But it can't be from Dolly Clackett. She gave me an Easter egg!

Evening all! What's the craic? I am having a busy old week at work, which is kind of nice. I've been sewing and knitting and watching trashy TV (we're back on Blue Bloods) and wearing socks around the house because the weather has turned a bit colder. Also because I keep buying new shoes and wearing them around the house with socks genuinely does break them in a little bit. So, the more you know.

So, yeah, sewing. I haven't made much of a dent in the fabric stash I brought home with me from Paris (not helped by the fact that since coming back from Paris, I have also bought a buttload more fabric) But, after a trip to the pub a couple of weeks ago with my lovely friend Lauren, I was inspired to get going on some of it. She was wearing an absolutely amazing coral polka dot Sewaholic Cambie dress and she looked fabulous. I love the Cambie pattern a lot but am currently unable to wear any of the ones I've previously made - they're all too big for me now and I have packed them away - so I got my pattern out and retraced it in a new size. Lauren had omitted the waistband from hers and had also only lined the bodice, and I'm a big old copycat so decided to follow suit. Well, apart from omitting the waistband (but I will get to that shortly) So... here is my Dirty Dick Cambie dress:

Dirty Dick Cambie dress and Swedish hasbeens Heart Medallion sandals

So. Let's get the issues out of the way first. I sized down with this dress from my previous size and I didn't toile it because it had fit me pretty well in the past. Well, I could have stood to toile it because as well as having lost weight, my body has changed shape a bit. Also, I think I am just a bit more fussy about fit nowadays so I'm not as happy with this dress as I could be. The bodice is just a little bit big all over and the waistband hits me at a funny place. I have since gone on to make a Cambie dress without the waistband - which has its own issues that I'll do a separate post about (it is cute, though) So basically, the bodice needs work. I think I need to change the shape of the darts in the bodice a bit and maybe shorten the bodice a bit as well. But - any advice would be gratefully received!

Bodice!

So in this shot you can kind of see the issue a bit more clearly - that excess fabric underneath the bust. But you can also see the thing I really like about this dress - the fabric! So I'm going to stop being picky about it now because despite the issues I have pointed out, I do like this dress. It's not perfect but it is wearable and the fabric is so cute! I bought this pineapple print cotton in Coupons de Saint Pierre and I think it was €10 for 3 metres. It's very light and floaty but not see-through, so I was able to get away with not lining the skirt. Also: pineapples! I am accidentally on-trend! There are actually two layers of pineapple to the print - the brightly coloured ones, and then slightly faded outlines of pineapples. It's pretty awesome. I have about half a metre of it left so I'm trying to figure out what to do with it.

A back view I don't hate! But gosh, I'm a strange shape from the back.

So, yeah. This dress is more flattering in real life than it is in the pictures but it's definitely not my best work. I'm at that slightly annoying stage now where I can see fitting issues but I'm still learning how to address them. I suppose I need to get better at making toiles rather than relying on fitting on the fly, but I'm getting there. I'm never going to be a fitting master like my girl Heather B but it is good to move towards that. I love being able to whip up a dress in a few hours, but of course that's only good if the end result fits. Which, in fairness, this dress mostly does.

Yes, I'm in the undergrowth here, in heels. I think this is the moment when I officially jumped the shark. In my defence, the heels aren't all that high.

Anyway. I'm going to stop being negative because PINEAPPLES! NEW SHOES! HEARTS! MY HAIR LOOKS REALLY GOOD IN THIS OTHER PHOTO!

FACE LOOKS STUPID THOUGH, DORP!

Now, I was meant to get a photo of me drinking a pineapple-themed drink in this dress, and I totally failed to do that. If I'm totally honest, I don't like very sweet drinks and pineapple always burns my mouth. It's to do with enzymes, apparently. Science. But I did name this dress after that awesome Tiki bar in Pigalle that Nic and I went to on our honeymoon. And I will go and have a drink as soon as I am finished writing. It'll be gin, but it will be good gin. And on the subject of gin, I will leave you with the other thing the name of this dress makes me think of:

Dirty Martini... dirty bastard

And this one is just because...

Morning boys and girls! Happy Sunday! I'm having a very busy weekend with lots of socialising - it's funny how these things can all crowd in to fit the same space. Nic and I had dinner with friends on Friday night, I was teaching at Berylune all day on Saturday, we went to a party at a friend's house last night and this afternoon I'm off to London to hang out with my girl Liz. Thankfully I'm going to be working at home tomorrow so I can get in some pyjama time. I do always eventually get dressed when I'm working from home but I'm not going to lie - I am looking forward to being a slob for a few hours.

Thank you to everyone who chimed in with fitting advice about my Cambie dress on the last post - it was really helpful and I have a fair few ideas now of things to try that should help. It's not all fitting woes up in here though - I have a little sewing success story to share today. Hurrah! So, after experimenting with hacking the back bodice pieces of the Emery dress to make the v-back on the Monkey 47 dress, I was keen to keep working on that hack to get it right. And to sew it to a circle skirt, because I love circle skirts. I decided to pinch out the neck darts on the bodice piece and to try Mrs C's neckline taping suggestion. This is something I had actually done before, with some success, so it's silly that I forgot to do it on the Monkey 47 dress!

Anyway - I made the dart modification to the paper piece and off I went, cutting out some more of the fabric I bought in Paris. This is a lovely cotton lawn I bought as a 3m coupon in Coupons de Saint Pierre - I think it was €20 for 3 metres. It originally had a white background but it met with a colour-running accident in my washing machine and no amount of colour corrector would return it to white! I was a bit bummed out about this initially - and indeed, if I can find some more of the fabric so I can have a dress made out of it as it's intended to look, I will get some - but actually I think the pale blue background works. I like it a lot and I love the finished dress:

Le Lotus Bleu dress - Christine Haynes Emery bodice with modifications and a circle skirt, worn with Swedish hasbeens peep toe sandals

Often - nearly always - when I try on a handmade dress before hemming it, I'm a little bit meh about the whole thing. This was not at all the case with this one, which I loved unreservedly. I think I got my reservations about it out of the way earlier in the process when, after cutting it all out and marking all the darts and everything, I lost interest in it for about a day. Coming back to it was weirdly a chore. But anyway - I love the dress! The print is of chinese vases and lemons which is a little bit random and, in the length I had, there was no way of having the vases running the right way up on the front skirt without either seaming it, or sewing a half circle skirt. I didn't want to do either of those things so let the vases be on their sides. They're right way up again by the centre back seam, though!

Back view. No crabbing about it this time, I promise.

Mrs C's tutorial worked a treat and the back neckline lies completely flat - I am very happy with how it fits! I'm keen to experiment with adding the Emery sleeves to this bodice modification - I'd have to undo the changes to the armholes but I think it could work and be very cute with it!

Here's the bodice so you can see the print a bit closer. Excuse the messy hair - it was a windy day!

I wore this dress last Saturday to go on a day out with Nic - the one that was originally planned for Rugby but ended up with Birmingham. It was a very windy day but I took precautions and wore a slip to prevent accidental flashing of Brummie strangers. I loved wearing this dress and felt pretty awesome in it all day.

Here's how I wore the dress - with a blue Hell Bunny Paloma cardigan and my new Zatchels saddle bag

There isn't a whole lot else to say about either the dress or our day in Birmingham. We had a lovely day out - Birmingham is a great city, especially in the sunshine. I introduced Nic to the magical wonderland that is Barry's Fabrics and I fell in love with a ridiculously expensive Paul Smith coat in Harvey Nichols. Oh, and I met a giant anglepoise lamp:

Yes. It's true. I love lamp.

Anyway, I know it's been a pretty picture-heavy post but I'm going to leave you with two more pictures from a lovely day. Then I need to go and get my ass in gear if I'm going to catch a train to London!

Running across this street sign in the back streets between Digbeth and the Mailbox was pretty pleasing.

Nic took a few photos of me in front of this painted wall. It's beautiful and I really like it as a photo backdrop but OMG could it be more stereotypically blogger to do this? I suppose I could be jumping, or crouching, or staring off wistfully into the distance. Not going to lie - kind of wish I could find a wall like this in Leamington!

Okay, pups. I'm out. I've got shit to do. Bye!

Yo yo yo YO. Hello my loves! This week has been going sooooo slowly for me, for some reason. How can it only be Wednesday?! I had a very busy weekend between teaching, socialising and generally running about the place, so maybe it's just that I'm in need of some time to just slob about at home.

The weather has started to turn a bit. It's chilly - by no means is it winter coat weather yet (although I have seen a lot of that this week) but the season does feel like it's starting to turn and that always sends my emotions into turmoil. That's at least partly because I really hate having to wear layers and tights and winter coats - I'll be clinging desperately to my open-toed shoes for a while yet! So tonight I'm going to show you a project I worked on a few weeks ago, when the weather was still reliably warm.

It's not a new dress - this is a refashioned dress! Now I must admit, I'm not much of a one for refashioning or altering clothes. I'm always really impressed when I see others do it, but I kind of lack the patience to do it myself. Over the last year, most of my handmade dresses from the beginning of 2013 have been gradually packed away because they're now too big. I've given some away to friends and to the charity shop, but there are a fair few that I'm very attached to and I'm slowly working my way through altering them to fit my current size. One of them is the first By Hand London Elisalex dress I made - the Feckin' Birds dress. I love the Michael Miller fabric I used to make this dress, which I bought from Fabric.com, and it's been a source of some regret to me to have it packed away. Back at the end of June or beginning of July I took it apart and refashioned it, and I'm pleased to say that it's part of my wearable wardrobe again!

Refashion alert! Feckin Birds dress, worn with Vivienne Westwood for Melissa Lady Dragon shoes and Ollie and Nic apple bag

So. Because the dress had sleeves and is partially lined, it wasn't really possible to alter the dress by just taking it in up the side seams. I've done this with a few other too-big dresses (both handmade and shop-bought) and while it's not the most elegant alteration it has worked really well where I have tried it. Anyway. That was a no go here. So I took the whole thing apart and started again, kind of from scratch. I decided that, beautiful and all as the sleeves are - and man, I was SO proud of them at the time - that this dress was going to get more wear as a sleeveless dress. So I re-sewed the bodice and the bodice lining, and attached them using the old burrito method so it was all neat and tidy. I thought I'd try something a bit different with the skirt and, rather than recreating the box pleats, I gently gathered the skirt. It's still tulip-shaped - which you can see more evidently in real life than in these photos - but it has a slightly different look to it now. To be honest, I have mixed feelings about how successful this change was because it does blouse out a little bit and it probably could be more flattering.

But, you know, whether or not something is 100% flattering 100% of the time is really not of huge concern to me and, as it is, this skirt has lots of room for a big dinner. On the night these photos were taken, we went out for dinner and cocktails with friends, followed by prosecco and maltesers in the park, followed by champagne and sweets in our living room. It did well on all scores.

The other change I made was to take a couple of inches off the skirt. The midi length worked when the skirt was pleated, but it just looked all kinds of wrong when I gathered the skirt.

The finished article isn't perfect: it's a little boxy in the bodice because I was feeling chubby when I remade this dress, basically, and rather than re-cutting the bodice pieces using the correct size, I just sewed them back together with extra large seam allowances. It's fine - and in fact, the extra ease made this dress cool and comfortable to wear when the weather was humid - but I know it would have looked better if I had taken a slightly different route when sewing it. Still: I'm calling this a win because I loved this dress, and I'm really really glad to have it back in rotation. This fabric is still one of my favourite prints.

Rescuing this dress has inspired me with a few other too-big dresses and I have a dismantled Lobsterlex dress awaiting the same treatment, probably over the weekend. Alterations are tedious but, having spent time and money and poured love into making these dresses, it's totally worth taking the time to give them a second life.

This photo doesn't show you anything new about the dress. But Nic tried to take about 7 photos of me on these alternative steps, and I had my eyes closed in every single one. I think mainly here I was thinking about the dinner and cocktails that were ahead of me and I was blissing out about the whole thing.

