Tag Archives: Vogue 7303

Blue-black basic

01/08/2011 7:00 am \ 21 Comments \

A new skirt… I’ve been casting a critical eye over some of my older skirts, and much as I still love them I can see some are sadly looking a wee bit on the shabby side.  So with the warmer weather just around the corner (thinking positively here) I’m looking to replace some of them.  I had a shortish length of charcoal fabric sitting in my fabric pile, leftover after Cassie had made herself a skirt.  Only about 65cm, and when I have leftovers of this measly size the standby option is often my old trusty faithful skirt pattern Vogue 7303.  So I made it up; lined with black acetate lining fabric, and hemmed with a bias strip of black cotton.  The inner raw edges are overlocked to finish.
But the colour was deeply uninspiring.  I hung it up in my wardrobe and it actually sat there for over a week with no desire on my part to wear it even once…  and really I do have a perfectly good little charcoal skirt already, and a newish black skirt too.  The fabric is a marle, woven in a drill-like weave similar to a denim, and had a distinct white fleck amongst the predominant charcoal grey, so I thought the white fleck-y parts of it would take up a strong coloured dye OK to give it a sheen of some colour.
So two days ago the brand new skirt was plunged recklessly into the murky depths of the dye-pot…
(before)

Do you like my dyeing stick; for stirring, poking and prodding?  I found it in the garden, and it has a perfectly placed twist in it to enable it to sit stably against the edge of the pot.  Pretty good, huh?
 I used iDye Poly in Blue and am pretty happy with this new deeply intense navy-blue colour.  The fabric doesn’t look like suiting any more, but now looks in close-up a bit like a soft woollen denim.  Quite interesting, and more inspiring than the rather predictable “before” skirt.  

Oh OK; I agree it’s still not a super exciting skirt but I think it will turn out to be a very useful little basic, as seemingly boring garments often are.
And it sure does feel gooooood to get rid of those leftovers from the stash!  In the past few months I’ve managed to use up several smaller amounts of fabric and gained useful garments in the process, so I’m feeling pretty virtuous right now.  Virtuous enough to offset just a little of the guilt from three new pieces of fabric recently added to my collection, anyway… hehehe.

Details:
Skirt; Vogue 7303 with modifications, charcoal marle fabric dyed with iDye Poly in Blue
Top; Veronika Maine
Cardigan and tights; Metalicus
Scarf; made by me with a jersey offcut, details here
Shoes; Django and Juliette, from Zomp shoes

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Fool’s Gold

03/04/2011 10:47 am \ 17 Comments \

Last night we went to an April Fool’s party, dress code: well of course, something to do with “fool”!
So I remembered this skirt that I made about three years ago… guess what I went dressed as?  Oh, yeah, the answer is up there in the title, hehe.
Ironically I originally made the skirt for another dress-up party at the same friends’ house; the theme that time being “glitterati”  I’m so glad I kept it!
It hasn’t been seen here on the blog before.  Obviously I don’t wear it much, hehe.  Not much call for this sort of thing in my everyday life.  
Funny story, the last time I wore it, for the glitterati party, I had to nip out halfway to pick up our daughter from a school event, and it just happened to also be the day of the annual Perth Christmas Pageant, streets lined with people all watching the pageant, hundreds of people, nay thousands of people, or that’s what it felt like.  Naturally Murphy’s law had it that our daughter had to be picked up from the very middle of town, requiring me to park a little further away than I would have ideally liked, and walk the rest of the way to where she was waiting… you get the picture.  There’s me, looking at best like an act, a performer straight from the pageant; at worst a streetwalker who has lost her way and wandered in amongst decent law-abiding families sitting with their small children… embarrassed!  I felt like I was running the gauntlet and yes, I got some very funny looks, and a few wolf whistles, the last not something that happens to me very often any more I can assure you…
The skirt is made using my old favourite, Vogue 7303, out of that cheap stuff that has thin plastic shiny foil circles glued all over it.  Surprisingly easy to sew; those foil thingies are just like thin cellophane and the needle punches through very easily.  I inserted an invisible zip in the left side seam, and hand-sewed the coffee coloured lining all around the inside edges.  The skirt has a big slit up the right hand side, going up to just above knee level, partly so I can actually walk in it, partly just to add another element of something fun and party-ish otherwise it is a pretty ordinary shape.
I wore it with my gold chain belt, worn as a necklace here.
(btw, this is not photoshopped or anything.  The golden glow in my photo is courtesy of the light of the setting sun)

