Tag Archives: Own Design

In which Sienna has a bad hair day…

18/11/2010 9:01 am \ 14 Comments \

We are having a mini heat-wave.  35C yesterday, 36C today and forecast 37C tomorrow…  (roughly 95F, 97F and 99F respectively)  I’m nervous about summer.  Yup, not even summer yet, and already we’re cookin’.  Not to mention the dog… all that fur… poor poppet.  So a few days ago, when the hot hot hot days starting appearing up ahead on the weather report I rang our neighbourhood dog groomer.
Oh, yes Sienna, one of my favourites!” she chirped.  “now let me see, when can I fit Sienna in… hmmm (sounds of multiple pages flicking… flicking…flicking) the earliest I have is the thirteenth of January.”
Stunned pause. 
“Oh.” Gulp.  “Oh, yes, please book us in”
Since when has it been harder to have one’s dog clipped than one’s own hair, for heaven’s sake?  Though I’m obviously a bit dense, because I now recall it was the same story last year and still I haven’t learnt about the importance of getting in way early…  I’m telling you, looking for extra summertime income? get some clippers and put yourself out there grooming dogs.  Around here at least, HUGE demand…  
But in the meantime, Sienna is already panting and falling back on our morning constitutionals so immediate action is required.  I’ve never clipped a dog before but am always up for a challenge and my overly-confident, can-do brain assured me seriously, how hard could this be?  Armed myself with a medium sized pair of scissors (a mistake… now have blisters) and set to work.  Like, hours later, simply smothered in dog fur (a daily outfit pic from yesterday would have been hilariously un-glamourous) and with a whole cushion sized bag of new blonde clippings in the bin, and below is pictured the newly coiffured Sienna.  (here is the before-Sienna) You know the old saying from schooldays when someone had a haircut “Lost a fight with the lawnmower?” well in all honesty the poor pet looks a bit this way.  Today my daughter’s boyfriend stopped in his tracks, staring incredulously before inquiring “what happened to the dog?”
But hey, I did the best I could do.  She was a very very good dog, lying so patiently while her inept mistress snipped snipped snipped away laboriously…  There are no nicks.  And there’s no doubt she is a heaps livelier and happier dog with a renewed spring in her step.

Details:
Top; my own design, refashioned old pair of 3/4 linen pants seen first here
Skirt; Vogue 7303, lime printed cotton
Sandals; Anna, from MarieClaire shoes
Hat; Country Road
Sunnies; RayBan

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Dove grey skirt, Japanese

09/11/2010 10:08 am \ 12 Comments \

So I’ve made a new skirt, this one is skirt “d” from the Japanese pattern book, “Unique Clothes Any Way You Like” by Natsuno Hirawai.  I’m already in love with its tendency to flutter and float about my legs as I walk in little ripply silver waves, promising to be delightfully cool to wear during summer!
The skirt is cut in one piece, which is a strange almost tear-drop shape, with only three other pieces for the waistband, and two separate button plackets.  I chose these three large nacre buttons for closure to complement the soft silver grey of the fabric.  Actually I made this using the wrong side of the fabric out.  The right side has a much more shimmery shiny metallic silver finish to it, but I chose the dull dove grey wrong side with a slightly felt-y texture over this as I’m not really a disco ball kind of a girl.  Although come to think of it I do have some silver sequinned fabric in my stash… calling to my inner disco queen, a flashy persona buried deep within the prosaic Australian exterior…  I must have bought it knowing she was down in there somewhere, hehe.
The shape of the skirt piece means that the one seam in the skirt joins a with-the-grainline edge on to a cross-grain edge, requiring absolutely straight-as-a-die cutting and sewing to avoid horrible wrinkles and bagginess around the seam.  If it wasn’t for this need for accuracy here I would rate this skirt as a laughably easy project… of course if you are working with a very stable strong fabric then this wouldn’t be a problem… but I chose this slippery crepe; wonderful draping qualities but with a tendency to shift and stretch.  I think I did an OK job with the seam, and I like how it cuts across the body diagonally providing a subtle random off-kilter focal point to what is otherwise a featureless A-line skirt.