Anyway - that's my refashioned dress! I can't say I'm going to get into refashioning in a big way - I find the lure of the bright, shiny and new a bit too hard to resist - but this was undeniably satisfying. I love my dress.

...me after a night on the cocktails, prosecco, champagne and fizzy laces...

Heeeeeey! What's happening, everyone? I'm sitting here in my pyjamas with my head wrapped in clingfilm, eating chocolate biscuits. SUCH GLAMOUR. The clingfilm is because I have henna on my hair. It's not something I sit around and do to keep the alien thought waves out, or anything.

I use tinfoil for that, obviously.

Anyway - hope everyone is well and everything. I'm fine. Work kind of sucks this week (hence the pyjamas and chocolate biscuits at this time of the evening) but, you know, sometimes work kind of sucks. I had a lovely weekend with friends and even though it rained heavily ALL DAY on the last pre-Christmas bank holiday of the year, this just meant I got to make a dress and watch many, many episodes of The OC. So, yay?

The weekend was very cool, though. On Saturday I went to London and caught up with Janene, Amy, Marie, Katie, Emmie, Jen and a bonus Alana (who looked genuinely terrified when she ran into us all in A-One Fabrics on Goldhawk Road) to visit the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition at the Barbican. I won't recap the exhibition because it's finished now, and I think there are probably a lot more insightful reviews of it out there on the internet, but it was fabulous. Not least because of its size - it was over two floors and there was just so much to look at - but also because you were able to really look at the clothes as none of them were behind glass. That was brilliant - especially when in a group of fellow seamstresses - although at one point, Jen and I did set off an alarm. Just a little one, womp womp. While we were there we had cocktails in both the Gin Joint and the Gaultier Bar - I mean, when you're around other seamstresses it seems that drinking gin is basically mandatory, right?

With Marie and our Gaultier-themed cocktails. If I already look a little bit drunk it's because I was.

It really was an incredibly fun day. I talked and laughed myself hoarse, threw back more gin than was strictly necessary, and ate the world's tiniest halloumi burgers. No photos because they were gone as soon as I looked at them but holy shit. I did not take 'mini' to mean 'microscopic'. In an uncharacteristic burst of energy when I arrived back in Leamington at 10:30pm, I joined Nic and our friends Owen and Jane in the pub and we ended up having a very late night.

Train picnic. I think this is what inspired me to power on through to the pub

Yeah. I didn't do very much on Sunday. FOR OBVIOUS REASONS. It was a lovely boozy, funny and inspiring day. I love how much fun sewing has brought into my life. It really rocks.

One of the other things that rocks about sewing is when you spot a fabric you love and you know just what you want to make from it, and you make it straightaway. This is what happened after Nic and I went to Birmingham a couple of weeks ago. On our way over on the train I commented to Nic that I probably shouldn't buy fabric as I still have a fair bit of my Paris fabric waiting to be sewed with. Also, our flat is small and I genuinely don't like to have too much of a stash waiting around on me. I can't explain it, I just don't. But then we were in Birmingham and, you know, Barry's Fabrics and the rag market were RIGHT THERE, so I bought fabric. Ah well. You can't win them all.

Nic actually spotted this fabric. It's always good to have my fabric whisperer with me! It's 100% cotton canvas, and I just loved the colours. And yeah - I guess in 2014 the print is kind of hipster nonsense but that's fine. I like it:

Hildy dress - By Hand London Flora dress worn with Swedish hasbeens heart sandals

Another Flora dress. YEAH IT IS. That lovely pleated skirt seemed like the perfect match for this weightier canvas fabric. It has basically no drape - I mean, I guess it's actually furnishing fabric - which means that the box pleats at the back of the skirt really stick out. That being said, it was easy to work with and comfortable to wear. It frayed a bit, but nothing major. I bought 1.5 metres and was able to get the whole dress out of it with a pattern placement I was happy with. All good!

Yes, my dress does have typewriters on it, and I'm pretty smug about it. Thanks for asking.

Because this fabric is so much weightier than my usual cotton, the fit on this Flora bodice is a bit different to other ones I have made. So, to give you an example, the bodice I worked from here is the same size as the one for the Lauren dress. The bodice on that dress was - and is - a little bit bigger than I was happy with. And I've actually lost weight since then (ugh, seriously not a humblebrag, by the way, because it's really not ideal). The bodice on this dress isn't tight or uncomfortable, but it just goes to show you how much difference the type of fabric you use can make to the overall fit - even when you're not talking about a difference between wovens and knits.

Anyway, it's no biggie. The dress fits well and I'm happy with that. But isn't it weird how blogging can just make you so hyper critical of everything you post? I was going to post a back view so you could see the way those pleats stick out and give me total circus-tent bum, which is actually pretty cool. But, ugh. I couldn't. Sorry, guys. To be fair, you're not missing that much.

So here's the wind catching the skirt in a pleasing way, instead.

It was raining while we were taking these photos, and it's been raining today. It's not officially autumn yet, and actually I still think we're due a late summer rebound in September (we generally seem to get a week or so of really nice weather around the time that school goes back) so I am very firmly NOT joining the OMGSQUEETIGHTSBOOTSAUTUMN club. I'm not super in to sewing autumn/winter clothes, in fairness. That being said, the slightly heavier weight of this fabric will mean it should work well late into the year. The Madarch dress I made last November from Cath Kidston furnishing fabric was a favourite in the colder weather, and I expect this one will be too. It might even look pretty cute with pink tights. But, don't talk to me about woolly tights before then, seriously. I don't want to hear it.

Get out of here with your woolly tights. IT'S AUGUST, FFS.

Hello my lovelies! I hope everyone is having a happy weekend. It's all good here - I have had a restful day of eating cake and sewing, which are two of my favourite things to do! Tonight Nic and I are off to look after my friend Lucy's totally brilliant children, which should mean at least an hour of playing with lego followed by a few hours of watching trashy TV. Can't be bad!

I had a pretty stressful week at work. It was the first such a stressful week in a few months and I probably shouldn't complain, but it really took it out of me! The next six months - as we enter our busiest period and my team lose two members of staff - are going to be very intense and quite difficult, I think. I'm much better at coping with stress than I have been in the past - a big part of this is the fact that I am just happier and healthier overall - but there are definitely some challenging times ahead. I predict that sewing, shoe-shopping and gin-drinking will be needed to get me through it!

Anyway, that's the old life update out of the way, eh?! Now do you want to see a dress? So. The story with this dress is that a couple of weeks ago, Verity from Miss Gingers got in touch with me to say that she had been getting a lot of traffic from my post about my Green Ginger dress, which I had made from some beautiful Michael Miller fabric I bought from her store. Aaaah. I love that dress! And clearly so do some of you guys! Anyway, as a thank you she offered to send me my choice of fabric from her shop. It took me ages to choose some, because it seems like she and I have very similar taste in fabric! Eventually I went for the most Roisin-y fabric I could find, this Robert Kaufman Paris print cotton:

Mon Amie by Robert Kaufman*

YEAH I DID. I just can't stay away from fabrics with the Eiffel Tower on. As you can see from this image, the print also features the Arc de Triomphe and Notre-Dame. Sadly no Sacre-Coeur, but as there are lots of cute little houses and bicycles and cafe tables and suchlike, I was good with it. I spent a little time trying to figure out what to make with the fabric before deciding to go with the Sewaholic Cambie modification my lovely friend Lauren showed me - removing the waistband and only lining the bodice.

Sonja dress - modified Sewaholic Cambie dress worn with Vivienne Westwood for Melissa shoes

This modification was only a partial success. Removing the waistband definitely did help with the overall length of the bodice. I mean, well, duh. It does hit my natural waist now, and I don't miss the waistband at all. HOWEVER, and it's a big however - this dress is too big. I don't know whether I need to size down in the bodice or whether curving those under bust darts would fix this better, but that's kind of the biggest problem with this dress. Oh - and just so you know, I had made this before I posted the Dirty Dick dress, so I couldn't apply all of the good advice you all gave me to this dress.

This dress is wearable as it is, and I have worn it a couple of times since I made it a few weeks ago. The print kept me entertained during a particularly boring meeting at work.

It was a changeable day when we took these photos - this might give you a better idea of the fitting issues in the bodice

As it stands, I think this dress is a little unflattering on me. The excess fabric in the bodice makes me look a bit shapeless and although I experimented with adding a belt to hide that fact, I don't actually like wearing belts! I will take this dress apart and take it in, though, because I love the print and it would be a shame not to wear it. I mean. I have to. It has Eiffel Towers on it!

Making this dress, it occurred to me that my love of anything Eiffel Tower themed is very much like Sonja from I'm Alan Partridge's love of London. Don't worry, though. Nic doesn't have a static home filled with toy baguettes and teddy bears wearing breton tops and berets. But actually, there are a lot of similarities between me and Sonja. We both like to play practical jokes, we both like London and we both have occasionally stressful jobs. Sadly, despite intensive searching of the internet, I can't find ANY good Sonja gifs - which I find weird, because she's wonderful. So here I am instead, doing my best impression of Sonja laughing:

When I was finished laughing, I made Nic an egg in a bap. Needless to say, I had the last laugh that time.

Okay boys and girls. I have to go and build things out of lego with some small children. Seeing as I can't provide you with a Sonja gif, I'm going to leave you with an Alan gif party. You can thank me later.

Thank you so much for the fabric, Verity! I have put my heart in the back of a Paris love taxi and told driver to go to you.

Hola! What's happening, folks? I have had an enjoyable midweek day off today for no other reason other than I could, and it's been lovely. I slept late, had lunch in the park with Nic, went to the library, had a nap in the afternoon and had a shiny new pair of shoes delivered. I had a mild and slow-burning hangover as a result of a slightly boozy evening with Sally last night, but nothing enough to slow my roll. Excellent day off fun.

Well, anyway, that's basically the craic with me! Thank you to everyone who commented so encouragingly on my last post about my too-big Cambie dress. In a fit of energy on Monday afternoon, I took it apart and basted it way in at the side seams. I didn't touch the darts initially because I wanted to see if just taking it in up the side seams would work - and it did! So that dress is now wearable and totally cute. Hurrah! I think I need to think about how to make the Cambie work better on me - I do think that if I make it again I will need to look at the darts - but I'm glad to have found a quick fix for my dress because alterations are BORING.

I haven't taken photos of the altered dress, but that's okay because I have a brand spanking new dress to blog about this evening. Whoop whoop! I made this dress on August bank holiday Monday, when it was so rainy and dark that leaving the house wasn't on the cards at all. Actually, I'd had such a fun weekend what with the Jean-Paul Gaultier exhibition and everything that staying in the house was no big deal and it was very good to have a nice big block of sewing time. I got down to sewing one of the lengths of fabric I had bought that Saturday on Goldhawk Road with the girls. Yeah - that whole not buying much fabric thing really isn't working out amazingly well for me, is it?! I bought two metres of this insanely patterned cotton poplin in A1 Textiles for £4.50 per metre. A bargain for 100% cotton and 60 inches wide, right?

Er. Yeah. Basically this fabric needs to sit the fuck down. I know I have joked before about twee nightmares, and this is kind of it - flowers, bows, fucking polka dot bows, POM POMS... I think you can see why I had to have it. Janene remarked that she thought I must have some kind of radar for very me fabric, and maybe she is right. I love it because I mean, look at it.

Two metres is plenty for me to get a dress out of and because this fabric was nice and wide I had lots to play with, so I reached for Vogue V8998 once again. It's a bit more time-consuming to make because of the 7,000 skirt panels, but I think it's worth it. I like the pattern so much I'm tempted to buy its sister pattern, V8997.

