage to make a few things. And I have a beautiful and unique new jumper!

back, indistinguishable from the front actually, but you know…

Details:

Jumper; my own design, made from the Dingo Dyeworks 2018 advent calendar
Skirt; Vogue 1247, made from curtaining fabric, details here
Thongs; fipper, bought on our holiday in Bali

Posted in: knitting, Uncategorized \ Tagged: advent calendar, Christmas, Clara, daily outfit, dingo dyeworks, jumper, Knitted, knitting, own design

poppy dress

26/11/2018 10:44 pm \ 11 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve made this new dress #surprise! This beautiful poppy printed silk chiffon was a birthday present from my lovely thoughtful Mum… we were browsing together in Fabulous Fabrics and oohing and aahing over it, and she suddenly announced “I’d like to get that for you for your birthday!” And she even chose the pattern I was to use, which is of course Vogue 1351, anyone who has read this blog for even a short amount of time will know how much I LOVE this Donna Karan pattern since I’ve used it a few times. Actually four times before, to be exact; here, here, here and here. To my mind its silhouette has a perfect simplicity, or should that be that it is simply perfect? Either or!

The poppy chiffon is very delicate and sheer. The background is actually pure white, however I chose to line my dress with a off-white polyacetate lining fabric. I chose the off-white over pure white, because it was noticeable softer, the overall effect of the pure white was surprisingly harsh. I’m not really at my best in pure, pure white, even though I love it; a softer ivory-white is a lot better for me.

invisible zip in left side seam; this is always my preferred zip placement!

I’ve worn it several times already, the first time on Remembrance Day, when Mum, Dad, Craig and I went to visit the RSL poppy tribute at Kings Park. I chose to wear it a) because of Remembrance Day, of course! and b) because Mum and Dad were staying with us and I wanted to show them the lovely birthday present they had given to me!

Wait, the poppy tribute? Well, this year, 61,513 hand-knitted and crocheted poppies were made and “planted” by RSL volunteers, one poppy for each Australian lost at WW1. Seeing them and walking through the exhibit; the sheer number of them, was such a very sobering, very humbling and very moving experience. Speaking, um “craft-ily”, as it were; so much care and love and thought had obviously gone in to each and every poppy too, some had buttons, that we read were often included for their significance to the family in some way, like from a uniform or something. The exhibit was only on for four days, so we felt very fortunate we thought about it and went, and I was also very pleased to hear that the exhibit will be returning again in future years.

I did think about getting a picture of my dress at the exhibit, but once we got there I felt that would be disrespectful. I mean, while the poppies themselves were beautiful and spectacular and a visual treat to behold, of course I realised how very wrong it would be to treat them like a photo backdrop to my dress. Though a few ladies passing by did comment that my dress was “perfect for the day” which was very nice.

I did take a picture of Mum and Dad though…

I next wore the dress just recently, we had a gorgeously warm, but windy! weekend and we went for a lovely long afternoon walk at the beach, and I grabbed the opportunity to take some pictures… does Clara look incredibly wet and sandy in this picture? Well, that’s because she is!! I was wondering if she was going to jump up on me, or shake sopping sand all over me with one of those doggy full-body shakes.

Actually caught her partway through one said full-body shake below… and thank goodness she’s waaaaaaaay way over there! Normally she’ll come right up to you before letting loose, and I’m telling you, this is one ultra-fluffy hairy doggy, and she can carry a heckuvva lot of water and sand in that there gorgeous coat of hers!

plus bonus random bird! hey birdie!

Aaaaand there’s my husband, being very polite and keeping well out of the way while I take my pictures, ahem. Well, that’s what he’s supposed to be doing!! Man!

Fun fact; in this picture he’s wearing this blue jumper, that I made for him last Christmas. You have to scroll riiiiiiiiiight to the end of the post to find it though, I just checked and it’s a MONSTER post with about a million items in it. Well, that’s what it felt like, when I was making them I mean. Ha!

Details:

Dress; Vogue 1351, poppy print silk hiffon
Red cardi, in beach pics; my own design variation on the Nettie bodysuit, but Closet Case patterns, details here
Sandals; Zomp, from Zomp boutique

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Clara, Craig, Dad, daily outfit, dress, Mum, Vogue 1351

outback wife

01/10/2018 7:23 pm \ 70 Comments \ Carolyn

My dear sister-in-law S gave to me a length of precious “Outback Wife” barkcloth for my birthday… soooo thrilling to finally get a piece of this gorgeousness for myself! I’ve bought other designs of this once or twice before as gifts for others but never for myself for some strange reason, I know not why … Because, oh my gosh this stuff is just so lovely, sews up like an absolute DREAM!! I’m in love! I’m seriously thinking about sneaking out to Calico and Ivy and buying more! For meeeee!