Details:
Skirt; skirt “d”, “Unique Clothes Any Way You Like” by Natsuno Hirawai, pale mauve-grey crepe
Camisole; Country Road
Cardigan; my own design seen first here, black jersey printed with rubbery plastic snakeskin scales
Shoes; Perrini, had for so many years I’ve forgotten where they came from
Sunnies; RayBan

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The weakness for ivory lace continues

03/11/2010 5:18 am \ 14 Comments \

Hehe, in order to avoid falling into a rut and boring you with repeat photos of the beach I’m making an effort to seek out new locations, variety is the spice of life, so they say.  Thus, the toasty tones of my lovely rocky wall backdrop setting off the all-white ensemble here.  Beautiful wall, no?  It is actually the outer wall of the toilet block down here at the beach.  Yeeeeah, I’m so sorry to completely ruin any romantic notions you may be entertaining about my “picturesque” backdrops… ! honesty in blogging, and all that…  the same beach from yesterday is a mere stone’s throw away from this spot.  That’s even for a pathetic stone-thrower like me with a truly “girly” throwing arm…

So… my new ivory lace hoodie; top 3 in the Great White Shirt project (I’m counting the two I made just before signing up, hehe)
This lace top will be perfect for days like today (a hottie of 35C, or 90F… I know, bit worried about what the real summer will bring…!)  The beauty of lace in hot climates is that it has its own inbuilt ventilation to pick up breezes and thus keep the wearer cool.  In a temperature sense as well as a super stylish fashion maven sense, of course…
Details:
Top; Butterick 4985, with modifications, ivory lace
Camisole (under); Country Road
Shorts; Burda 7723, white linen, these ones sewn to the pattern with no modifications
Thongs (flipflops); Mountain Designs
(The rest of this post below is technical sewing stuff, so feel free to skip it if you want…)
So; new top.
I didn’t use the KwikSew hoodie pattern as planned!  Instead of racing irresponsibly off to the fabric store willy nilly for white stretch fabric I was a good girl and took stock of my stash first, and of course there were a few lengths of white fabric already lurking in there with no purpose: one was this ivory lace.  It’s not super high quality and not stretchy and I only had about 1.2m… so couldn’t use the KwikSew pattern, but just right for the old standby Butterick 4985.  I have used this pattern a multitude of times already.  I made a few adjustments, obviously the biggest is the addition of the hood.  For this I did use the KwikSew hood pattern piece but re-drafted somewhat drastically; cut it down smaller to suit the finer more delicate fabric I was using here, and also adjusted the neck edge length to fit the collar edge of the top, so the hood actually replaces the collar and is sandwiched in between the fronts and facing just like a collar would be.  I really just treated the hood like a giant oddly shaped collar.  I sewed the hood’s own centre seam in a French seam.   The back neck edge is finished in a flat felled seam.  The open edge of the hood is the selvedge of the fabric, which is a nice sealed flat edge already, making any further finishing unnecessary.Sleeves: I drafted a sleeve with a long flat sleeve cap like a man’s, and the rest of the sleeve is basically a wide and untapered tube.  I like the unstructured casual flappiness of this new shape.

Buttons; I lucked out and found these perfect ivory buttons with embossed roses and flowers, perfect, no? to go with the rose motif in the lace.  Rather than my usual habit of sewing all the buttons the same way up I sewed them on alternately up and down, to try to match the random rose pattern in the lace…