Buttons and Bows dress - Vogue V8998 worn with Irregular Choice Windsor shoes*

Ha ha! Oh, I don't know why I look so unsure in this photo but I am really happy with how this dress turned out. Maybe the slight rabbit in the headlights expression is just because I have a fairly stupid face. Anyway, after I had put the bodice together I had to do a little bit of tweaking to the princess seams in the front - I needed to take the seams in a bit over the top of my bust because I was getting a weird armour-plated effect there. I also pinched a tiny bit out of the front neckline which gives it more of a tank-top shape than it did previously, but otherwise the alterations I made to the pattern when I first sewed it in June stayed the same.

Back view! I love the scoop back on this pattern, I think it is such a pretty feature and it's something I'm always a sucker for in sewing patterns. I know I go on about how I don't like photos of my back - and dudes, I seriously don't, because I look so stupid - but I don't hate my actual back.

Here I am looking thoughtfully off into the distance, thinking about how stupid my back looks... no, seriously, I was probably thinking about what we were going to be having for dinner.

The absolute riot of colours in the print means I could probably wear this dress with most of the shoes in my wardrobe - as well as all the reds and blues, there are also pinks and greens and even black in the mix. Still, both times I've worn this dress since making it, I have paired it with these lovely royal blue heels - I think it's maybe that I enjoy the whimsy of wearing a bow-printed dress with actual bows.

I am such a dick.

But you knew that anyway, didn't you?

Not too much else to say about this dress, really. Only that it's probably not suitable for eating a large meal in - that seamed skirt probably wouldn't have room for a big burrito, for example. But I'd imagine that it's very good for dancing in...

Let's all go to a... taco show!

Hey guys! I hope you're all having shiny happy Mondays. It's all good here because I have been working from home and the sun has been shining, and ALSO there's a cafe in town that makes Mars Bar muffins. To be honest, they're not as gooey as you might expect but that's no bad thing.

I've had a pretty good weekend. Nic was away in Amsterdam at a conference so I spent the weekend doing some of my favourite things: drinking gin, sewing, hanging out with Lauren, drinking prosecco and watching trashy TV. In fairness, the TV wasn't all trashy but I did watch basically 11 hours of Luther. I know I'm late to the show and it's mainly because I find Idris Elba's real accent (or at least, the British accent he is doing in the show) incredibly disconcerting. I like a good trashy cop show more than almost any other kind of TV show (see also my recent binge on the truly terrible Blue Bloods) and Luther ticked that box really well. It seemed really strange to me to begin with but that's partly because I had watched an episode and a half before I realised I had started watching the third series rather than the first one. Derp. Do I always pay 100% attention to what I am watching?

I think my favourite thing about Luther is the conversations that his colleagues have about him behind his back. Someone tells Saskia Reeves that Luther is 'nitroglycerine' - like, excellent dialogue there, dudes. I'm not ashamed to say I was heckling the laptop HE'S A MAVERICK COP GUYS OMG JUST DEAL WITH IT.

HE JUST HAS HIS OWN MORAL CODE OKAY.

Anyway, my weekend-long Luther obsession is really just holding me over until Wednesday, when the new series of Scott and Bailey starts. I found this out on Thursday when I was standing in line in the supermarket to buy pesto, and I did a little happy dance. Hurrah!

I guess Gill likes reading books about serial killers almost as much as I do...

So. That was my weekend. It's really just as well that I don't live alone, to be honest. As I said earlier, I did do a fair bit of sewing, which was really nice. I made two dresses and I altered three: including finally getting around to remaking my Lobsterlex dress. So I have some catching up to do on the blogging front! Here is a dress I made last weekend, when I had a fun sewing day with Sarah and Charlotte. We started with 'brunch'. I use the word advisedly, because we ate at 9am, which made that meal BREAKFAST, but whatever. Then we spent the whole day sewing and talking crap and watching TV. It was really good fun.

Don't Tell The Mean Girls dress - Christine Haynes Emery dress with a midi-length skirt, worn with Swedish hasbeens Mimmi sandals

Soooo. The story of this dress is that I bought just over two metres of this border print fabric from Barry's in Birmingham when Nic and I had our little day out last month. I was drawn to the Marimekko-style flowers in the print and was tickled by the border print itself. It runs from the left selvedge to the right with the flowers becoming bigger in each row. It's a reasonably weighty cotton - probably a poplin - and I think it was around £5 per metre.

This fabric was kind of challenging to work with. I had a very specific idea of how I wanted the print to look on the skirt and on the bodice and in order to achieve this, I had to cut the whole thing on the crosswise grain. I also had to make the skirt significantly longer than I'd usually go for - it was either that or cut through the flowers themselves. I guess I could have made the skirt shorter by omitting that first row of flowers but I must admit, I kind of like the midi length. It's a bit different.

Cutting the bodice on the crosswise grain might not have been the wisest move. to be honest. It - unsurprisingly - affected the fit in an annoying way. There's no stretch at all so the bodice is very close-fitting and I had to buy myself an extra fraction of an inch by moving the zip out a little bit. I don't know how it looks to you guys - maybe it looks horrendously tight - and it's certainly closer-fitting than I would necessarily like. Still, it's wearable and I like it.

Back view - you can see where it's pulling a bit across the back. I certainly won't be wearing this dress to go out to dinner, or to lounge around the house in. Do you like my unintentional pattern-matching across the back, though? Look at that instead of the wrinkling, yeah?

Often I find that I like fabric much better made up as a dress than I did on the bolt, and I have to be totally honest and tell you that's not the case with this dress. I do like it, but it didn't really live up to the vision I had for it in my head. But, you know. You win some, you lose some.

I got some awesome new shoes, though. Check it outttttttttt:

I bought them in the Swedish hasbeens sale and these were a pre-emptive strike. I ordered them the weekend before a shitty week, knowing that by Thursday I'd be in the market for a shoe-shaped pick-me-up, and it totally worked. They kind of look like old-lady driving gloves, but they're hella comfortable and I love the colour. And yay new shoes, right? I confess, though. My stressful week did result in the hasbeens sale taking another hit from me, but that's a story for another blog post.

Anyway lads, I'm away here. I have dinner to cook. I'll leave you with another Luther gif though because, while it's silly and everything, I'm only human and he is a very handsome man:

I like to think he's applauding his own extreme handsomeness here.

Happy Saturday everyone! I have to admit: I'm already in my pyjamas. Pyjamas and fleecy socks and a pair of sandals I'm trying to break in, and I have my glasses on. Nic asked me did I want to go outside and get some photos on the front step but I thought I'd spare you - and the people of Leamington - that particular delight. Still, though. I'm looking pretty smokin'.

Anyway. I don't have a lot of craic at all today. I've had a busy and pretty stressful week. I had a big work deadline to meet, but after I did I celebrated by going to Ikea and then having noodles. I know that makes my life sound really sad and maybe it actually is, but I bought some fabric in Ikea and the noodles were really good. I also had my first ever steamed custard bun and that kind of rocked my week. Yeah, I know, I need to get out more. Especially as the main excitement of my week was the new series of Scott and Bailey starting on Wednesday night. I'm trying to decide whether to recap the episodes again this year - I know a fair few of you guys are also into cop shows too, so I might. Let's see if I can find the time to do the screen caps, I guess!

No sewing this week but after my sewing binge last weekend and the weekend before, that seems fine. As well as making a few new dresses, I have also tackled some alterations, taking in a number of dresses and completely reconstructing one. I won't show you pictures of the ones I have taken in, but I am pleased with the refashion of a very special dress - the Lobsterlex dress:

Lobsterlex dress - By Hand London Elisalex dress worn with Atelier Scandinave sandals

Yaaay! My Lobsterlex dress is back in action. This was the second Elisalex dress I made, back at the start of 2013. I loved it then and wore it reasonably often but it's been packed away for over a year now because it was just too big. After the success of the refashion of the Feckin Birds dress, I sat down and took this apart. It sat in my sewing box for a couple of weeks - for some reason the idea of sitting down and re-sewing it was pretty unappealing - but I finally got around to it on Sunday evening, with a couple of episodes of Luther for company.

I recut the bodice using the Elisalex pattern pieces I have re-traced in the last few months. This wasn't a perfect solution because the lines of the pattern pieces are slightly different across sizes, but it worked pretty well. I didn't recut the skirt pieces - instead I took it in at the side seams and matched up the box pleats by eye. I also cut about four inches off the length of the skirt because while the midi length worked when the dress had sleeves, I thought it would look better now with a shorter skirt.

HOLY FAT FACE BATMAN!

I'm so glad to have this dress back in rotation, seriously. I mean, I get that a dress with giant lobster all over it isn't exactly a wardrobe staple. Especially one with a ridiculously exaggerated tulip skirt! I know that a lot of people really don't like the skirt that comes as part of the Elisalex pattern but I'm very fond of it. On this particular dress, I think it just adds nicely to the overall crazy effect. In addition - this fabric just makes me happy. I got it at a swap at a Birmingham meet-up at the end of 2012 - I think it came from Marie - so I just have all-round happy feelings associated with it.

I've been able to wear this dress in this little late-summer comeback we're having. I think it looks really cute with my gold sandals! It's not going to be all that wearable when the weather gets colder but I did finally invest in some orange shoes this week, so maybe I can keep this dress in rotation through October, anyway. You know me, though. I'll be holding onto bare legs for as long as I possibly can. I'll still be running around in these sandals until there is frost on the ground. HUSSY FEET!

Anyway lads, I'm kind of at a loss for things to say this evening. I suppose there's not a lot to say about a dress I have made twice. That's the other thing about alterations - as well as being boring to do, they're boring to blog about! Isn't it funny though how boring alterations are. I had this dress in pieces - basically no different to having a new project cut out and ready to sew - but I really dragged my feet over it. I suppose I find the allure of the shiny and new just too much to resist. Which, you know, goes some way towards explaining the contents of my shoe shelves.

So, it's Saturday evening and I have gin to drink so I'm going to leave it here. I'll see you guys next week, maybe with a very serious, academic review of Scott and Bailey.

Hey guys, happy Thursday! Ugh, this week has been a bit of a struggle, I'm not going to lie. I'm going to get straight in here with the complaining, right, get it over with in the first paragraph and then I'll be on to bright and shiny and pretty things. Do feel free to skip ahead, I won't mind. This week has been a struggle. For some unknown reason my mood took a major nosedive on Sunday afternoon - I'm talking actual tears when my laptop was slow to load an episode of Luther I wanted to watch. And I mean, Idris Elba is pretty and all but I'm not THAT into Luther. It was one of those attacks of the blues that September seems to be so generous about handing out. I have a work thing that is making me really anxious and it's kind of seeped into everything else! I finally got a handle on it today, and I'm still feeling jittery about it but a lot better.

Sorry to be vague-booking here, but it's not something I can talk about openly just at the moment. It's made this week crawl by, I've had a tension headache for what feels like forever - you know the drill. I broke my special short keyboard on Tuesday by spilling tea on it, which sucked because it meant my keyboard AND my tea got ruined, and I dealt with that stress by buying shoes. Then yesterday I went to the park after work with Nic and felt what I thought was a leaf or something fall into my dress. Got home, felt something squirming around and found a LIVE BEETLE. IN MY BRA. There are no words to describe how weird that was. The beetle was fine - I fished him out and Nic put him on the windowsill and he flew away. I was like this:

But, you know. My week can only get better from the moment when I retrieved a LIVE FUCKING INSECT FROM MY UNDERWEAR. Because, duh.

A LIVE INSECT.

Actually, let's be real here. I'm not cool Beek 2.0 - I'm this...

That will never stop being funny. Ever.

Anyway. Seriously the beetle bra thing did pick my week up and after that, I was feeling happy enough to sing along loudly to the theme tune to The OC. Our poor downstairs neighbours.

So that's the craic with my week. Thanks for indulging me there, lads. Now on to the dresses!

You might recall me saying a few posts back that I think I sorted out the fit on the Sewaholic Cambie dress. After lots of you guys weighed in with helpful advice on how to sort out the bodice fit, I gave it a go. I did a quick bodice toile and experimented with curving the darts under the bust and making them more...I guess, bullet-shaped? This is an alteration that Liz recommended to me when I first met her back in April, and it did the trick. I sewed the darts as drafted then pinched out the excess and redrew the darts. All good! Then I cut into some fabric that has been sitting in my stash for a while and got sewing.

