I like my coffee like I like my women. In a plastic cup.

Hello! Urgh... so my plan to blog more frequently has been a big fat FAIL, hasn't it? Oh well. Here I am now anyway. I'm having a short break from work for Easter, which is really good as everything has been so full-on so far this year. We don't have much planned other than relaxing and spending time with friends, and perhaps eating some tasty food and drinking some tasty drinks! I might even fit in some sewing if everything goes well.

Here's a dress that I made last month, just before Nic's birthday. It's another Butterick B6333 and I did show you a hint of it last time I posted. It's covered in beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees!


The funny thing about this dress is how totally unplanned it was. I've had the fabric chilling in my stash for a while without a specific plan for it. I'd had the yellow polka-dot buttons in my stash for about a year as well. Nic was out one evening at an event in London and the idea for this dress just popped into my mind, so I got straight down to it.


I popped on a record, and got sewing. The directional print didn't technically lend itself to a half-circle skirt, but I thought, you know, fuck it.


There's not too much to say really about the sewing of this dress, to be totally honest. It was very straightforward to add my own half-circle skirt and to lengthen the button placket to match. I must have bought the yellow buttons with a shirt-dress in mind because I had twelve of them - everything came together pretty nicely.


The buttons are probably too big for a shirt-dress, really. Looking at the ones you can get in shops, the buttons are usually a good bit smaller. I like these, though - they add to the overall too muchness of the dress, if that makes sense? I bought them from Wool Warehouse and they don't seem to have them any more, although they do have some heart-shaped ones, should you need buttons even more twee than giant polka dot ones. Let's be real here though, as if there is ANYTHING more twee than this dress. I MEAN.


Nic really loves this dress and, when I finished it, he insisted that I save it to wear on his birthday. It makes me happy when he's so excited about something I made, so of course I agreed. He spent the whole day making me stand up so our friends could marvel at what I'd made, which was equally adorable and embarrassing. He's too good to me.

It's not perfect, this dress - I think I could probably do with scooping out the armholes a little bit and the collar is not my finest work (although it's perfectly grand) but I like it because it's exactly the sort of dress I would buy in a shop. I've rolled back a bit on novelty prints (a bit...okay a tiny bit, probably not really so you'd notice) but this is still very much my style.


In homage to the overall too-muchness of the dress, I wore it with these honestly quite hideous Orla Kiely Clarks shoes. Having not been much of a fan of any of them when they were released, I've been won over by their ugly charm. They ARE ugly, but in a way that appeals to me. These ones are the ugliest of all and I adore them and, despite the very high heel, they're surprisingly comfortable to walk in.

Anyway. I've worn the dress a few times since I made it and I'm sure I'll wear it lots over the summer. I wore it yesterday on a day out to Winchester, where a waiter in a bar told me I looked 'bee-youtiful' so naturally enough I left him a good tip. For the lols more than anything else.