A few dresses for the summer

Ah the sun is shining so I've been busy in the garden and not writing any blog posts it seems! 

I had a crazy busy 2 weeks to be honest. It was my boyfriend's birthday so we popped up to London to go visit the Lichtenstein exhibition in Tate modern. He's been a favourite of mine since I was a kid, such easily accessible imagery and bold colours. The exhibition completely blew me away, especially his early work when he was drilling holes into metal plates to make all those dots! 

This weekend I also took part in the Big Lunch event - 'What are you bringing to the table'. I ran an all day workshop where you could come and make your own woven placemats and coasters out of old magazines and comics. It was crazy busy and we met loads of fun people and made tonnes of placemats! I'm waiting on my friend Mike to send me all the pictures from that day, so there will soon be a post so you can see what we were up to.

In the mean time here are a pile of dresses I've made recently for the shop using old duvet covers and vintage sheets. Oh just ready for festival season!!

 

 

Rockabilly Baby

I was asked to do a custom order for someone at Alley Cat Ink. A vintage spotty dress for a little girl. I thought it'd be fun to make some children's vintage and I'm loving how it's turned out. Kids clothes are so easy to make and relatively quick too. I choose a lovely sleeveless vintage pattern and cut out some red and white spotty fabric.

Next I marked and stitched up the darts.















After I put the darts in, I overlocked all the edges and then sewed the pieces together. Below is an action shot of sewing the facing to the front bodice.

Ironing all the seams out is an essential for dressmaking =)

For the skirt part, I gathered an oblong shape along the one edge and stitched this to the bottom of the bodice.

Overlocked and stitched up the hem.

To finish off the neckline I added a vintage daisy chain trim.

 

To fasten at the back I stitched on 3 big vintage red buttons and a ribbon loop to hold them together.

And this is the final project! Hope she likes it.

I like to draw.... and some action shot dressmaking photos

I woke up this morning feeling awful. It's like this weird combination of hay fever; where inside my nose and throat have swollen and my eyes itch like crazy, mixed with nausea. Bad times. So I didn't go into work, instead I drew a couple of pictures and chilled out. They're for Becca from Green City and the festival that we were making the flags for ( see earlier post ;))

Here's what I've done today and some older new stuff that's lying round on my desk!

They're designs to be printed onto bags at the event.

Here's the ol' sheeet...

The British Bulldog and Stamp were for the Chapter Art Centre event CarArtBootique. Back at Easter time they had a massive art carboot style affair and Jude and Tom from the PrintHaus set up a stall printing jubilee themed bunting. I was suppose to be helping out and supplied these beauts to print but was bed ridden ill so didn't make it down. I'll have to ask Jude if she has any pics of them printed.

This is a cheeky toucan from my sketchbook.

More delights from the sketchbook.

And last but not least a drawing I was working on for the last Snapped Up market but didn't end up using.

Here's also some pictures I found on my phone, action shots from the dresses I made last week!

 

Dresses to spin round in...

I've made a few rockabilly dresses for a tattooist in Penarth. I met the lovely Justin and Chrissy from Alley Cat Ink a few months ago when a friend of mine went to work with them. Such lovely and genuine people and the shop is stunning with lots of fun clothes and jewellery from a mix of local makers to big brands like iron fist. They were finding that the larger curvier customer wasn't necessarily being catered for so I've made them a selection of dresses ranging from size 12 - 20 with the idea that we can make custom dresses for ppl. I've used mostly fabrics from the crazy stash and coupled them up with some vintage trims. Hope you likey :)

I also dropped off a few play suits that I made aaaaaages ago. They're one size and are a bloomer/halter neck combo -tre sweet!

Last night I went on a mad felt badge making frenzy too! Why have I not been doing this before, very calming and satisfying too. My hayfever has been terrible and shows no signs of letting up so I am resigned to stay inside and make stuff!!