Tammy 2 dress - Sewaholic Cambie dress with pleated skirt and Lola Ramona Angie shoes*

It's kind of hard to tell from the photo but curving the darts under the bust made a huge improvement to how the bodice fits. I omitted the waistband again because I think that works for me, and just for a change I used the skirt from Simplicity 1419. Because I LOVE THAT SHIZ. It's a really nice skirt pattern.

If the fabric looks familiar, it's because it is. I've used it before - in the Meta dress, which I sewed at the end of 2011. I used the pastel colourway that time, which I had bought from Barry's Fabrics in Birmingham. I loved that dress and wore it loads but it doesn't fit any more and I didn't feel up to altering it so I gave it to a friend. I've had this colourway of the fabric since the spring - I bought it from that online store that shall remain nameless, along with the sunflower fabric I used to make the At the Indie Disco dress.

Ba-da-ba-da-ba...DORP

So anyway, yeah. The fit is still not totally perfect, like. But I'm broadly happy with it. I might take a peep more out of the tops of the darts, but I might not. I want to see how it works with the sweetheart neckline that the pattern is drafted with.

You know what, though? I freaking LOVE this dress and I'm so happy with it. I think the bodice works brilliantly with the pleated skirt, which looks really cute with the measuring tape print of the fabric. And the fabric is SO fun. I wore this to work on a day when our statistician was in - she's usually based in Sheffield - and she was tickled with all the numbers. I have big meeting with her next week and she's one of my favourite work people, so I'm going to wear it to the meeting. I'm super cool like that.

BACK VIEW FOR THE WIN.

Woah, bright eyes, that's not a super invisible invisible zip, is it? Oh well, wevs. I like the way this dress fits through the back. And I like that one stubborn little flick of hair that would not just sit the fuck down. You go, stubborn little flick of hair. You do you.

So anyway. This dress is not perfect, but it was a nice pattern alteration to have a go at, and it was a quick win in terms of sewing. It's bright and cheerful and fun, and this fabric still makes me laugh, because it reminds me that this exists in the world:

LOOK HOW HAPPY HE IS. I like his little hat. I wonder where you get hats where the brim is at the back rather than the front. Does anyone know where they come from?

Oh no, hold on, I've worked it out...

Okay. I'm talking a lot of shite here so maybe I should tip on out. My friend Sybil gave me a bottle of Burleigh's gin as a gift yesterday, so I'm all set to put my Gin School lessons into practice and make me and Nic a perfect gin and tonic. I'm going to leave with one more picture of my dress because I love it. It's awkward as fuck, though.

Pigeon toes!

Oh, and I should say - this dress was totally inspired by one of my very favourite sewing bloggers, Anna from Paunnet. She made a Cambie from this fabric aaaaages ago, and it was gorgeous. Thanks for the inspiration, Anna! And regarding the name - well, I made this dress when Nic was away for the weekend and as well as chain-watching Luther, I chain-watched Parks and Recreation.

I want to be Tammy Swanson-Swanson when I grow up.

Hello all! Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a good weekend - I did. So good, in fact, that I spent all day yesterday in my pyjamas with a raging hangover. I came by it honestly, though, thanks to a lot of prosecco and gin on Saturday night with friends, and a living room disco until five in the morning. It has to be done sometimes and, after a stressful few weeks it was nice to cut loose. I had a bit of good news on Friday afternoon so I was ready to celebrate. I should know more next week and I can only hope for another hangover on the same scale!

So. If you're a reader of sewing blogs, I'm sure you're aware of the blog hop that's been going around about the writing process. I don't normally go in for blog hops, to be honest, but I have found every post I have read on this subject to be interesting. So when the hilarious Sue of A Colourful Canvas nominated me last week, I was happy to take part. Here goes!

Why do I write?
Honestly? I'm not totally sure! The existence of this blog predates my sewing. I'm not really a sewing blogger - for the first couple of years that I was blogging here, I was blogging about clothes I had bought. Before that I was just blogging about what I thought about stuff.

I BOUGHT this dress! It's from Cath Kidston and I bought it a few weeks ago. At one stage, I was only blogging stuff I bought but since I've been sewing that has felt increasingly weird. Anyway - I bought this dress because I thought it was cute. I rarely buy RTW clothes these days and when I do, it's usually because the print or shape is something I wouldn't be able to recreate myself. As it happens, fabric with this print is available to buy, but it's canvas rather than the soft barkcloth that this dress is made from. I like this dress a lot and have worn it a few times since I bought it. Oh and I'm wearing it with pink Swedish hasbeens heart sandals which are the cutest shoes I've bought in ages.

Before I had this blog, I had a blog on my university blog network that was mainly about me ragging on the PCGE course I was doing, talking about pop culture stuff and things that were going on in my life. When I think about it, I have always been a writer. As a small child I kept diaries and in my teens I was a letter-writer with lots of penpals. At school, my best friend Emma and I wrote each other hundreds of notes and letters and comic strips. I still have them all. I like to think that my cartoon drawings of our teachers, of Jim McDonald from Coronation Street (it's a long story) and ugly babies that look like potatoes predates my love of a well-timed gif. I write because I enjoy writing, and it's just a nice bonus that people like to read what I write.

What am I working on now?
I don't have anything on the go at the minute. As I basically exclusively sew cotton dresses, which don't take very long to sew, I don't usually have UFOs hanging around. I'm hoping to get some time to sew a fun dress this week as it's my birthday soon and I'd like to have something new to wear. But if I don't have time, it's no biggie. I have a lot of clothes. I do have a few dresses in the queue that I'd like to get to soon: a v-backed Emery dress with short sleeves, from some cute fabric I have with elephants on it; a By Hand London Holly dress from some beautiful silk that was a gift from a friend; a Blue Gingerdoll Billie Jean dress, for which I haven't chosen the fabric yet and another Emery dress in some cute fox-print poplin I bought in Barry's a few months ago. I always have lots of ideas - I just lack the time to execute them! I also have a bit of a blogging backlog. For instance - I just never got around to blogging this Anna dress I made months ago:

Birdie Loon dress - this is an Anna dress with a gathered skirt made from Cloud 9 fabric from Berylune. I made (and photographed) this months ago - maybe in April? Anyway, it was a little bit too big when I made it and it's bigger again now, and the moment for blogging it just seemed to pass. It's shame though, because it's very cute. I love the colours and the print, which looks abstract from a distance. I'm wearing it here with Topshop wedges, Hell Bunny cardigan and green Zatchels satchel.

How does my blog differ from other sewing blogs?
Ha ha! Okay, it mainly differs from other sewing blogs in as much as it's not really a sewing blog. Yeah, sewing is what I mainly write about these days, because it's how I spend most of my free time. Also, it's what most of my readers come for, I think - so it's why I have mostly stopped blogging about stuff I have bought. Well, that and the fact that these days I mostly wear things I have made myself. My blog is not really a sewing blog. I don't do tutorials, I rarely show you the inside of my garments - hey, once you've seen one nicely-finished seam, you've seen them all, right? - I have ZERO interest in writing a sewing book or being sponsored by a fabric store or setting up my own pattern company. I don't want to sew for a living, and I don't want to quit my day job to be a blogger. And, I've got to be honest, here, those aren't the blogs (or at least, the blog posts) that I like to read.

I sew because I love pretty clothes and I like learning new things, and I write about it...well, for the reasons I outlined above. I do write a bit about construction and I'll describe any fitting challenges I have had, but that's as technical as I'm apt to get. It's not to say that I dislike reading very detailed posts about construction or whatever, but that's not what my blog is about. I also like to write about what's going on in my life. I do get quite personal on here and I like other blogs that have a personal face. You all saw my handmade wedding dress, but I wrote a lot more about the wedding than I did about making the dress. This blog is about me. Sewing is just a part of that. I'm not going to lie: there are times when I have worried that I'm not serious enough about sewing, and that people out there might be judging me for being a frivolous, shit-at-sewing, no-overlocker-having basic bitch.

But then I remind myself that, you know. Whatever. I like it here. That's the main thing.

Another picture of the Birdie Loon dress - I feel guilty for never blogging it.

How does my writing process work?
Writing process is maybe a grand way of describing it, to be honest. I don't have as much time for blogging now as I used to. When I get the chance, I try to draft a blog post on paper or in an an email draft. I usually have a couple of posts worth of material waiting to be blogged, which means that even if I am too busy (or ill, or whatever) to sew or get out and about, I have stuff to write about. Since Scott and Bailey has been back on TV I've been trying to carve out some time to write about that, because I love writing about TV but sadly, it's looking unlikely that I'll have the time to do that. Maybe I'll do a whole-series recap at the end. Anyway - yeah, then after that, it's just a case of sitting down and writing. It usually helps if I've been out and done something fun because, to be honest, I find just writing about sewing to be pretty dry. I like having news to share and stupid jokes to crack. One of the reasons why I'm not interested in being in a sewing store network or trying to write a book or anything like that is that I really value not having to have a system, here. I really value being able to write on my own schedule, and write about whatever the fuck I want.

Here's me with a pizza I made in April. This is the only time you'll see something I have cooked on this blog, I swear. Even here, I didn't make the dough, like. I just rolled that shit out and threw a few toppings on it. It was tasty, though.

Anyway, that's the craic there. Thanks so much, Sue, for nominating me! Part of this process is I'm meant to nominate two other bloggers but this hop has been hopping around for a while so I'm going to take the coward's way out and throw this open to anyone who wants to answer those questions.

Anyway, I'm going to leave it here for the evening. I have a ton of ironing to do and dinner to make, and I think I might even be recovered enough from that epic hangover to chance having a cocktail with dinner.

...or maybe I'll stick to water for now.

Afternoon, all! It's been a hectic week here at Clackett Mansions. Work has been extremely busy - I've been in non-stop meetings, or at least it feels like it, since the dawn of time. I think actual time was really just Wednesday and Thursday, but time moves more slowly in the office, doesn't it?! It's been a good week, though. Work was good - the long meetings were the culmination of a couple of weeks of really intense work, and they went really well. It's satisfying to me to see how much I have learned in the fifteen months since I changed jobs. I'm still getting used to feeling good about work, and although things are about to get really crazy (and will stay that way until around about next May) I feel okay about it. So: yay!

Also, it was my birthday this week and I had a very lovely day. I had to be in work, but Nic got my day off to a good start by waking me up with tea, birthday cake and my birthday present. After work, I went to the pub with friends and then we went for dinner. And I had Friday off work, and went for Business Lunch at Kayal. Really, what could be better than that?! I did try to sew a special birthday dress but I was short on time, and the dress I started ended up being kind of a disaster (never sew while extremely tired, kids!) so I binned it. Ah well. You win some, you lose some. I wore my Buttons and Bows dress instead, and felt awesome in it.

So anyway, that's the craic with me this week. It's been really good and I have high hopes for next week, too. I have a big work thing on Monday which could be exciting if it goes well, and then I have a short week/long weekend ahead of me in which I'm off home to visit my family. I even have a day to myself, which is going to be a nice indulgent sewing day. Oh, and I'm expecting to get some shoes in the post as well. It's a good week if it includes a shoe delivery, right?

As usual, I have a dress to blog about today. Another Emery dress, because duh. I think we're all going to just have to be real here and acknowledge the fact that probably every other blog post is going to be about an Emery dress.

I bought the fabric for this dress when I met some sewing friends in London to go to the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition at the Barbican. As ever, I went to Goldhawk Road fully intending NOT to buy fabric and yeah. That didn't work out. But basically, Classic Textiles had a Liberty lawn I've had my eye on for a while, so I bought 1.5 metres of it and went for it.

