Kawaii High Tea

If you've been following my blog lately you would be forgiven for thinking that not much has been happening here in Wellington. It has, but at the same time I feel like the winter has really been dragging and I am well and truly ready for it to be over.

This weekend was fun though as an event I had planning with some friends for a long time finally happened - we had a Kawaii High Tea.

What is kawaii you ask? Well the internet explains that it means - "lovable", "cute", or "adorable"

I decided my kawaii outfit would be kind of witch themed, I started with this pattern that Ria bought me a while ago, we had been planning to make the same jacket for a while and the Kawaii High Tea was the perfect time to do it!

I also have a lot of creepy cute fabric in my stash, because I love creepy things. I also apparently love purple as well because I had a bunch of purple fabric.

So here's the thing about this jacket, when I read my measurements on the envelope it said I would be a size 22. I'm pretty weary of the HUGE amount of ease big pattern companies seem to put into their garments and that just didn't seem right. So Ria and I measured the pieces and it seemed that a 16 would fit better.

But as you can see from the photos, its still really too big especially in the shoulders. However this is also because I started cutting this out when we first came back from our trip to the USA. While we were over there I ate all the food and put on some weight. Since I've come back I've dropped back to my normal size. I'm not one for making or buying clothes that will "fit me when I lose weight" but maybe I should have know better and in this case made a size smaller.

Although the jacket is obviously too big in the shoulder which makes it look pretty wonky I did have fun making this jacket and I feel a bit more confident with my sewing after making it - plus I managed to use a bunch of fabric that had been sitting around for a long time.

Both of the fabrics I used were from Spotlight and had been bought when I was shopping and thinking - oh this is cute, I will find a think to make with it sometime. Also known as fabrics bought solely for the fabric stash!

Here's some of the trim I used for the jacket - I bought the purple trim from Pete's Emporium and although I bought 3 metres it wasn't enough. So I went to Made on Marion and bought 4 metres of broderie anglaise but that wasn't enough either! So I ended up using the purple trim around the bottom part of the jacket and the broderie anglaise along the top part.

I think that my favourite thing about the jacket though is the big bow at the back - I love it!

As for what I wore underneath the jacket, I wasn't entirely happy with it. I actually really like this simple little shift dress and I know I will get a lot of use from it in the "real world" however, I don't think it was the right thing to wear under the jacket.

I really should have used what was on the pattern envelope as a guide and made either the skirt that came with the pattern or another equally full skirt. I think the straight skirt under the full jacket looked weird.

However, I was running out of time to finish though and I decided to go with what I knew and made another dress from Maudella 5619, rather than a full skirted dress pattern I was less familiar with.

Even if it didn't work as well with my costume, I love this dress because I love the creepy trees and bats. I got this fabric on sale from spotlight as well, it hadn't been sitting around as long as the purple fabrics though.

You may be wondering about the actual high tea itself? Well I can say it was AWESOME! It was at a new to me high tea place called Louis Sergeant. I wish I had taken more photos of the interior of the restaurant as it was beautiful, but I kind of forgot. I did however take photos of our table and the high tea.

It was  also important to get photos of my friends looking pretty awesome in their Kawaii outfits!

My friend Jo bought a selfie stick along - I'm a cheese ball and I love selfie sticks, so we took a few photos (we could have spent all day playing with that selfie stick).

We were even generous enough to let some of the others at the table play with the selfie stick for a bit.

When the tea stopped being poured - we decided it was time to leave, but there was still time for a few more photos over at the Old Bank Arcade.

It was a really fun morning out and I now know two things for sure, one I need more dress up fun times with friends and two I really need to replace my horrible camera!