A new outfit for a wonderful wedding.

A week ago we were just getting back from one of the most wonderful weddings I've been to. Then I got tonsillitus so I'm only just getting round to blogging about it now.

When I tell you we stayed here.

and I tell you the wedding was black tie you may see why I thought I wanted to make a real effort. Though mostly it was the fact it was my husband's only brother getting married which is a once in a life time event regardless of venue.

The hotel was fantastic as you would expect given the number of royals and other internationally important people who have stayed there. The ones most people will know of being the Middletons for the recent Royal wedding. The dining room and indeed pretty much everywhere we ate the entire weekend were totally clued up on Celiac and took it in their stride. For once I didn't feel I had a very limited selection or that I could only have sub-standard dishes without the sauces and so forth as is so common in other places.

For the wedding I wanted a dress and jacket as it is November and you never know on the weather. It was actually pretty warm for the time of year but the jacket was still a good idea.

After considering several patterns I went for these two.

Vintage Vogue 2859 from the thirties

I'm never going to look that long and slender but still it's an interesting design.

and

Butterick 4919 which is again a vintage pattern this time 1950's

I planned to use the jacket from the first and the dress from the second but with a straighter skirt as I wanted evening dress not ballgown in feel. In the end I took the skirt off the dress in the first pattern which worked very well.

I did a mock up of the jacket in a leaf design cotton I got cheap from IKEA which I'll post when I've done the finishing touches to it as I stopped once I'd worked out what did and didn't work. Actually the fit was pretty good though the shoulder darts weren't quite right.

I mocked up the dress from the first pattern in a nice floaty satin I had spare, mostly to check the fit on the hips. Again I will finish it, this time as a nightly I think as it's a bit minimal on top for me to wear otherwise given my shape. I decided to add a couple of inches ease as while it fitted it was a bit TOO close to not show off lumps and bumps even with magic pants.

The dress bodice I used with no alterations. The pattern fitted quite well and is a very interesting design as there are NO side seams. The front pieces extend all the way round the back and are hook and eyed at centre back only then do you do up the back zip. Then the back panels extend and become the sash which you wrap round the front in a variety of ways then take round to the back to be done up ! Quite fun and very un-usual and really not that easy to do up on your own !

I made the final versions in two different fabrics. For the dress I used a silk/cotton mix satin which is one of my favourite fabrics, over the years I've bought it several times in different colours when I've had the chance and I had several yards of the lilac left I'd been keeping for something special for me.. I think this is good reason to use it.  I paired it with a slightly pinker toning Chinese brocaded satin with a cherry blossom design for the jacket.

 I think the back looks great, The flowers in my hair are free style machine embroidery on water soluable fabric which was mostly washed out and then they were dried in an egg box to give them some shape. I used the same colours as I embroidered the dress with.

Please ignore the slightly zoned look on my face I don't like having my photo taken and I think the champagne was starting to kick in by that point. If it looks like I'm in a tent it's because I was or rather a fantastic double teepee which is where we had drinks at the beginning of the reception.

I forgot to get a photo of just the dress so will have to get someone to do that for me later. The shoulders are still a little blocky on the jacket even though I adjusted them from the original design, My shoulders are so narrow I suspect it isn't an ideal design for me but I do love the seams on the back view and it went together surprisingly easily. The sleeves look a little long in that photo but there really arn't, however the fabric is one that creases if you look at it hence the amount of creasing on the sleeve.

The dress itself worked OK though when I put it on the neckline suddenly seemed very low and I could see a lot of bra but while I would add a bit to it next time I think it was mostly my rather unique viewpoint and not so bad from where everyone else sees it ! I embroidered two birds with flowers either side of the bottom of the front split which I think worked well though it's hard to see in the photo as I did it in toning shades. I considered doing more but time was against me and actually to it could easily have become too much. The sash ended up a little short so I put hooks and eyes on it then couldn't get them to work when I had to finished getting dressed on my own as Jon was off early being an usher so in the end I safety pinned it !  With jacket on no-one could see.