Half-Cut, Wholly Yours dress - Christine Haynes Emery dress in Liberty 'Jack and Charlie' tana lawn, worn with Irregular Choice Hello Ha shoes*

There's not too much to say here, except that I probably shouldn't have been so tight and bought two metres instead of a metre and a half because this dress is definitely shorter than I would usually go for. Ah anyway, it's fine. Because I know we're all so desperate to get into our OMGTIGHTS and I think this length will work with tights when it gets colder.

I do love this print, which is a series of pears. What I like less is that it was part of some sort of collaboration between Jamie Oliver and Liberty and I find Jamie Oliver almost unbearably irritating. It's nothing personal, Jamie. I find that to be the case with almost everyone on TV, because I'm very easily irritated and it's why I don't have a TV. And he's a lot LESS irritating than Gordon Ramsay, or anyone involved with the Great British Bake Off (I swear, Sue Perkins' voice actually raises my blood pressure) Sigh. But anyway, I like the print and I like the fabric a lot.

You can see the pears closer up here. Jamie Oliver notwithstanding, I really do like this print a lot, and I love the variety of colours in there. It means I can wear this dress with basically all of my cardigans, which is a good thing when you work in an air-conditioned office. Also. I think that Liberty lawn and the Emery dress are a good match so there will certainly be more of these, provided I can continue to find bargain Liberty prints at Classic Textiles or elsewhere. At full price, lovely as it is, it's a bit too rich for my blood.

Here's one more picture because why not.

It's really nice having a couple of go-to patterns that fit me well and which are in a style I like. I appreciate that it might not make for the most exciting blogging, but I'm fine with that. I like the fact that I can sew (and nicely finish) an Emery dress in a few hours and have a dress that fits me and that I like to wear and that I feel good in. I have a special one made all ready for my big work thing next week, too.

So, that's the craic there anyway. I sort of feel like I should have a jazzier blog post this afternoon because this is my 500th blog post! 500 posts. God, you'd think I'd have better things to be at with my time. Not to get all reflective on you all - especially after the last, navel-gazing why do I blog post, but 500 posts is a nice milestone to have reached. Blogging here has meant so much to me in the time I've been doing it. It's been a diary, a space for catharsis, a creative outlet and a wonderful, wonderful way to make friends. Even if it is a weird thing to do, when you think about it. So to all of you who have been reading - either more recently, or over entire 500 posts of nonsense, thank you! To celebrate, I might go and crack into some of my birthday presents. My friends know me well and among my gifts were a bottle of champagne, a bottle of red wine and a bottle of Scottish gin.

Cheers!

I don't even like Will and Grace. But Karen is the best.

Hello hello! What's up, pups? I'm rattling through this week and after I finish for the day tomorrow I have a little bit of time off, hurrah!

I've been having a good week for a number of reasons but probably one of the best ones is that I had a job interview on Monday for a promotion in my department and I got it. YEAH BOI. Interviewing for an internal job is really stressful - it's very weird being interviewed by your colleagues, and especially so when you know that if you don't get the job, you have to keep on working with these people. I've been there, and that sucks. That sucks hairy balls. The interview was nerve-wracking as fuck so when I heard that I'd been successful I was more exhausted and relieved than anything else. Anyway, by now I'm feeling more like:

Tell me there isn't a Ron Swanson gif for every occasion and I will laugh in your face

Anyway - it's been a busy week at work so I haven't really got around to celebrating but I plan to tonight and over the weekend. I have a bottle of champagne in the fridge and everything. I've worked really hard over the last year and a half in this job and have learned so much and it feels really good to know that I'm good at my job, and to be rewarded for it. I mean yeah: I'm going to be doing plenty of crabbing over the next few months when work is really busy, but you know. That's always the way.

So that is the craic with me this week. AND I have a new dress to show you as well! I made this dress a few weeks ago when Nic was in Amsterdam at a conference - if you read this blog regularly you might remember that weekend I had a sewing, gin and watching Luther binge. Ah. Good times. Anyway, I can't remember the exact circumstances around making this dress but the story of it is, I saw the fabric in the haberdashery department in House of Fraser in Birmingham. Annoyingly, they were selling a knitting bag made from it but not the fabric itself but this was enough to convince me that I needed it in my life:

The Fox and The Houndstooth by Andie Hanna for Robert Kaufman fabrics

I had seen this print in various online fabric shops but it took seeing it in real life to make me really want it. I love this combination of colours and the little foxes have the CUTEST faces. I ended up buying it from Fabric Inspirations - this isn't an affiliate link, but they're absolutely brilliant. They have a fab range, great prices and I've never been unhappy with an order from them.

So anyway, given the cuteness of the foxes I had to make a similarly cute dress from it. And WHOMP, THERE IT IS:

Tommy Timberlake dress - By Hand London Flora dress with a gathered skirt, worn with Swedish hasbeens heart sandals in red

This isn't the dress I intended to make, really. I had been thinking about making another Flora dress with a pleated skirt, and maybe using the skirt pieces from Simplicity 1419 again. Something about this print resisted that, though. Maybe it was the thought of folding those little foxy faces into pleats that prevented me, I don't know.

I do think the potential downside to gathering the skirt on this dress is that - well, it really does look like an adult-sized version of a little girl's party dress. It does. Less so on my body than on the hanger, in fairness. But yeah. This is a childish dress. I don't shy away from that and it doesn't make me dislike the dress. I recognise that I am lucky enough to work somewhere in which a dress with a print like this is totally acceptable attire. Dressing in this way hasn't prevented me from progressing in my career, as this week has proven. So, essentially, I'm good with it.

Excellent advice there, Joe.

The bodice and a slight case of crazy face

In terms of the Flora pattern - since making and wearing this dress I've realised I need to make a couple of minor adjustments to the next one I make. Namely, curving those waist darts slightly to address the slight wrinkling you see under the bust there. But otherwise, I am really delighted with this dress and I will be adding a gathered skirt to the Flora bodice again. I think it's pretty cute.

I wore this dress on Sunday. Nic and I had breakfast with friends and then went for a walk in the fields to the Saxon Mill. I can't believe how lovely the weather has been and it's just as well, really. I've been on a sandals-buying binge all summer and I want to keep wearing them for as long as possible. I've amassed quite the collection of Swedish hasbeens clogs and I have another pair on their way to me as we speak (hey, I had to buy a celebratory pair of Promotion Shoes, right?)

Red peep-toe sandals: always a classic!

Every time I post a picture of my Swedish hasbeens on instagram, I get questions asking me if they are comfortable. It's always hard to say whether a pair of shoes is comfortable but I do find these shoes comfortable once they've been broken in. The wooden sole takes a bit of getting used to because it's totally inflexible and also the leather can be quite stiff. These red heart sandals took a fair few wears to break in but the same pair in pink were comfortable and soft from the word go. So, it varies. Cici Marie wrote a nice little post about how to break them in, if you're curious. Anyway, I know it's autumn now so this is probably totally irrelevant to most of us in the Northern Hemisphere - but still. I fully intend to wear these with tights as the weather gets colder.

Derp face out-take for my girl Heather B. I don't even know what I was doing here. I mean, apart from looking MAJORLY HOT, obviously.

So anyway. That's the craic there with my dress. The weekend I made it, as well as binge-watching Luther, I binge-watched Parks and Recreation. Ah that show makes me happy. The little foxes on the print reminded me so much of Tom Haverford, he had to get a shout-out in the name.

There's one fox wearing an argyle sweater:

There's one fox wearing a bow-tie:

There's one fox wearing a hat:

And there's one little fox wearing a fedora and a waistcoat...

So, on the advice of Tommy Timberlake and the Regal Meagle, I'm away here to drink champagne and eat cake.

Hellllooo! I guess it's only been a week since I last posted but it feels longer, probably because it included a little mini holiday to visit my family in Northern Ireland. We were only home for a long weekend but managed to fit so much in - it was wonderful. It was my nephew Fionn's first birthday and my other baby nephew, Joe (who will be one next month) walked for the first time. This was really exciting because we were there to see it - my mum looks after him during the week while my sister is at work, so we were there when it happened. We had lunch with my sister in her new house, dinner with my aunt and I even had time to fit in a little bit of fabric shopping in Belfast with Kerry from Kestrel Makes - who happened to be visiting her family at the same time.

Being at home while Joe was there was pretty intense. He's an incredibly active baby - he never stops moving - and he's very funny and charming. It was wonderful and exhausting and emotional. It was very emotional and I got a bit teary on the flight back to Birmingham - because I'm not sure when I'll next be home, I know the baby I got to know so well over the last few days will be very different! It was emotional also because I don't want to have children of my own. Spending so much time with Joe (and the shorter time we got to spend with Fionn) hasn't changed that - if anything, it's made me more sure that it's not for me - but it also made me really realise what I will miss. I'll get lots of the good stuff by being an aunty, though, so it's not a sad feeling - it just felt like pretty grown-up thoughts. Still - if having grown-up thoughts gets the fucking Iggle Piggle song out of my head, it's all good. Because seriously, how do you parents cope with that and Balamory and all the rest of it?!

So anyway, that's the craic there. I had yesterday off work - and I spent it in a very domesticated fashion by cleaning, cooking and sewing - and then it was back to work with a bit of a bump today. It's all good though - I finally got my letter from HR confirming my promotion (email from Nic about the delay said, "I imagine it's like the Vatican in Father Ted over there" and he's not wrong) and, you know, it's nearly the weekend. And here's a wee new dress to blog about too! It's taken me long enough to get to it, right?

This dress is the result of some pattern testing I did recently for By Hand London. Victoria emailed and asked would I be interested in testing the Sabrina dress, which is a new pattern that's available in PDF only. Now, I've got to tell you. I am not a fan of PDF patterns. At all. I mean - I get that they are convenient for a lot of reasons, I do. But, god. I REALLY hate taping those fuckers together. Like, seriously. I bought the Sinbad and Sailor Hepworth dress a couple of weeks ago and haven't even printed it out yet, that's how much I hate doing it. So I can't compare the PDF experience here against other PDF patterns because I avoid them. This one was fine - I received it already printed out, and I guess taping it together wasn't all bad. It was pretty easy. I still bitched about it to Nic while I was doing it, though.

The Sabrina dress comes with two variations. One is a strappy, princess seamed dress which buttons down the front. It's cute, if that's your thing, and it's very now as the 90s are back in again. It really called to mind that fashion of wearing strappy baby-doll dresses over t-shirts:

It looks great on Alicia Silverstone here - man, what doesn't - but it's not very me. So I went for the other variation, which is a princess-seamed a-line dress.

As I was testing, I sewed the dress according to my measurements and, initially, without any fit modifications. I cut the size 10, which is grand around the hips and waist, but I ended up going back and taking the princess seams in substantially around the bust. So when I sew this again, I'll cut an 8 at the bodice and grade out to a 10 elsewhere.

Thelma dress - By Hand London Sabrina dress and Swedish hasbeens heart sandals

The fit on this dress is far from perfect. I forgot to get photos of the back but there's a little bit of gaping at the back neckline and I have some fabric pooling at the lower back - which I'm not really sure how to fix on a dress that doesn't have a waist seam. By Hand London are going to be running a Sabrina sew along so hopefully this is one of the fit adjustments they'll cover. The day I had these photos taken I was a little bit bloated - it was a VERY indulgent weekend - so it looks tighter around the waist than it really is on a normal day. But I think that the princess seams allow for lots of tinkering with fit, even for a fairly lazy fitter like me, so I'm confident that I can make this work.

Here's an arty close-up of the bodice. I'm pretending to pick plums. DISCLAIMER: I didn't pick any plums, although I did pick an apple from another tree the following day. You can see I could probably do with taking some width out of the neckline too, but that's no biggie. If the fabric looks familiar it's because I already have a dress made from this cute star-print Ankara - the Bedelia dress. I had 5 metres of it, so more than enough for two dresses!

Do you like my background props? There's a blue bucket in one photo and this barrel in the other. That was totally intentional and very significant. Also, I think this might be the worst and most goofy photo of me ever, which is why I felt the need to include it.