Details:
Skirt; based on the basic shape of Vogue 7303, synthetic gold glittery stuff
Camisole; Country Road
Cardigan; Picnic
Sandals; Sachi, some little shop in Melbourne
Necklace; my own design, tutorial here
Bag; Glomesh, found secondhand
Sunnies; RayBan
Nail varnish; undercoat of One Voice OPI, top coat of Golden Peach, Nailfinity

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Summer armour II

22/12/2010 6:21 am \ 10 Comments \

Who said I’m a colourless dresser?  Sometimes I do don brights.  And when one has made the decision to go cheerful, well one may as well go overboard, no?  Well, to fully compensate for all the neutral days in between, that is.   As in, when I cast my eye back over the days here in which I have made the effort to take a photo they roll past neutral, colourless, quietly tasteful, a bit dull, then all of a sudden, whammy!  A bright day.  So today is one of those days.  A makeup day.
Did some more final Christmas shopping today.  You know, you think you’ve finished, a full range of prezzies for all in our fambly’s lives has been purchased and/or made and tucked away in secret hiding places about the house… then all of a sudden you remember some more people.  You know, peripheral people, that are not a huge part, but still there, and you would feel bad if you didn’t get them a little something.  So off I toddled, back to the shoppies yet again, and braved the crowds.  Although the crowds were still orderly and manageable.   I didn’t come home exhausted and barely able to cope with taking my shoes off before collapsing on the sofa, a usual symptom of Christmas shopping…  so I guess dressing to boost my self-confidence must be working some!  Right?
Now today is my husband’s birthday.  So we are having a quiet family celebration this evening and I am baking a decadently rich and stodgy chocolate cake for afters… just because we, er, haven’t been having enough chocolate in our lives lately?
Haha.

Details:
Skirt; modified Vogue 7303, raw silk
Camisole; Country Road
Cardigan; Metalicus, birthday gift from my friends
Necklace; made by me, tutorial here
Sandals; Pedro Miralles, from Soletta shoes
Sunnies; RayBan
Bag; Gucci

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Flat out

18/12/2010 2:07 pm \ 9 Comments \

Ahhh, delightful albeit exhausting day…
Up early for a long walk with my good friend S; but on a low note, I was saying goodbye to her as she is heading back home to NZ.  I’m very sad to see her go.  She’s a delightful lady; great company, sweet, intelligent and funny, and been a really good friend to me.  She’s a rare lady; a Kiwi who actually likes Australia, and says so.  That’s refreshing.

I can’t wait to plan my next visit to see her.
Later a mammoth shopping excursion for a Christmas do we’re hosting tomorrow…
And even later; well, my favourite shop, Fabulous Fabrics has been having a huge sale, and, yes I had to pay them a visit.  But it’s OK.  Really.  You see, I’ve been buying my family’s Christmas presents, from them to me.  It makes sense.  You see, nobody ever knows what I would like, although I don’t get what is the mystery as I can think of, like, a zillion things, hehe…   but, long and short, my family will be wrapping up lengths of fabric,  zips, lining and interfacing to put under the Christmas tree… it sounds a loopy thing but really it makes it all so much easier for everyone, and with the 20% off prices, it is sensible to be buying it now, rather than next year…  So thankyou, my loved ones., for lavishing me with an oh so generous stash injection; all in my favourite colours, perfectly co-ordinating with my current wardrobe, filling in some gaps…  Oh my, so thoughtful…
One needs to express a least a smidgeon of delighted reaction upon opening one’s own presents to oneself… otherwise it just doesn’t work right.  This is an important component of self-gift-giving.

Details:
Shirt; Burda 7767 with minor design modifications here, cotton/linen chambray
Skirt; modified Vogue 7303, olive corduroy
Scarf; refashioned from old Tshirt, here
Sandals; Vincenzo, from Soletta shoes
Sunnies; RayBan
Bag; Gucci

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A day off…

13/12/2010 4:35 am \ 5 Comments \

‘Tis the season to be jolly… (sung to the appropriate tune…)
 but Craig and I are in danger of turning eating, drinking and being-merry into an extreme sport around here lately!  Don’t get me wrong, I just love parties and getting together with friends and we have certainly been doing such a lot of this.  There has been some sort of party, Christmas-do, or gathering, like, almost every night, over the past week.  Yesterday we had a particularly nice get-together with my Monday morning gals and our husbands.  It was just delightful.  Without a doubt all of our social-butterflying has been lovely.  However my poor constitution needs a break or I am going to end up the size of a house, and dyspeptic to boot.   Now, I am happily blessed with a cast-iron stomach, and ordinarily I’m not one to look a gift hors-d’oevre or chocolate truffle in the mouth  … but dry toast and water is sounding like a pretty nice menu to me right now.  
Luckily, I have almost two whole days off before the next Christmas party tomorrow night.
So until then, I declare this bod a rich-party-food-and-champagne free zone…