I turned to my ol’ reliable, tried and true,Vogue 1247 for the skirt… my copy of this is now a little bit tattered, not surprisingly since this latest is version number 23, ahem. I just counted, and wow, that’s a shock, even to me! Yes, I really do need to move onto a new pattern… A lot of my V1247’s have been straight, sans pockets, because to be honest, although the pockets in this design are really cool I actually don’t really use them all that much. Very occasionally for my phone and keys and it’s very rare I shove my actual hands in them.. I worry about distorting the lines of the skirt and contributing to premature pocket sag. And if there’s one thing NO ONE needs in their life, it’s premature pocket sag, am I right? Quelle horreur!

But for old times’ sake, I put the pockets in this version.

I über-carefully cut my pieces so the print matches up practically everywhere, along both horizontal skirt seams, and as well the centre back seam, and even the waistband seams matches as well as it is able. This took only a little bit of frowning and sighing, and moving my pattern pieces around more times than the most diligent of sleight-of-hand operatives, but it’s always a worthwhile thing to do, I reckon. Otherwise, the not-matching pattern would probably bother me forever.

At the same time as I was making my skirt, I happened to notice in my stash two lengths of very thin jersey knit that I’d bought at the Fabric Store in Melbourne during one of my trips over there with Mum and Cassie, one a bottle green and the other in deep teal blue; both an absolute perfect match for the skirt! It was meant to be!! I quickly whipped up (k-tchaaaaah!) two long sleeved modified Nettie tees. These are practically identical to each other, narrow neckline bands and wide sleeve and bottom bands.

It’s so funny to me, looking at these pictures. See, S actually gave this fabric to me back in early June, yes, it was a very early birthday present! and I made the skirt and two tees up straight away, like within a week. And took the pictures of the tees on Bessie, though it was too cold to actually wear them at the time… then a few months later, early September to be exact, I took the wearing-with-black tights-and-boots pictures. And did precisely nothing with those pictures, either. As it happens, I’ve been in a bit of a funk over the past few months, feeling a little intimidated, like I’m just not capable or good enough, almost on the point of giving it up entirely. Generally speaking, it’s been taking me a looooong time to write a blog post lately, like almost as long as to make a little dress for myself. And so I’ve just been feeling… less inclined, and oh so lazy about it, to be honest; even though I want to write.

Anyway; yesterday, it was a perfectly beautiful day and we went out walking at the beach, and I wore the whole lot of them, the skirt and both the tops too. Meaning, in my funny weird little world, a blog post must transpire. Eeeek! Quick sticks!! so I gave myself a bit of a pep talk. Just lay it out there. With minimal fiddling. Just spill, organically. I mean apart from spelling. I am as it happens, the biggest spelling nazi imaginable. I roll my eyes on the regular, at the newspaper, at advertisements on instagram; at all the offending “your”s instead of “you’re”s and so on. I’m sooo judgemental, the absolute worst, in fact! But, I’m getting off track… where was I? Ah yes, writing without pause. Letting the words flow, flying from my fingertips, of their own volition. That’s what this is. Stream of consciousness blogging, for better or worse. Well, that’s what blogging is supposed to be, right? It’s supposed to be a personal journey? Just me, being me? SO! I hereby free myself of further worrying, right now. Begone, thy treacherous feelings of inadequacy!! Vamoose! Whooooosh!!! And; this house, is clean *… I hope!

* … name that movie 🙂

Details:

both tees; loosely based on Closet Case patterns Nettie, thin cotton jersey
Skirt; Vogue 1247, in Outback Wife barkcloth
Tights; made by me, details here
Boots; Roberto del Carlo, from Zomp boutique

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: Clara, Closet Case files, daily outfit, Nettie, skirt, Vogue 1247

floral trench coat

26/09/2018 8:54 pm \ 72 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve made a new trench coat; a riotously floral-tastic, blowsy English rose of a trench coat. As soon as I spotted this print I was smitten! delightfully old-fashioned, vaguely reminiscent of Granny’s china cabinet and a wholly unabashed celebration of spring-time. Because that’s what it finally is now… SPRING!!!

This very thing, by which I mean an over-the-top floral trench coat, is a thing I’ve had percolating in my mental wish-list for aaaages, ever since I first laid eyes on the floral trenches by Burberry from a few years back. I originally bought this paler pink magnolias floral fabric to make the trench coat but got distracted and made that dress instead, obviously! Anyway, a little after I finished that dress, I still really really wanted my imagined floral trench coat, so I bought some more floral sateen. And I’ve finally made it!