I wasn't overwhelmed with love for this dress when I finished it, I must admit - mainly because I still have some way to go on the fit and also, it didn't look amazing on the hanger. I do like it on, though - I wore it on Sunday to go for lunch and to my nephew's birthday party (see comment above about indulgent eating!) and it was comfortable and I felt cute in it all day. I like the a-line shape, which is a bit different to my usual full-skirted silhouette. I like the above-the-knee length and I think this dress will work as the weather grows colder. It'll look good with tights, I think. And I have plenty of pink shoes. I have some pink tights squirrelled away somewhere that will make me look like some sort of mad lollipop when it gets colder.

So that's the craic with the Sabrina dress. It's not an unqualified success - I'm thinking of this as more of a wearable toile. There's definitely potential there, I think. I enjoyed pattern testing this dress, also. The turnaround was quick and - well, I've already told you about the crabbing I did about PDF patterns in general. I like slowing down and thinking about sewing in a slightly different way and although the turnaround time was reasonably short, the deadline didn't stress me out. I wasn't asked to blog about this dress or promote the pattern in any way - but hey, it's a finished object and I like it, so there it is.

Now, I have dinner to make and things to do so I'm away here. I'll catch you guys soon!

Oh! What's up? It's all good here: cold and wet, and I have a cold. Only a head cold, and not enough to keep me off work, but certainly enough to make me feel utterly wretched. And then last night, Nic and I watched the episode of Fringe called 'Bound', in which people are infected with giant, slug-shaped cold virus monster things...

Lol NOPE

So yeah, that's been my week so far. Ah it's all good, though. I had a lovely weekend, and things are good. It's only a cold and not - I hope - giant spiky cold virus slug things. Winning, right?

The rain has been relentless, so here are some photos from the weekend before last, when the sun was shining and Nic and I were in Northern Ireland. On the Saturday, we took the bus to Belfast for a potter around the city and so that I could catch up with Kerry. One of our favourite things to do in Belfast is to have a walk in the Botanic Gardens, so I took the opportunity to have some photos taken of a recent sewing project.

The Palm House, Belfast

A few weeks ago, after I had heard from employee services that I had been invited to interview for a promotion, I decided to make a dress to wear to the interview. Also, sewing helped take my mind off the stress of preparing for the interview! I had some beautiful fabric in my stash, which coincidentally I had bought with a voucher I had won at work. I had enough to make an Emery dress, and that's what I felt like sewing.

Japanese Whispers dress worn with blue Swedish hasbeens heart sandals

The fabric is 'Japanese Chrysanthemums' by Philip Jacobs for Westminster Fabrics, and I bought it in House of Fraser in Birmingham. It was on the sale table for £7 a metre, and it was such a bargain! I suppose technically it's a quilting cotton, but it has the hand and weight of a lawn. It's really beautiful quality and I will be looking closely at any other Westminster Fabrics cottons I come across.

Anyway - not too much to say about the sewing of this dress. I didn't do anything different to any of my other hundred and seventy three Emery dresses but the fit is a bit different in the upper part of the bodice here, for some reason. It's nothing major, and it's down to the fabric as much as anything else, I think.

BRB BEING ALL SERIOUS HERE

Because of the scale of the print, it was kind of impossible to avoid getting Chrysanthemum Boobs. On the plus side, I may have found a new twitter handle! I love the print and the colours, and although I bought this fabric just because it was there, on sale and I had a voucher, I really love the finished dress. It was a good one to wear to my interview - a bit more subdued than my usual dresses, but still colourful and smart.

Back dorp! I was pretending to walk here. I mean, I was ACTUALLY walking, but I was still pretending to? Blogging is fucking weird, when you think about it. But do you like my pattern matching across the back? YEAH BOI.

Anyway, that's the craic with the dress. It's another one that I'm sure I'll wear a fair bit when it gets (even) colder as it'll look grand with tights. That's about as far as I get with planning an autumn wardrobe, I'm afraid. Oh well. It's nice looking at these photos of a sunny day and remembering actual sun. Not that I'm melodramatic or anything.

Nic was feeling quite inspired by the lovely backdrop of the Palm House - which is a beautiful Victorian building. It's obviously on a much smaller scale than the one in Kew but it was built by the same iron-worker, Richard Turner. The above photos were taken in one of the smaller rooms and to the right of the pictures, although you can't see them, are banks of ornamental chilli plants. Anyway, apologies for the picture spam but fuck it, here goes:

Do you like those weird little Silurian-looking plants? Because it's not clear if I do.

Here I am, looking thoughtful on a chair. As you do.

My T-rex arms are too short to do selfies. I need to get one of those selfie stick things, or carry Nic with me at all times when I want to take a selfie.

Aye, it was sunny in Belfast last Saturday but it was still Belfast: BLOODY WINDY. So I wore this jacket, which was my birthday present from Nic. And eyes closed, because I didn't think I'd need to bring sunglasses back home with me. In fairness, I didn't. This was a few hours of sunshine in an otherwise rainy weekend.

I'm not in this one! I took this photo of the Albert Clock and one of either Samson or Goliath (I don't know which) and then I went to drink gin in the Spaniard. According to Odd Man Out, you can see the Albert Clock from ANYWHERE IN BELFAST. That's totally how it works.

Anyway - that's the craic from me for tonight. I'm taking my sniffly ass to bed. Stay cosy, boys and girls!

Hello! It's Sunday of another week that has kind of managed to get away from me. It's been a funny week: I've had a horrible cold for the whole week, which is showing no signs of shifting. I've had a busy work week, public transport issues and I fell down the stairs on Thursday and hurt my arm. A colleague who I don't see very often asked me on Tuesday if I was pregnant and, when I said no, continued, "Are you sure?" Which, you know, didn't upset me as such - I laughed it off - but it was far from my favourite interaction of the week. So I've been sore and sniffly and presumably looking like I'm smuggling a baby bump. NOT THE BEST.

On the plus side for this week was lunch with my friend Lucy, buying some fabric, a dress and some silk pyjamas (excellent for going to bed in the afternoon to read John Wyndham novels when you're feeling snotty) and two good nights out this weekend. So I think it has all balanced out, even if my arm is still sore.

Today I'm going to show you a little dress I made last week. I'm still tinkering with lowering the back neckline of the Emery dress and, after getting there with the Lotus Bleu dress, I decided to try adding sleeves. I was given three metres of this lovely elephant print cotton, so away I went...

Three Graces dress - modified Christine Haynes Emery dress in Timeless Treasures 'Mini Elephants' fabric*, worn with Irregular Choice 'Fairies in a Jar' shoes

Awww maaaan, I look super goofy in these photos! But basically - yeah, this is another Emery dress with a circle skirt and a lowered back. The fabric is really cute and, while I don't often sew with black, it appealed to me as potentially a good wintery fabric. I wore my now too-big One Good Turn dress constantly throughout the winter I made it - it looked great with red tights, pink tights, black tights, blue tights - and I think the multi-coloured print of this dress is going to do the same thing.

Bodice view - ignore my silly face and look at the leeetle elephants. They're cute, aren't they?

I saw my aunty M when I was at home a few weeks ago. She'd just come back from holiday and was telling me that she had bought an elephant ornament as a souvenir. Apparently they represent good luck if their trunks are pointing upwards. Well, I haven't checked every single one of the elephants on this print, like, but the ones I can see have their trunks pointing upwards to I'm taking that as a good sign.

Elephants are also significant to my adopted home-town of Leamington Spa - the Victorian elephant trainer Sam Lockhart lived in Leamington along with his troupe of elephants. The most well-known of these were the Three Graces: Wilhelmina, Haddie and Trilby. It's unverified local folklore that the elephants could frequently be seen walking on the parade and being bathed in the River Leam but whatever the truth of the story, it's a charming myth that is attached to the town. The elephants have even been commemorated in various ways - there's a Wilhelmina Close on Warwick Road, a sculpture of the elephants in Jephson Gardens and a truly horrible painting of them in the covered walkway at the railway station (that painting isn't even the worst of the ones there. I love them.) There's also a fantastic bakery on Regent Street named after Haddie and Trilby which, while not my favourite bakery in Leamington, does do an incredible sourdough pizza.

OMG never mind my back, my bum looks fucking HUGE in this photo. Ah, circle skirts. Thanks. (I actually have quite a small bum) But anyway, there's the dropped back. I'm pretty happy with it! Of course I didn't try to pattern match these millions of elephants. Ain't nobody got time for that.

It's shameful how little I have worn these shoes since I bought them like, last May? In my defence, black velvet shoes with pink ribbons are kind of hard to wear, but anyway, I thought they went pretty well with this dress. So, basically: success!

So anyway, that is the craic with this dress, and with life at the moment. I think this coming week is going to be similarly busy but hopefully without the injuries and delays of last week. And maybe this cold will take the hint and push off, as well. I can but hope.

Hola people, happy Friday! I hope everyone has been having a good week. This week has been pretty full-on for me at work, and until last night I was suffering from insomnia as well. I was working from home today and managed to sleep for ten hours last night (going to bed at 9:30 woot woot) so this week I've been too tired to do much of anything, basically.

Although my new job doesn't officially start until next week, I've unofficially been doing it for some time and I'm still getting used to the change. I have additional responsibilities, which I was prepared for, but actually the biggest shift for me has been the mental shift into the new job. I'm pretty conscientious at work anyway, but I've really been feeling the pressure from within to not only get things right, but to get them REALLY right. It's my inner overachiever, I guess. That bitch keeps her mouth well shut when it comes to sewing, but she never shuts up about work matters!

Thankfully, towards the end of the week I started to feel like I had a better grip on what I need to get done over the next few months so I was able to start sleeping better and feel more confident. I haven't managed to do any sewing this week but I have a lovely clear weekend ahead of me and two exciting sewing projects to get cracking on so it's all good. It'll mainly be nice to have time to think about something other than work, you know?

Anyway, that's the craic there. And I do have a dress to blog about today - well, because I usually blog when I have a new dress to show off. I made this dress before the craziness of this week hit, using some fabric I bought in Belfast when I had a few hours of fabric shopping with Kestrel Makes. Belfast city centre has two fabric shops, but we both ended up buying fabric in the Cath Kidston store. There is actually a Cath Kidston store in Leamington, but it doesn't sell fabric, so I felt a little less bad buying something so generic as a sort of holiday souvenir! The fabric I bought is described as 'cotton duck' and the print is called 'Camden' - I don't think it's available to buy online, but if you have a local store that stocks fabric you might be able to get some.

So anyway. Cath Kidston seems to use the term 'cotton duck' in a fairly generic way to describe their slightly heavier weight cotton canvas. That's just a word of warning that they're not all created equal. The Camden print is a medium weight canvas and, while I'm sure it's not really designed for garments, it worked just fine here.

Nancy Spain dress - By Hand London Elisalex bodice with skirt from Simplicity 1419, worn with Irregular Choice 'Can't Touch This' heels*

This dress was extremely simple to put together. It's basically my favourite bodice pattern - the princess-seamed bodice from the Elisalex dress - attached to the pleated skirt from Simplicity 1419. And because this print isn't directional and the fabric is 150cm wide, I was able to get this dress out of a metre of fabric. BOOM. Just as well, really. Cath Kidston fabric is pretty but very overpriced at £20 a metre.

Bodice view - so you can see the print more clearly

I spent a bit of time in the shop dithering over whether to buy this, the train print or the London bus print fabric. In the end, this won out because the print is so loud! (Spoiler: I did subsequently buy some of the London bus fabric) It feels very 60s to me, and it's a bit unlike the more typical ditsy floral that Cath Kidston is known for. The label said that this fabric could shrink by up to 5% so I made extra sure to pre-wash it before sewing with it. This is something I always do anyway - it's habit now, more than anything else- but with anything that seems to be loosely woven it's a really good idea. As it happens, I don't know if this shrank at all but washing it did make it a bit softer and more pleasant to sew with.