Details:
Skirt; partly my own design, based on Vogue 7303, python print and black satin
Camisole and cardigan; Country Road
Scarf; jersey knit
Sandals; akiel, from an op shop
Sunnies; RayBan

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B is for beach

10/12/2010 4:41 am \ 6 Comments \

This is my newest project; top “b” from the Japanese pattern book “Unique Clothes Any Way You Like” by Natsuno Hiraiwa.  It is designed to be worn both ways front and back however desired and has a button band up the centre of the front… or back, take your pick.  All the internal seams are finished with flat felled seams and the armhole edges are bound with self-fabric bias binding.  I’ve had this crisp-ish white cotton in my stash for a while, probably at least a year ulp, thinking it would come in handy for something or other one of these days and it finally has.  Yay! for using up a bit more stash!  
I really like the boxy, undefined shape of this top; the unfittedness of course being the factor allowing one to wear it either which way… but also making for a delightfully cool and breezy shirt to wear during the hot hotter and hottest days of summer.  The Fremantle Doctor can just sail right on through these big loose armholes to refresh and revitalise me on a scorcher.
Hehe, I know what you’re thinking and you can just stop right there;  just to explain, the Fremantle Doctor is the name given here to the afternoon sea breeze…  
An added bonus here is that this shape is gloriously trendy at the mo’, see the big boxy white top in the photo below from Celine Spring 2011?  Nice to think my sewing efforts are resulting in something super fashionable every now and again…  well, I try.
Now perhaps I just need to make myself a pair of loose floppy wheat-coloured linen pants in order to really nail this look right down to the ground…?
This is the fourth white shirt in my Great White Shirt project.

Details:
Top; “b” from “Unique Clothes Any Way You Like” by Natsuno Hiraiwa, white cotton
Skirt; Vogue 7303, raw silk
Sandals; Perrini, had for many many many years

Below at left, worn the other way around; at right, from Celine Spring/Summer 2011

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Thoughts on coat-hangers

26/11/2010 5:15 am \ 12 Comments \
A smocked dress for a coat-hanger…?
A friend was telling me recently about a local woman whose business is to come out and assesses one’s wardrobe.  Yes, apparently there are some women out there who do not do this simple and very personal task for themselves… but I digress… this lady visits you in your own home and helps you go through your wardrobe and decides for you what does and doesn’t suit you; sorts out what to keep and what to cull and “enables” you to fill gaps in your wardrobe (translation; goes shopping with you to spend even more of your money)
The particular lady we were discussing has a firm belief that one’s coat-hangers must be all matching, and definitely not the old wire variety either.  She recommends white and plastic.  She tosses out every single coat-hanger you own that doesn’t conform to this strict rule and makes you buy all new identical white plastic coat hangers … apparently one simply cannot be a well dressed woman if one’s coat-hangers do not match… I know, how ridiculous.  Some of my most treasured possessions are the coat-hangers that have crocheted, smocked, knitted (or whatever) covers; made by my great-aunties and great grandmothers who are now gone…
And not only are these a sentimental memento of my female role model relatives, but they make the best, bar none, hangers for delicate slippery tops and dresses…
I have covered only one coat-hanger to pass on to my daughter… this is it.  So while it makes me cringe a bit to look at it, hopefully she might feel some nostalgic attachment to it some day.
Disclaimer: as well as my inherited hand-crafted beauties, the rest of my coat-hanger collection is a veritable zoo of different varieties, including lots of old wire-ys…
Below; a daily outfit photo.  Looking back over my blog; the days over the past year that are clearest to me are the days in which I have a photo of myself.  Seeing me in that day’s outfit really helps jog my memory of the events of the day and my feelings…  So if I get the time to take a photo, I am going to put one in.
(On another note; I was surprised yesterday at the number of (albeit nicely worded) comments telling me I was just showing off.  I didn’t think I was showing off, just trying something different.  And seriously I’ve heard of ladies in their eighties who can still do hand-stands.  I really admire those ladies who don’t let age get in the way of their fitness routine, or anything else in their lives for that matter, and would like to hope I could be one of those ladies)
Details:
Skirt; Vogue 7303, cotton velveteen
Top; Aztec Rose, from an op shop
Cardigan; Country Road

Thongs (flipflops); Mountain Design

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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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