A darling dress!

We here at CM are big big fans of Megan Neilsen's Brumby skirt. It's my favourite makes- it gets out of the draw at least once a week. I had some excess light weight medium denim , and hankering to try it out, it was a perfect duo.

I love that the instructions for the Darling is so straight forward. As is standard practice- I traced out the pattern on Swedish tracing paper first. I have a small chest, length wise so I normally need to adjust shoulders so I don't show boobage- I wish I had done that for this dress. More on that later..

The denim is incredibly light weight- like some of our chambray's, it was nice to work with, and could withstand a few rounds with a seam ripper (which is most important).

I wanted to slightly jazz up the whole appearance so for the neckline and the waist ties I used Cotton + Steels Bluebird. 

I also wanted to add it to the rim of the pockets but only for the edges. I didn't want to use a lot of this fabric up, if no one was going to see more than the lip. So I cut out the pockets out of the denim and then cut 4 strips of about 5 cm of the Bluebird and sew it on top. (not straight on- right sides together sewing the most inner side and the edge was sewn when the pocket was sewn into the dress),

The only time I needed to refer to Megan Nielsens tutorial (which is very good) was for the plackets. Using 2 different fabrics made it slightly more complicated (but only slightly). But plackets and I don't really get on,(just ask the Colette Negorni shirt that has languished in my sewing box with a backwards placket in the arm for the last 2 years.). But it wasn't all that bad. There were step by step pictures and short of seam ripping and re stitching about 5 times, because I couldn't get the symmetry right- and I sew wonky sometimes. It was done in no time!

I also decided to use the brightest reddest buttons we stock for this, I wanted them to pop out- I was trying to avoid it looking at all drab.

Back to small chest issues, and this is where learning how to make adjustments are a good skill to have, I should have fixed this all before I started sewing, rookie mistake- too excited. The front is now too low and I need to wear a vest under it (this is what I have to do with almost all of my dresses) and a result of my short torso,  the darts have come up too high and it looks like I have headlights (nipple showage) I'm trying to work out ways to fix it, but I have't come up with anything- I'll just attempt to unpick it and try to put them in again. I will make this dress again, but I will defiantly make up a toile for the top half first, making the v smaller and shortening the darts. 

Shoulda really spotted the problem at this stage really.....

On a note- I had finished cutting and sewing up the bodice and child walked in took a look at it and said "you could turn that into a Nelson vest" Thanks- but I had to admit, she had a point.

Easter sewing!

Over Easter I wanted make something using some of the great bunny fabrics we stock, although I couldn't choose between Ghost bunnies or the Moon bunnies. What I did know was that I wanted to make the Brumby from skirt. 

I gunned for the ghost bunnies after asking on instagram. For the inside pocket detail I used some of my own stash, bright pink with birds was a good contrast even if you can barley see it.

I'm always too excited when I make these kind of things, so as usual I didn't pre-wash my fabric, but being med weight cotton it was fine. But the pattern matching in the middle I probably should have thought about more. But in a weird way I like the half rabbits, like they are synchronized.

I used Swedish tracing paper again, loving that stuff! I then measured out just under a meter and a half (130cm to be exact) of the ghost bunnies for the medium size. It was so easy to whip up, I mean super easy. If it wasn't for the zip, I would say this is perfect for a beginner. Unless that beginner wants to learn how to put in a zip.

The instructions were straight forward, but perhaps made some of the steps sound a little more complicated then they actually were. The pockets were fun to make and easy.

 It sits really well, I didn't have any difficulty with the gathering or anything like that. It was a straight forward delightful pattern that I'll make again.  

You can get the brumby here!

...and in cross stitching world

Sally is coming along really well, it's coming along quicker than expected!