Nic posed me like this. I'm not sure why and I'm not sure if I like it. But this is what I look like, standing like this!

I really like the skirt pattern from Simplicity 1419. The pleats to one side are flattering and it's somewhere between a-line and full, so I think it's a very pretty silhouette. The fact that the pleats don't go the whole way across the skirt made it easy to match up with the bodice of the Elisalex dress. The measurements were roughly the same, but the pleats gave me a little bit of freedom to fit the skirt and bodice together neatly, and to line the pleats up with the bodice seams. I'm really pleased with how this dress turned out - I love how much the weight of the fabric makes the skirt stick out. I'm a child that way, I guess.

Here's the back view. You can see some wrinkles in the bodice which Nic tells me aren't there in real life. He might just be telling me that. Either way, the dress is close-fitting but it doesn't feel tight! Anyway - I know people like to see the back view of handmade dresses, and this way you can see the lucite heels on some of my favourite Irregular Choice shoes too!

I didn't take any photos of the innards of this dress but, just so you know, the bodice is lined but the skirt is not. I turned and stitched the skirt seams and I finished the hem using bias binding - once I tried on the dress to decide on the length I liked the skirt length so much that I didn't want to lose any of it.

At my surprise hen do in May, I ended up drunkenly gushing to Elisalex about how much I love the bodices of both the Elisalex and the Anna dress. She very tolerantly listened to me - because it's fucking obvious. It's why I have used them both so many times with so many different skirts! Hm, in fact, this is reminding me that I haven't sewed an Anna dress in a while... anyway, with that in mind, I'm entering this dress into their current competition - the Pattern Hackathon. Why not, right?!

I'm going to leave you with one more totally gratuitous photo, because I think this dress is really cute. Then I'm going to eat a bit of cake and make dinner. Tonight Nic and I are going to a friend's house to watch The Crow. Nic has never seen it and I haven't seen it since I was a teenager. I hope it'll stand up to a rewatch - wannabe Goth teenager Roisin fucking LOVED that film!

I wore this dress with one of my many Hell Bunny cardigans. Cardigans by a brand called "Hell Bunny" - basically all that remains of the little mini-Goth I was a teenager.

I know legit goths didn't listen to The Cure, but that's why I was merely a wannabe. Don't care though. I still have a crush on Robert Smith in the 80s.

YO! It's FRIDAAAAAY! This has been one seriously long and stressful week so I am super pumped that it's finally the weekend, and finally payday. I guess someone (not me) bought too many pairs of shoes this month. So that is the craic there. This week has been pretty stressful, due entirely to some totally unnecessary work nonsense. Ugh. Not from my colleagues, but from a contractor - which makes it kind of worse. Anyway, I'll stop complaining because it's Friday now. YES.

In fairness, the week hasn't all been bad. I managed to sneak in a bit of sewing during the evenings, making my sister some bunting and making a second By Hand London Kim dress - I liked the dress I sewed to test the pattern so much I immediately wanted to make a second one. I will blog both of those once the pattern has been released, which is slated for the end of November. If you want to get a look at what the pattern looks like before then, the girls are running a pre-sale at the moment. I haven't been asked to mention that, or been compensated for mentioning it - it's just a very pretty pattern that some of you may enjoy!

This post is going to sound like a big By Hand London fangirl squee, I guess, because I'm going to show you another Elisalex dress I made recently. But I can deal if you can: I like this pattern a lot! As I mentioned in my last post, after buying the Cath Kidston 'Camden' cotton in Belfast, I decided to order a metre of the London buses fabric online the following week. Annoyingly, it's a very different beast ordering fabric online from Cath Kidston - the metre I bought wasn't very well cut and I ended up slightly short. No biggie, but it's definitely one benefit to buying it in the shop if you can. In addition, although both fabrics are listed as 'Cotton Duck', they're very different. The London buses cotton isn't nearly as suitable for dressmaking as the Camden cotton - it's much, much more loosely woven and it frayed like a bitch. Still - I think the end result is pretty cute:

83 Piccadilly dress - By Hand London Elisalex dress, worn with Irregular Choice 'No Place Like Home' heels

I made another Elisalex dress, this time with the pattern's box-pleated tulip skirt. That skirt works really well with this weight of fabric - or at least, it should. This fabric had slightly less body than I was expecting, especially after I had pre-washed it. But anyway, it does hold the shape of the skirt pretty well.

So, this dress wasn't super fun to make. As I said, the fabric really frayed when I was working with it and I was kind of irritated that it was (in my opinion, anyway) of so much lower quality than the other Cath Kidston fabrics I've worked with. But, you know, the buses are pretty cute. And also I have the pencil case with this print on it - so now I have a dress that matches my pencil case. So now that's a thing? Anyway - I think it's mostly a success. I did take photos of the innards this time. The bodice is lined, and I enclosed the skirt seams with red bias binding, and I finished the hem with it also:

Despite my reservations about the quality of the fabric, I am happy with my finished dress. I love the print and the colours, and I really like the shape of the dress. I tried on the barkcloth version of this dress that Cath Kidston sells and while I liked it fine, I didn't love it - I ended up buying the Townhouses dress that day - so I am glad I made my own.

Got to be honest - not sure what I was doing in this picture, but it does show off the shape of the skirt pretty nicely. So, in it goes!

Cath Kidston has a store on Piccadilly, but that's not what this dress is named for. I never really got to know London until I stopped teaching in 2008 and started working for the now-closed QCA. At the time, the agency was in the process of moving its office to the midlands. I was officially based in the midlands office, but many members of my team were based in the London office and I worked there once or twice a week - increasing to four days a week throughout 2010 and 2011.

Apart from a few day trips to London, I'd never really spent any time in the capital so to go from that to suddenly working there was a pretty big shift for this country mouse. It was often a stressful time - particularly in 2010 and 2011, when I was also dealing with pretty intense anxiety issues - but I really loved working in London - at 83 Piccadilly - and I very often miss the building I worked in, the people I worked with and the organisation I worked for. I'll always cherish that time in my life, though - even with the difficult things that came with it - and I really value the confidence working there gave me when it comes to London. I still work in London occasionally - although QCA is now long-gone, I'm still working in an organisation that is split across multiple cities and with a team who are partly based in London. It's not the same, though. While I genuinely enjoy my job - in fact, in many ways I enjoy it much more than the job I had at QCA - I don't feel the same way about the organisation I work for now.

83 Piccadilly was a pretty awesome building to work in, too. The building I worked in is no longer there - it's been torn down - but it was very cool all the same. One of the meeting rooms on the ground floor was (apparently) bomb-proof. I heard rumours that there were secret tunnels underneath the building connecting it to the Houses of Parliament. It looked out onto Green Park, Buckingham Palace and was across the street from The Ritz and Fortnum and Mason, and around the corner from Bond Street. When gun salutes were fired (I think they're fired from Hyde Park) you could feel the walls of the building shake. And, kind of best of all, there was a roof terrace which was a great place to have lunch and enjoy views over the city. Working there made me love London.

Anyway, that's all very long-winded. I guess I am feeling sentimental today! Here's a picture of the bodice of the dress, just to shake things up a bit:

It kind of annoys me that this fabric has Cath Kidston's actual name on it. Like, calm the fuck down, Cath. You don't need to sign every damn thing, you know.

So that's the craic with this dress. I wore it a couple of Sundays ago to have a stroll in town. From about the middle of October, the Parade is closed off most Sundays for markets. They don't usually start being much good until closer to Christmas but all the same, it's nice to have a look around them. It was - and still is - mild enough to wear a light jacket and my ever-present cardigan with this dress:

I was really going all-out here on the twee accessories with my Ollie and Nic apple bag as well!

Right-o, that's all the jazz out of me today. My lunchtime is drawing to a close and it's time to get back to updating spreadsheets. But after that it'll be time for noodles, and wine and maybe I'll even do some sewing over the weekend! Have a great weekend, everyone.

Ah, hello! It's Bonfire night and...well, I'm not out looking at fireworks or eating toffee apples or baked potatoes, or whatever it is people do on Bonfire Night. It's not really a thing in Northern Ireland and, in my thirteen years living in England, I've never really been able to get into it. It might be partly down to the fact that I'm a great big wuss when it comes to flames of any kind. I swear that the reason I've never been a smoker is that I can't even light a match. I know. So lame.

But anyway. I'm fine with all of the above because I've had a long and reasonably stressful day at work, so putting my pyjamas on and drinking gin is ticking a lot of boxes for me right now. I'm also going to have an early night and watch Nashville, which Nic and I just got into a few weeks ago. I know, so behind the curve, but we're both really enjoying it. It's like a combination of Treme and The OC - with Powers Boothe being evil, Luke from The OC as a gay cowboy country singer and an absolutely killer soundtrack. Also, to quote every tumblr ever: OMG CONNIE BRITTON'S HURR THOOOOOOGH

I mean, fair enough. I'm finding it hard to look at your face too, Connie, because omghair etc.

So that's where I'm up to with my week. If I want to get to bed to watch Nashville I need to crack on with this post, right?

I do love trashy TV though, and a recent favourite has been NBC's Hannibal. I watched The Silence of the Lambs at an impressionable age - I think I was 12, maybe - and quickly thereafter read the book, and I have been a Hannibal Lecter fan ever since. I'm not so keen on any of the other films (and I will never have any interest in watching Hannibal Rising) but I quickly became hooked on the stylish, funny and very silly Bryan Fuller show. Also, Mads Mikkelsen. HELLO.

Sharp suit there boss

A few weeks ago Annie from The Village Haberdashery emailed me and offered to send me my choice of fabric from the shop to, as she put it, sponsor a dress. I was more than happy to oblige - the odd freebie never hurt anyone and as I have very happily shopped with The Village Haberdashery in the past, I'm happy to recommend them. I spent a happy half-hour browsing the site and went for this beautiful Echino Decoro Stag fabric in red. Due to my love of Hannibal, I've been after a stag-themed fabric for a while, and this fit the bill beautifully. Also, lookit how cute the little stags are!

Annie sent me two metres of this fabric. It's cotton with a beautifully soft and slinky hand to it - it's a bit weightier than a lawn but just as suitable for garments. Because of the chevron print and the very pretty little stags, I decided to sew a Christine Haynes Emery dress again. I'm sure it hasn't escaped your notice that I love this pattern but it really is a great canvas for a pretty print such as this.

So anyway, here's the finished dress:

Hannibal dress - Christine Haynes Emery dress in Echino cotton*, worn with Vivienne Westwood for Melissa Lady Dragon shoes

I wore this outfit on Saturday to have coffee and cake with Sarah and it was still (almost!) mild enough to go bare-legged and in open-toed sandals. I have lots of red shoes but I must admit that, given the subject matter in Hannibal, I was really tickled by the idea of wearing these grotesque lip shoes with a dress named after pop culture's most famous cannibal. Small things amuse small minds, I suppose.

I don't have anything to add to the many hundreds of words I have already written about Emery and I have my fitting tweaks down to a fine art now. I did have enough fabric to make short sleeves but, as you can see, I decided not to. I thought that going to the effort to pattern match sleeves on a dress that I'll mostly wear a cardigan with was kind of a wasted effort. I did pattern match the back pieces though because even I could see it would be a hot mess if I didn't!

LOOK AT THAT! It's not completely perfect but it's damn close, and that's good enough for me. It was enough that, when I tried the dress on to show it to Nic, he exclaimed, "The pattern matching across the back is SO COOL!" which: 100 points to you, dude and also, success! I have to tell you though - I find pattern matching to be really tedious. I faffed around for ages when I was cutting the fabric out to get it right. Like, as if cutting out fabric isn't tedious enough. So, I'll do it when I can with something like this but it's not ever going to be something I'm anal about.

That also tells me that if I ever need to have wallpapering done, I need to call in the experts.

Here's a little closeup of the bodice - you know, because I usually do that.

