Woven Wrap Dress - Possibly the most out there thing I've ever made!!!!!!!

I often describe my fashion sense as out there , but even I did a lil twitch when  I put this dress on and said to myself "Is this a bit much??????"

I mean that is a fabric and a half. I got it from the abakhans fill a bag sale. 

I found it in the bottom of the box held it up and said to my mum "is this hideous or fabulous" and she said she had no idea so I put it in my bag and took it home. 

The background is stripes and the foreground is HUGE flowers in all different colours!!!!!

Its a bit of a go big or go home sort of print. So I opted to make a maxi dress. I was hoping for the sort of thing that I could wear swanning down a beach in the Maldives, not that I'll be swanning off to the Maldives any time soon! 

The pattern started out life as the bodice for a prima dress. I them hacked it half to death to make it into a wrap bodice and added a long skirt with a curved front hem. 

The bodice is fully lined which is good because wrap dresses can sometimes flap open around the ol boob area. 

The waist tie is from a piece of stash fabric. I decided I needed a solid colour for the tie just to make sure that you could see clearly that it was a wrap dress. Plus I think its helpful to have something break up that crazy riot of colour!!!! 

Fit wise , its okay. It did fit better but I've lost some weight recently so its not as good anymore.

Also I did gathers instead of darts because I thought it might give me the blousey look I was going for but now I'm wondering what it might look like darted instead. 

I love the length but I wish the curved front hem was a bit more obvious and it showed more leg when I'm stood still. at the minute this looks fabulous walking but you can't even see my legs if I stand still. 

I do love that I can wear it with my brown wedges though!!!!! 

To be honest whilst the idea of unpicking it all makes me want to cry, I do think its the best thing to do because there's a lot of things I'd like to tweak on it. 

I suppose that's the only downside of hacking a pattern , very often its not quite perfect and you have to keep going until you get it right!!!! 

Construction wise all of the inside seams were done on my over locker and I just used my regular sewing machine for the hems and for top stitching around the neckline.

All in all I really like the dress. Its one of those items that just makes me happy wearing it. I mean how could I not be happy when I'm wearing that many colours!!!!!! 

There's a bit more work to do to it and even if I do get it close to perfect I'm not sure I'll ever have anywhere suitable to wear it...... But HEY HO! I love it so I know I'll end up wearing it at some point. Even if its just for a trip to home and bargains in the summer! 

In other news!!!!! 

I've been busy with work and looking after lil man!

I've been out in the garden and I'm hoping to have it looking respectable soon. At least if this awful weather ever lets up. 

My sketch book arrived!! And I started doing some work in it only to find the paper is more suited to pencils rather than mixed media. Long story short I have a new one on order and yet again I can't wait to get started!!!!

I have been sewing but I seen to be slowing down a bit with my makes recently and only working on things I know I'll love and wear to death!!!

Much Love

Frankie 

The happy little hippy dress

Let's just pretend were back in June, England's still got a chance in the world cup , love islands on and we are still having a glorious heatwave...

Working?

Nah? 

In which case let me introduce you to the dress I probably won't wear until next summer. 

Yep I made this during one of those good god its hot sort of days when everything in my wardrobe felt too warm or too constricting. 

The main idea of the dress was based around this panel print I got from the first fill a bag sale my local abakhans had. Originally I wanted to make a kimono dress but the pattern consisted of two large squares and some twiddy pattern bits and I just couldn't figure out the placement so I gave up and chucked the fabric in a pile. 

Naturally I didn't take a picture of the actual fabric because I'm a TERRIBLE blogger.

As it goes the print worked nicely for this dress , I used the two square pieces for the front and back of my skirt. I didn't even cut them on the fold I literally just cut around the square. And then used the extra twiddly bits on the straps , facings and bodice. 

The bodice itself is the Cami top from the gbsb (3rd) book. I cropped mine to hit my belly button and took some ease out of the back because of gaping. (I also used this pattern here and its one of my favourite party dresses)  and then added a simple gathered skirt.

The print isn't identical on the front and back of the bodice but I was working with fabric restrictions so it ended up being a bit of a hey ho moment. 

One issue I am having is that the skirt feels really long. I am trying to get on bored with longer skirts because in reality they are so much more practical. But every time I make something I'm still tempted the reach for the scissors and make it mid thigh length .

However I can't with this one because it will ruin the printed panel on the skirt.

And there are two more issues . 

1, the back is still gaping , I'm working on fixing this but I'm conscious that if I go too fitted I might no be able to pull it on over my head and one of the beauties of this dress is that theirs no fastenings (yes it makes it a really quick and satisfying sew)

2, its a about half a degree of being maternity wear. I could belt it but that sort of defeats the object of it being a really loose dress for hot days. On the plus side I can confirm that you can fit a large pizza under this dress and no one  will know. (Not a physical large pizza , you can eat one and no one will notice. I haven't tested if you can hide actual pizza down it )

Naturally I love it because it makes me feel like a happy little hippy who wants to dance around bare foot and preach love and peace. In fact as soon as I'd made it I played Fleetwood Mac and pretended to be Stevie Nick's for a bit. Not ashamed at all. 

All in all I think its really successful even if I won't get to wear it much now the winter nights are drawing in. 

In other news! 

I've still not been sewing, boooooooo. But I'm planning to crack right on when lil man goes back to school. I know traditionally I give the house a good clean on the first day. But screw that this time I'm sewing. 

I've added a few more hexagons to my EPP , its not growing very quickly but I enjoy the process. 

I had a day at the dog track!!!! And guess who won 3 times? ME! And guess who won 4? LIL MAN! And guess who didn't win at all??????? Rikki! much to my amusement and his disgust.

And I think that's all!

Much love

 Frankie 

Abakhans Fill A Bag Sale -Thoughts and Fabric Haul Video

Hey folks! How we all doing? I've got two more days of shipping lil man off to school and then its 6 weeks of lie ins so I'm feeling pretty chipper! 

I'm also feeling chipper because I have 32 [I think] pieces of fabric in my dining room and the sun has been shining so I have plenty of opportunities to pre-wash.

So basically on 7th of July I got up at half six in the morning so I'd have enough time to get ready , walk the dog and feed lil man breakfast before heading out to abakhans.

We'd already decided that waiting in line was not fun so decided to get there early. However as it turned out the heat meant that the queues were a lot shorter so we needn't have gotten up early. 

That said getting there early did mean that when we got into the sale room my dad managed to bag the only chair which was pretty useful for when my mum got tired. 

Oh yeah I should have mentioned we went en force!!!! There was a plan of attack from camp knitwits! I went, my momma went, my dad went, my sister went and lil man came too!!! 

As you can see I took the opportunity to have a group selfie. 

It was laid out the same as last time to be honest so there's not much I can say about that. But their were some highlights!

- Lil man shifting through fabric and saying "mummy do you like this?" FYI Mummy did not love everything he picked out..... But he did pick out some cute things.

- falling into the box again.......

- Holding lil man over the box so he could reach the bottom of the box.

- A lady telling me she reads my blog! *waves* HEY LADY! it was nice meeting you let me know what your going to make with that roll of faux fur you brought!

Anyways as I said I got a LOT of fabric , far to much to photograph so I've made a video [spoiler alert Polly our dog makes an appearance] and a bag of 50 zips because this girl is always running out of zips..... Or so I thought until I got home and couldn't get them into my zip jar! 

Now I warn you its a LONG one! So I'd suggest making a brew before you start!

Hope you enjoy!

Frankie 

xxx