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Downgrading a “good” dress

01/11/2010 9:22 am \ 10 Comments \

Does anyone else downgrade their dresses?  Move the snazzies out of category “with heels and make-up only” and over to “OK to walk the dog in”?
Last year this dress was a “good” dress.  I wore it to lots of formal lunches, parties and end-of-year functions, as well as a wedding (and this dress for the reception dinner and dance afterwards)  And this year I’ve made a few new party numbers to see me out for the seasonal social whirl… but I still love this dress and want to give it an outing once in a while… well, how could I not love it; it’s lace!
Luckily it’s quite subdued in colour and style and not overly sparkly or glamourous, so I’ve delegated it duty as a nice-ish everyday dress, just to wear out and about.  In its early life as a party dress, I went through the ritual of the “gently swooshing by hand in a bucket” cleaning routine.  Then started tossing it in a lingerie bag in with other delicates… then eventually, throwing caution to the winds, sans lingerie bag and just in with the general light clothes.  The first time I dared to do this I worried how the gathered silk chiffon midriff and sash would hold up…  but it survived that test and actually stood up pretty good.  So I reckon it can thankfully shed the lace-and-silk-diva label and has earned its place in amongst the daily players.
Oh, and the heels aren’t just for show; although I did wear thongs (flipflops) for walking the dog, here I was on my way to morning tea with the Monday gals… just thought I’d point that out after my post on “honest blogging” the other day…!

Details:
Dress; some design adaptions of New Look 6699, beige lace, silk chiffon midriff and sash, lined with swiss voile
Sandals; Marco Santini, from Marie Claire shoes
Sunnies; RayBans

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Three Grim Reapers

30/10/2010 4:04 pm \ 8 Comments \

OK, we don’t really observe Halloween here in Australia.  Trick-or-treating, definitely not.  But sometimes there is the odd party happening at this time that adopts a Halloween-y theme and thus provides an excuse for people to dress up in weird outfits.  So, a few years ago my eldest son and two of his friends went to such a party and decided they wanted to be Grim Reapers.  Hehe, checked out the dates on these photos, and wow, it was four years ago.  Four years ago!  Man!
I made their costumes (don’t get the wrong idea, I don’t make a habit of this sort of largesse…) using 4m each of black cotton fabric, and they fashioned the scythes themselves from my husband’s bamboo aikido poles with cardboard blades covered with aluminium foil..
I thought they looked pretty good, no?  Tim is on the far left…! lol. How can I tell?  Well, a mother just knows, yeah.

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Bathers, 2010

19/10/2010 4:57 am \ 29 Comments \

I’m feeling veeeeery brave, putting a picture of myself up here, in my bathers!  Last year I was way too shy to do this.  Please note I’ve modestly veiled my face,  so no one can recognise me… (lol)
So I’ve made this year’s bathers for myself, the first project from the fabrics I bought in Melbourne from the Fabric store, on Brunswick Street.  If you can you read the printing in the selvedge of the fabric, below, you can see it reads “Zimmerman”.  Well, this is quite a classy Australian swimwear brand and I was pretty chuffed to see end-of-roll bolts of their fabrics stacked up at the back of The Fabric Store.  I haven’t seen the Zimmerman range for this season yet, but I am curious to see what they’ve made out of this very fabric!  I made a tankini, altering the one swimwear pattern I have to do this.  I just drafted the body skirt part and added it on to the bottom of the bikini top at front, and redrafted the back piece accordingly.     I had initially cut these body pieces quite long because they are self-drafted and I always allow myself plenty of extra fabric in case of problems; and at first I was planning for the ivory waistband of the bottoms to be on view when I was wearing them.  But then decided I like the look of the top long and pulled down over the bottoms; so this feature is now hidden.  I cut up an old bra to use for cups inside the bodice.
I didn’t set out to make the bathers “retro” in appearance (a word I’m getting a bit bored with in the sewing world, but not as bad as “vintage”) but they have turned out quite… old-fashioned.  There.  “Old-fashioned” is a less overused and therefore much more preferable term.  I’m going with old-fashioned…
And, just because everybody loves a photo blooper I’ve included one below for your amusement, taken accidentally while I was setting up.