I didn't take any photos of the inside of this dress but I lined the bodice with cotton lawn and I hand-stitched the hem. On such a busy print, a top-stitched hem wouldn't been all that visible and it would have saved me time. I really enjoy hand-sewing hems, though. It's nice to sit with a glass of wine and a trashy DVD (are you sensing a theme, here? I love TV) and put the final finishing touches on a special dress by hand.

I've already worn this dress a few times since I made it last weekend. And it's good to know that I would have something suitable to wear should I ever get invited to dinner at Hannibal Lecter's house. Although, I'm a vegetarian so I might be the Freddie Lounds at the table:

Seriously. Nic and I spent so much time watching Hannibal saying one of two things. They were "OMG SHUT UP ALANA YOU SO BORING" and "Man, I'm glad to be a vegetarian." But I do enjoy all of the cookery scenes, all the same.

I'm kind of thinking I need to make a few more Hannibal Lecter themed dresses. So maybe a Clarice Starling dress with either horses or lambs on it. A Jame Gumb dress with small white dogs on or I could do a tuck-dance screen print. Actually, that's where my inspiration ends. Maybe I should leave it at the stags. Otherwise it's just mad, right?

Anyway, thank you again to The Village Haberdashery for the very generous gift of the fabric. Thank you for making my dream of owning a Hannibal Lecter dress come true. I hope that doesn't make you guys feel too weird.

Right. Finished. I can go and watch Nashville now. Night all!

Disclaimer: The Village Haberdashery provided me with two metres of this fabric for free. I wasn't otherwise compensated for this blog post and wasn't asked for a review. I definitely wasn't asked to talk for so long about my favourite fictional serial killer.

OH. Hi everyone! It's taken me rather longer to get around to blogging again than I meant to. This past week has genuinely kicked my ass. I've been super stressed and uptight about work. It's silly really because work is fine but for some reason this week it all got on top of me, and it ended up with a long rant and tears on Tuesday afternoon and more of the same on Wednesday. Today was much better - although I was flat out all day, it didn't seem so bad because I have tomorrow off. Hurrah! Also, yesterday afternoon after I had finished for the day, I spent a few hours sewing. That always makes me feel better. Tonight I have a lazy dinner, a film and a big glass of wine planned so I hope that will complete the job of de-stressing me!

Because of my lack of blogging time - not to mention the lack of daylight hours in which to take photos - I have once again a bit of a backlog of projects to share. Here's a dress I made a few weeks ago: my second version of the Deer and Doe Belladone dress. The one I made the summer before last is now much too big and to be honest, it was never a fantastic fit in the first place. So, I recut the pattern and cut into some printed denim that I bought in Paris in May. A Parisian pattern and fabric from Paris? MAIS OUI. SO FRENCH.

La Bicyclette dress - Deer and Doe Belladone dress in bicycle print denim, worn with Swedish hasbeens braided sandals

I've been thinking on this dress for a while and, unlike most of the rest of the fabric I bought in Paris, this fabric was bought with this pattern in mind. It's just taken me ages to get around to it! If the fabric looks familiar, you might have seen it on Lauren. I bought her a 3m coupon of this fabric too, and she made herself some Maritime shorts with it. The fabric is adorable and was such a bargain - I got 3m of 150cm wide fabric for either 10 or 15 euros and, you know, it has bikes on it!

Fabric detail with added lens flare.

The fabric itself was lovely to work with, and the Belladone pattern is enjoyable to sew. I'm not thoroughly in love with my finished dress though. This is going to sound stupid, but I think I've decided I'm not all that keen on the cut-out at the back. It doesn't help matters that, try as I might, I couldn't really get the fit of it right on my back. And you know, for those of us who suffer from Derp Back Syndrome - well, it's probably not a great idea to draw attention to how derpy our backs are!

Derp Back. NOW WITH ADDED FITTING ISSUES!

So, okay. This dress is a little bit too tight and I really should have done a full bust adjustment. In fact, I think giving myself a little bit more ease at the side seams and a little bit more room in the bust might go some way towards addressing the fit of the cut-out. But let's be real here: I'm never going to sew this bodice again. The dress - while it wouldn't be suitable to wear out to eat a big dinner in - does fit, does comfortably zip up and I can move around in it. And I wear cardigans ALL the time - if I wear this, that back mess is going to be covered up. I'll look like this:

I rarely leave home without one of these Hell Bunny cardigans. I want them to bring them out in every colour. Get on that, Hell Bunny R&D people. Come on.

So, you know. This is kind of a fail. It's not one I can really bring myself to feel bad about though because I can wear the dress (as long as I don't put on any weight or try to do anything too vigorous in it!) and I enjoyed sewing it. I really like the skirt and I will definitely use this in combination with some of my favourite bodices. The skirt finish is lovely too. The hem facing is very enjoyable to sew and, while I'm usually fairly meh about pockets, I like the shape of these and the topstitching finish.

This is also a (very slightly) different silhouette for me, and I do like the a-line skirt. I'm also keen to sew with some more printed denim because it's comfortable to wear and enjoyable to sew with.

I've just realised that I wore this dress with that plastic heart ring I bought in Antoine et Lilli a few years ago. This outfit is just SO PARISIAN.

So anyway. That's the Belladone dress - not totally for me. I was able to eat two different kinds of cake in it though, so it's definitely not a complete howler.

Right. A large glass of Sauvignon Blanc is calling my name. Later!

Yeeeeeeooooo! Howdy folks, what's happening? All quiet on the Dolly Clackett front: I'm deeply immersed in another very intense week at work. I have a lot to cram into the next few weeks, which I've planned for, but there are a couple of unnecessary annoyances that have driven me to distraction over the last few days. Actually my stress levels are not what they might be given the circumstances - one of the things I have learned over the last couple of years is how to manage this better and I have become a bit better at not losing my temper when people are being totally unreasonable. All the same, I will be ridiculously relieved to get to Friday tomorrow, you know? I'm going to try to start the Friday festivities a little early tonight by having a long bath with a drink and a book.

So, that is the craic there. I haven't had much time for anything outside of work this week at all. It's been okay, though. Nic and I had a lovely weekend and we had our friend JP to stay with us at the start of the week too. Our friends Amy and Barney called round on Sunday night to drop off an Ikea Expedit unit to us that they no longer need, which meant we were able to rearrange our living room slightly. Nic now has his records all neatly arranged and I'm not kidding when I say that every evening since has seen him sitting on the floor to look at them and tinker with the arrangement of them.

Like this, but with a beard. He's looking at them right now, in fact.

Anyway, as I said - we had a lovely weekend. It was my friend Lauren's birthday last week and we celebrated this by going to the pub on Friday night and drinking prosecco (standard) and spending Saturday afternoon doing a treasure hunt town trail thing in Leamington. I was not at all hungover, thanks to the magic power of chips in pitta bread in chilli sauce after the pub, and it was a dry and mild day, perfect for wandering around Leamington and trying to follow the clues in the booklet. I had a new dress to wear, as well. I actually made this a couple of weeks ago but hadn't had the chance to wear it. Then, as I was falling asleep drunk and full of chips on Friday night, I had an idea of how to wear it and what to name it. Yeah I know. Laugh if you want, but I happen to think that chips are brain food.

Scarlett dress - By Hand London Kim dress worn with red cowboy boots from Office

So, the dress! This is the new pattern from By Hand London, the Kim dress. The pattern isn't quite available yet - it's being released on 29th November - but I was one of the pattern testers, so have been able to sew the dress a bit earlier. This is obviously the version with the gathered skirt. However, I omitted the pin tucks along the hem on this one. I did sew them in my test version (which I will post at some point over the next few weeks) but with a printed fabric the effect is sort of lost so I didn't bother with this one. I won't review the pattern except to say that I found very little in my testing to comment on and I believe the finished pattern will be pretty similar to the version I tested. On my first version I sewed a size 10 and had to go back and take it in along the side seams and under the bust, so for this version I sewed a size 8. The only adjustment I made was to sew a slightly larger seam allowance at the side seams and to take it up substantially at the shoulders.

I bought the fabric in A1 Fabrics on Goldhawk Road at some point last year and it's been languishing in my stash ever since. It was fairly cheap, I think it was £4.99 per metre, and I bought two metres. I was able to get this dress and some bunting for my sister out of that two metres so I'd say that was £10 well spent!

Bodice view - you can see the lovely rose print a little bit better here. Also the close up on the "eating chips in bed at 1am face" I'm sporting here

There's something about this bodice variation - with the straight neckline, rather than the sweetheart variation - that really reminds me of a dirndl. But more than anything else, it really called one TV character to mind for me: Scarlett O'Connor from Nashville.

Scarlett wears this red dress when she first performs at the Opry. I'll probably wear something similar myself for my first performance.

I actually find Scarlett to be an almost unbearably irritating character. I don't dislike her as much as I dislike her songwriting partner, Gunnar (we call him Bummer) but she's very dull. I do like her style, though. It's mostly romantic dresses with full skirts, worn with wide belts, chunky belts and work boots. It's not a look I could totally carry off (I'm not all that keen on wearing belts) but it works for her. She's annoying, but she's pretty cute. And, you know, her hair isn't even close to being on the Rayna Scale of Awesome, but I like her hair too.

So, yeah. It might be totally lame, but this outfit is inspired by a character I don't even like. My chunky cardigan is from Mango and the boots are pretty old. I bought them seven or eight years ago after watching Wonder Boys - Katie Holmes's character is pretty annoying, but she has some lovely red cowboy boots.

yeah

Obviously the fabric and general style of this dress are pretty summery, so I might not get much wear out of it until the spring. I like the way it looks with the cowboy boots and I'm sure I'll wear this combination again over the autumn, although obviously I'm looking forward to wearing it with sandals in the warmer weather.

Gratuitous out-take. Don't even know what I was doing here but I look like I'm about to fall over.

So that's the Scarlett dress. I really like the Kim pattern - once I had figured out the couple of little fitting tweaks I needed to do it's a very straightforward and quick dress to make. I sewed this dress - including hemming it by hand - one evening after work. I like a bit of fast sewing! I think there's also a lot of potential for variations - this is another lovely bodice I look forward to pairing with different skirts. All round it's a thumbs up from me for Kim!

Right-o, I have been looking at a computer since about half eight this morning. Time for me to get my gin and tonic and my book. Goodnight!

Kin is people you've gotta kiss, even if they have a moustache.

I don't want a ladies' wetsuit. I'm a man! Give me a small man's wetsuit, please.

Is there anything to be said for saying another mass? Oh god, I love saying mass.

I’m too tired to slap you, would you bash your face against my palm?

Today it's difficult day for me at coffee shop, there is new stock coming and I have to cut the carrot cake.

Ba-da Seuss, a palm caboose, and a panda hop, and pantyhose, you look buppity, buttons and bowwwws!

I engaged in sexting, texting, and tex-mexting, which is when you take a picture of your genitals from the restroom of a Chili’s To Go.

She was multi-tasking. It's a thing women can do. Like smelling nice and wrapping gifts.

This bag is just full of knives and bras... and loose onions

My grandmother was missing that tooth and she was the most beautiful woman on her oil rig.

Before you worked here, were you an ass scientist? Because your ass... blah-blah-blah. You get the point.

Did someone talk about a job opening? Because guess who's got two thumbs and was just cleared of insurance fraud?

Some little girls grow up wanting ponies; I always wanted to be a widow.

And take someone who can open doors with their head! Take Mitch!

Toscanini? Arturo Toscanini? That's the WORST recording of 'The Magic Flute' there's ever been! I wouldn't even let it in the house!

Sorry, Joan. Your sandwiches exceeded the required six centimetres in width.

I guess nice just ain't my colour.

They say that some of his ears are inside his head and when he yawns it sounds like Liam Neeson chasing a load of hens around inside a barrel.

They lie in wait like wolves. The smell of blood in their nostrils. Waiting. Interminably waiting. And then...

This leak business is symptomatic of the moral decline of this country since the fall of the last Conservative government.