This is what  it should have looked like

 This is me and Jon, doesn't he scrub up well !  Probably be another ten years before I get to see him like this again !  The sash on the dress rather disappears in the very narrow gap between my bust and waist unlike on the pattern ! Oh well I'm never going to be a super model shape am I.

The wedding was fabulous, organised amazingly well by my new sister in law who is lovely as are the rest of her family and I wish them both many many years of happiness together.

My First Temari

I have been admiring Temari from afar for ages but it's only recently I have found out how they are made and realised I could make them with things I had around the house.

Temari are Japanese thread wrapped embroidered balls. Some people use styrofoam balls as a base but the traditional way is rice husks or fabric scraps. Now Fabric scraps I have lots of.  You then cover that with some batting  (I didn't for my first ones but when I find my bits of batting I will try this as well). Then some yarn and finally a layer of thread. The yarn and thread are wrapped as randomly as possible and in fact doing it this way can result in a surprisingly round ball. I did fairly thick layers of both to give me plenty to stitch through.

Here are my first two mari (the thread wrapped balls) The purple one is about 2.5" wide the grey one a little smaller. Temari can range in size quite a lot.

I also found a fabulous website which has lots of tutorials and help called Temarikai.com and they have an associated Yahoo group which seems very friendly and useful.

The purple ball has some gold threads on it these are the divisions, in this case it is divided into 8 even vertical sections and the pattern will be based around those threads. There is one around the middle of the ball as well. Getting these correct is important as if they are wrong everything else goes wrong.

One of the things the website says is learn the techniques rather than focusing on patterns and I always find that a very valuable thing to remember for most new crafts. For my first ball I did two versions of the same stitch. This is called Uwagake Chidori Stitch (translates as Zig-zag over stitch).

The first side I worked a simple version of the stitch making a four pointed star the bottom points of which nearly reach the middle of the ball.

The second side is doing the same thing but twice so they interlock with each other.

Finally I added an obi which is just several rows of thread laid round the middle of the ball with a simple zigzag of the gold thread over it.


I am really please with it. The ball has a lovely feel in the hand, a nice weight and very tactile. The boys love them too! Treestump has told me they are for throwing and Dominic after finding out they were originally made as play things rather than decorations wants me to make some to be played with so I might look at which designs would work well for that. I think it would need something that covers a good amount of the thread base so the threads can't pull easily and also a design that has fairly short runs of thread as the longer the run the easier it is to snag.

Sunday Stash

It's all IKEA's fault.. they are selling fabric at 49p and not just any fabric but the fabric I bought a while ago to make a Regency day dress.. so I may have a bit more now as in a couple of half bolts of different designs. The original one I bought is the same as the pale blue design but in navy.

I really like the black best except I am not sure what the number is all about and it rather jars with the rest of the design which is why i got the navy orginally..

Sunday stash - I won a give away!!

The fabric today are ones I recently won on a giveaway from Some day I'll be. I won three wonderful seaside fabrics, I hope she doesn't mind but I nicked the giveaway picture as my camera keeps being take off on trips by other people than me :) The fabric is glorious, even nicer than the photo and the beach huts very similar to ones at the beach near my in-laws so assuming we manage to get down there this summer then I will take some more photos of them and think about making something with the fabrics and the photos.. I have an idea so watch this space but it may be a while.

You can see the beach huts in this picture a bit which I posted a while back.

Sunday stash on Monday

Missed the right day due to running about doing stuff at the allotment and Tom being very much worse the wear from a tooth problem. Hopefully the dentist has solved it enough that he will not be in serious pain and they can sort it properly in a couple of weeks.!

Anyway fabric today was bought recently when I was dragged up the Foleshill to go to Tahim Drapers as it is such a dreadful thing to have to do !! Seriously it's dangerous for your pocket. This is their on-line shop if you don't believe me. The shop itself is quite a big space and has many, many types of fabric. A lot for Indian suits, ie the tunic, trouser and scarf sets, which means you get lots of designs where you have two or three complimentary fabrics but you often have to buy similar amounts of each as they are sets. they do a whole bunch of other fabrics too and trim and well you get the idea.

