Monthly Archives: October 2016
New Dress For a Funeral
Denise had some definite ideas for our funeral attire, black with a teal or pink accent colour. I didn’t actually own any totally black clothes, if you read to the end of this post I still don’t.
I had a general idea what I was going to make, then I went to Mood Fabrics and came away with a totally different idea., while browsing the aisles I came across some black eyelet fabric and with that a dress was imagined.
Black eyelet fabric over teal for the bodice and plain black skirt, I only had a week to make it so I wanted something not too complicated. So I pulled out Gertie’s Ultimate Dress book pattern sheets and tape measure so that I could work out what size I needed to go up to on the waist, it appeared to be the next size up, so I traced out a new bodice pattern and did the SBA on it and I traced off the new skirt pattern, originally I had decided on the same skirt as for Liz’s dress circle skirt with box pleats but I didn’t have enough fabric for that so I went with the three quarter circle skirt instead.
Simon found the ‘Teal’ fabric it was probably the most expensive fabric I bought in Mood, it was silk Crepe, at this point I was thinking about lining the whole dress with it so got 3 yards, I still have just over 2 yards to do something else with.
I knew silk was notoriously hard to work with and also ‘luckily’ realised I couldn’t line the dress with it because of the bodice darts so I interlined it (thank you Gertie)
I cut out the eyelet fabric first then used that to cut out the silk, it worked quite well that way.
I basted the two together and put in the darts, and the side and shoulder seams.
Enter a caption
I attached the skirt, there was still something missing the skirt and bodice seemed like two seperate entities, and I wasn’t sure how to bring them together, after discussing it with Simon I decided to use the skirt fabric to bind the neck and armholes.
With a 22inch zip in the back and a small hem done on the sewing machine it was finished with 2 days to spare. I’m assuming that with the holes the islet fabric stretched out of shape as the top didn’t fit as well as the muslin, but I was very pleased with it.
To finish it off I wore my pink and teal shoes. It could probably have done with being taken in at the waist a bit and the front darts could have been more dartier.
more later…..
New rain coat for Charlie
Charlie is our dog you have probably noticed him photo bombing a few of my recent pictures, he has a heavy winter coat, to be honest I don’t think he needs it to keep warm, as he has his own quite heavy fur coat, his winter coat is to keep him dry in the rain, he doesn’t like to get wet and runs around like a mad thing once he gets indoors.
His store bought coat has a waterproof outside and fleece inside, I had to put an extra hole in it as we use a harness instead of a lead and collar.
Charlie’s new coat has a waterproof outside and t-shirt material on the inside, I didn’t bother with the collar, as Charlie doesn’t appear to be keen on it.
Basically all I did was to fold charlie’s existing coat in half and trace round it. On both sets of fabric then I cheated a bit and using Pritt Stick stuck both pieces of fabric together, I stitched reflective tape around it, then realised I had to undo parts of it as the elastic to go round his back legs should be stitched into edging tape and used my button hole foot to make the hole for his lead to attach to.
This has been sitting cut out on my table for about 3 months it was surprisingly easy to put together.
New York, New York
I’ve just got back from a trip to New York, which is why I’m a bit late in posting, withe Florida I had time to sit back in the evening and take total advantage of the free WiFi, so I could post as I went along, the WiFi in our hotel was a bit slow and not free!!
We flew out of Heathrow, the Premium economy isn’t as good for New York as for Florida, I assume it is something to do with the size aeroplane, it seemed smaller and more cramped. we were driven over to Manhattan in a cab with the smallest amount of legroom ever.
I should have taken some photos on the way over but I had left my camera in my carry on, which was in the boot of the car. This is my 4th/5th trip out and I always smile on seeing the ‘spaceships’ from Men in Black (1965 worlds fair observation decks)
We stayed in a hotel near Central park and we had a few things that we had listed to do. Number one was go and get pizza at Angelos, which we did on the first day and fourth and fifth days.
day 1, it was raining, usually when we go to New York it is dry and sunny for most of the holiday and rains on the last day, this year it was the other way way round. It was forecast to rain the whole time we were out there but we were lucky it just rained on the Friday.
We walked down over to Macy’s, stopping at Gap on the way, Simon likes their Jeans. Because of the poor exchange rate and the fact we had already spent quite a bit of money earlier in the year, we weren’t planning on spending too much.
I did however go to Mood fabrics, wow!! I have never seen so much fabric in one place, it is on 3 floors and the fabric is floor to ceiling, there are a lot of staff, so you find the fabric you want and they cut it for you and price it up as you go along, then once you are finished you take your ‘pile’ of fabric to the front desk on the 3rd floor and they tot it up and Simon hands over his credit card, obviously he wouldn’t do that for just any one, only me. 🙂 that trip I bought some denim and a piece of silk crepe, I did have something in mind for each bit I bought.
For dinner that day we went to Red Lobster, we had discovered a liking for crab legs while in Florida and Simon found a Red Lobster just off Times Square, yippee!!
More later….
Musings of a Craft Enthusiast 