"Turning Japanese" Dress

So I made another dress recently from Japanese style print fabric and it makes me think of this song.

I bought the fabric from a New Zealand fabric destash group I'm part of on facebook - isn't it pretty.

I decided to use a tried and true pattern and make another Salme Patterns pussy bow dress with the sleeves from the Colette Laurel dress. It's the same franken-pattern I used for my Hearts and Anchors dress, the only difference was I added a little bit of length to the skirt of the dress.

It's getting dark earlier and earlier at the moment, but Rich was still able to take a few photos for me in the courtyard before the sun went down for the day.

The dress is pretty simple, I've not put in the darts as I wanted a more blouse type fit. It has elastic around the waist, but the best part of the dress is the bow. Because obviously bows rule.

I hope you've all had a good week, I've been off work with a spider bite that got infected. It was a bad times, but at least I can sew and have a courtyard.

Hope you all have been having a good week and an even better weekend!

Hearts & Anchors

So you guys may (or may not) remeber that one of my goals for this year was to tackle my large pile of mending of and UFOs. If you're thinking to yourself right now, what's a UFO?  Well its an unfinished object! I have a LOT of UFOs around, I don't know WHY I do this to myself, but I will get all excited for a project and then give up half way through for no apparent reason. Or even WORSE than that, just cut the project out and put it in a plastic bag (to keep the pieces together) and not touch it again for MONTHS (ok I do know WHY I do this - I love cutting out fabric).

Back to the current project, I cut out this dress one time when I was at home sick. I started to feel better in the afternoon and was going a little stir crazy. I wasn't feeling 100% but at the same time I'm not good at not doing anything.

So I decided to grab this hearts and anchor fabric I had bought from a vintage fair (although its definitely not vintage - its still cute though) and Salme Bow Dress that I had printed out a few weeks back. I stuck the pattern together, cut out the pattern and cut out the dress. After I did that I was thoroughly exhausted because I was sick and meant to be resting. I put it all in a plastic bag and left it in the pile with all my other UFOs.

But in the spirit of making good on my resolution to finish up all of my outstanding UFOs I finished making the dress up a few weeks ago!

So I'm still not sure I am sold on this dress, it seems a little boxy to me, but I wore it to work and I got a lot of compliments! Also I  think the belt helps, but this belt is actually a bit big for me (not what you really want with an elasticated belt) so it may be less boxy if the belt fit better.

So a few points on the pattern, if you are familiar with it you will know the original does not have sleeves. But I wanted sleeves so I added some (I just added the sleeves from the Laurel dress and they worked fine).

Also the dress is pretty short and if you're taller than me (5'6) you MAY want to lengthen it - but if short dresses are your thing that's cool too. 

The other thing is the pattern instructions are pretty basic, that's fine if you have a bit of sewing experience as the dress is quite easy to put together. However if I tried to make this dress a couple of years back when I was first starting out sewing I think it would have quickly ended in tears!

So I DO  have to admit something, although I'm not 100% sure about this dress I HAVE cut another one. Hopefully it won't become another UFO (but lets face it - that's probably going to happen!).