We went for a pattern and some buttons and I came out with three metres of this.

Coloured tissue under the bottom half to show possible effect.

Not sure what it's for yet. It is a fine unbleached colour with embroidery all over baring a couple of inches by the selvage. as you can see from the picture the embroidery is circles akin to the ones used to hold bits of mirror on fabric and smaller eyelet type work.. I think it might become sleeves and possible a yoke for a shirt and maybe a skirt over a coloured lining though fabric this light and small boys has problems.

Sunday stash

Today's stash is fabric which is currently made up, the stripe is a shirt and the flora is an Edwardian dress which really didn't suit me, sorry it's rather creased it's been in a bag for a while.. There is quite a lot of the floral and the design of dress means it is mostly still big panels. It is a very soft but well woven fabric so I'd like to make something more wearable with it and I keep seeing the two fabrics together and wondering if they will work together, if anything the colours are more similar in real life to the picture.

Editted to say --- the stripe is very similar to my crochet squares now i see them together on the screen.. I seem to be developing a colour theme!

Sunday Stash

I thought I might join in the Sunday stash idea.. gives me an incentive to go through my stash if nothing else !

So first up one of my newest purchases but something I've been wanting for a bit. Two fabrics from the Sew much love range by Clothworks. I have 1/2m of the bigger pattern and a fat 1/4 of the pins. Not sure what they will become as yet, for now they are to gaze at and stroke !

There is a round up of other people's sunday stashes here.

a wonderful giveaway

I've just found a wonderful new blog by a very talented lady (found as in pointed there by another blog I read regularly). The blog is called Don't look now.

She is having a giveaway of her new pattern and I am so tempted by it. The picture at the top is a detail of the design isn't it fabulous! Pop on over and have a look, you can even enter the draw to get one of the made up cushions.

Just noticed the colours match my fish :)

Convertble Dress

I've been coming across this idea on and off for awhile and today I came across not one but two tutorials.

The idea is a skirt with long straps attached which can be wrapped in various ways to give different looks, I think it needs to be a stretch fabric, certainly all the ones I've seen have been. It very much reminds me of the wrap sling I have for Treestump and wearing the two together might end up with accidentally getting undressed when you meant to take the sling off! On the other hand I can see it could be good for breastfeeding if you wore it the right way.

The two tutorials are on Burda Style and rostitchery, both used a circle skirt but you could do it with a straighter tube skirt. Personally the more flare the better, with a circle skirt it has a real Marilyn Monroe look. I would very much like to have a try and do have a nice piece of jersey somewhere though it might be a little heavy as it looks like it would work best in something very drapey. As it is meant to only take an hour or so it sounds like a perfect project to fit round a small baby,

I missed a couple of days posting though I have done a couple on my food blog but hey I still think I'm doing quite well on the post a day thing. Less well on the decluttering it's easier to ignore things because often starting makes things worse mess wise before it gets better and while I want more space I don't want to give up what we have managed so far.

Patterns galore

The inlaws were back today with the last couple of bags of fabric. I haven't gone through them properly yet but there is certainly some nice looking wool and some linen or linen-look in there that looks good.

However the main bit of this delivery was the HUGE box of patterns. It was a large box with the top taped up high and another piece of card over the top and it was full to bursting.

The patterns cover almost everything you can think of . They range in age from the 1960's to probably the 90's I think and cover almost everything you can think of. The normal range of dresses, trousers, tops, skirts, coats, suits from skimpy tops to floor length evening gowns and several full gypsy style skirts. Also underwear, hats, dolls, bags, menswear, boys clothes and babywear including the sweetest buttoned together sleepsuits. If I had to pick one pattern as my favorate it would be one of the early ones for apron, with fitted bibs and patch pockets, very much back in now.