Pattern; McCalls 5525 view E, the view with all the bells and whistles. The only things I left off were the flap thingies over the pockets, because I didn’t have enough buttons for them!

Fabric; a floral cotton sateen, from Spotlight. The trench is fully lined with pure white cotton poplin, also from Spotlight, and the buttons… the buttons! – are totally gorgeous vintage ones that I’ve had for about ten years. I was actually the lucky person to get them in a Secret Santa pressie swap at a very early Burda sewing community meet-up, way back in 2010? I think?

I had only 11; they are a deep bottle green, possibly made from Bakelite or something very similar. I’ve been looking out for yeeeeeers for the the perfect project for them and I thought this trench coat was it… they are in fact a perfect colour match for the deep teal-y/ocean-green of the foliage in the print. However! now they’re all stitched on, I’m not completely sure the fabric was the right choice for them after all? ahhhh, the agony of high, followed by unattained, hopes and expectations! The thing is; the busy busy busy colourful print, while it is really gorgeous and I LOVE it! it really just swallows up the impact of those buttons and at any distance you can hardly see them on there at all. They just disappear. As in, buttons, what buttons? I can’t seen any glorious buttons!! The fact that they are beautifully profiled, and slightly marbled, and vintage, well, you’d never know. So, I’m just thinking, maybe? I should substitute them for some plain buttons, and save my exquisite vintage buttons for another project – another, different trench coat, something in a solid colour where the buttons can really be allowed to shine? Hmmm….

the one under the collar is not one of the original set, it’s a modern, plastic, flatter one…

Making a coat is always an activity that brings me huge amounts of joy and satisfaction, and this one did too, keeping me blissfully pottering away the whole time I was working on it. Constructing all the little bits and bobs that go into a trench coat, like the tabs, the collar, putting in the sleeves and bagging out a lining is enormously fulfilling to me, just about as enjoyable as any project I can think of. I’m totally in zen mode, throughout. As it happens, I’m perfectly happy with all the construction details of this one; all my seams and sleeve insertion and symmetry of the tabs and collar, the walking vent, topstitching, and the neatness of my buttonholes and all that jazz all worked out exactly as I hoped, and I’m very pleased with all this.

for some reason, this arrowhead tab on the collar stand is always an especially pleasing detail to me!

So that’s all super good and satisfactory. However?! I have to admit to a little frisson of disappointment at the halfway point of making this coat, at about the point when the body was together, and I slung it over Bessie and took a step back to have a first look… and, oh dear. See, I had barely enough fabric to cut out my trench, and in fact several pieces are pieced together! Which ones? oooh, I’ll never tell!!! See if you can see the seams! But that’s not the problem here, after all, piecing is something I’ve done in a lot of garments because of lack of fabric and I’m perfectly ok with doing that when I have to…. The thing is, I really had to be clever about laying out the pattern pieces to have any hope at all of getting the coat cut out, and I did some very premature self back-patting when I managed to lay out the pieces. Because the way the print has turned out on the finished coat is just not good. Specifically; the front is quite a lot “busier” than the back, and I wish I could have been switched-on enough to see that while I was juggling those pattern pieces but sadly, I did not. The front and the back are to my eye almost like two completely different coats, which is very sad-making (please excuse my little Evelyn Waugh-ism there…)

It’s definitely not as obvious when the coat is worn open, like this; which to be honest is how I was planning to wear it most of the time anyway.

I can’t do anything about the unbalanced “busy-ness” of the print; but as far as the button issue goes, well I’m gonna wear it for a while and sleep on it, but button-switching may just happen sometime down the track.

I’ll just see how it goes for a while. The coat is quite lovely to wear, and perfectly comfy, well-fitting, and I did pour myself into making it well. Oh well. I’ll give it a crack! Quite often, early dissatisfactions I have with a project evaporate a little bit down the track when I look at it one day and kinda go, what was I worried about? I adore the overall vibe of my trench coat, how it looks when worn both belted closed and open are both very pleasing to me, and as usual, wearing a coat always makes me feel amaaaaaazing, no matter what! Sometimes, well, very occasionally really, I have a tiny little wish we lived in a climate which was more conducive to coats? But not very often really. Like, hardly ever, to be honest 😉 #devotedtotheaussiesummer

I am mostly planning to wear it casually and glamorously open, like I’m wearing it here with my white Inari tee dress, I’m actually rather thrilled at how super swish this combo looks, and feels! I’m even thinking this could be my Christmas soiree outfit over the upcoming festive season? Maybe!!