Details:
Bathers; McCalls 2772, with some modifications, navy blue with ivory polka-dot swimwear fabric
Hat; Country Road

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Red halter-neck sundress; 6 different ways

16/10/2010 4:31 am \ 21 Comments \

Ha!
The last time I wore this for my blog and I was writing a description, I was about to segue into rhapsodies about how useful a garment it was when it occurred to me I hadn’t done a 6-way post in a while and this would be a good candidate…
I actually love doing these; shopping in my own closet is fun when I have the time, and it certainly brings to light some garments and combinations that hadn’t occurred to me before and breathes a new lease of life into some “lurkers” that haven’t been worn in a while.
When I first made this dress it was intended to be a light beach dress to cover up the bathers, and it spent the first few months of its life just tossed randomly into my beach bag… then one evening I put some white linen pants on underneath (those particular ones were old ones, also permanently tossed in my beach bag for a coverup on colder days) and I realised it could be quite a chic combination, if said linen pants hadn’t been so creased from being stuffed casually in the bottom of a bag, hehe…  The dress migrated to a hanger in my wardrobe and has been worn for occasions of various formality since, so it is quite useful and demonstrates why everybody should have a little sundress with a pretty hemline and of a cheerful colour in their wardrobe…
For the bodice part with the halter neck I used McCalls 4453, and the skirt part I drafted myself, inspired by the hemline on some dress I had seen somewhere, in a perfume commercial? ( I think?) …  It is made from sparkly red/pink polyester chiffon, and lined with pale pink lining fabric.  I altered the bodice to close at the left side seam with an invisible zip.
For its original purpose; at left, it is worn as a very casual beach dress; then at right, with white linen pants on underneath it becomes quite chic enough for a semi-formal summer evening function.  I wore it like this to the theatre in Melbourne, and when we met friends at a swish-o riverside restaurant in the evening also…

On slightly fresher days; at left, it is funky and fun with a fluffy cardigan and lace-up boots for casual wear; then at right worn as a tunic with jeans on underneath and high heels, it looks not-too-casual for a barbecue with friends

Even in more wintry temperatures, it can work as a top over a skirt with tights, flat boots, cardigan and scarf for everyday wear (boy, I wish I’d thought of this combination during last winter, because I love this outfit now I’ve thought of it!).  And even though it’s a summery dress, with a top, tights and high heeled boots all in a solid one-colour worn underneath, at right, it’s warm enough for cooler days and looks a bit edgy and kinda mod.  I could start wearing it from early spring like this, and stretch it out to cooler autumn days also, out to town or to meet friends or the husband.

Which one do you like the best?
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Fair Isle knitted jumper

15/10/2010 8:16 am \ 9 Comments \

Today’s photo is good for a bit of a chuckle, no?
The above is a photo taken of my husband and me at our engagement party.  I know, we look like babies… this was over twenty years ago.  On a fashion note; please take note of my husband’s skinny leather tie and the random chaotic nature of the print on my dress, lol… tres chic and fashionable for the late eighties, honest!!
I’m putting it up here because he is wearing a cardigan I had knitted for him at the time.  It is my own design, based on a Kaffe Fasset motif.  We chose the colours together (there are at least twenty different colours and yarns in it) and the cardigan shape and style are also of my design, custom fit to his size and the shape that men were wearing at the time (don’t laugh, the boxy bomber-jacket shape was the very IN thing in menswear, truly!)
If I’m truthful I’ll admit he hasn’t worn it in a while.   In fact I dug it up out of a suitcase in our storage room for the detail photos below…
The design is knitted in Fair Isle style, and there are two colours in each row, although at a casual glance it looks a lot more.  The design was quite clever that way…  The whole cardigan is knitted in one piece, from wrist band to wrist band.  After completing the body, I sewed up the two seams (which are the underarm/side seams) and picked up stitches to knit on the waistband, the front opening bands and finally the neckband.  These are all in rows of striped rib.
I was (and still am) pretty pleased with the neat and tidy appearance of the inside of the jumper, so I’ve taken an inside picture to show you how carefully I wove the two colours of each row together in each and every stitch as I was knitting…

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