Olympia Le-Tan

Hello my dears!

Oops, I seem to have not posted in quite a whilee! Uni work is crazy, but I will be sharing some things to do with my work very soon! I'm now home for christmas, so I do hope there will be some time for my blogging and making!

But for now, I'll leave you with these beauuuutiful book clutch bags from Olympia Le-Tan (although they are oh-so-slightly out of my price range...) to have a little look at. They are so wonderful. And they are embroidered!

I'll be back soon :)

x

A Cape For The Autumn

Hello there my dears!

It has unfortunately been a very long time since I have posted :( But we all know that scary looming deadlines and busy new terms at university don't leave alot of time for other things! I have also been having a few little hiccups with my photo hosting website- they decided to change all my photos to a horrid 'upgrade to pro! bandwidth exceeded!' sign, for about a month.

But no worries! All is now back in working order and I can start posting properly again :)

So... Here is my latest creation.

(Well, when I say latest, I had made it in August in preparation for the autumn- it is my favourite season after all)

I found and bought the pattern for this cape 'Lindsay #6055' on the BurdaStyle website here last winter, with the intention of making it for last winter! But due to a severe lack of funds, I was unable to buy the necessary fabric. However, over the summer I was able to hunt around for the perfect fabric- an Old English tweed-like fabric that feels very soft and hangs nicely. I also purchased some beautiful lining fabric which I think you can see in some of the pictures? I may add a close up at a later date just to show the detail. The pattern was actually rather easy to follow, but I made some of my own changes here and there. The tricky part was the double jetted pocket, they are so fiddly!

In some of your comments, I have noticed some people would prefer to see my creations actually being worn rather than being displayed on a mannequin! As this is quite tricky to do on my own, I took the boy out yesterday to take a few photos of the cape. I'm home for the weekend from uni, so we went on a little stroll through the local woodland :)

The sunbeams were so pretty through the trees!

My little boots are from asos.com.

Also pictured is a floral dress I made myself from an old skirt found at a car boot, and my blouse is from a charity shop. My tapestry bag is handmade, and from ebay!

I hope you enjoyed the post!

x

p.s, I was very excited to be greeted with '100 followers' when I logged in this morning, YAY!

Maybe I'll do a giveaway after all :)

My new re-invention project...

This is a dress I picked up in a charity shop on my Cornwall adventures.

Its rather large, but I fell in love with the pattern, the colour and the collar :)

Here's the dress in all it's large glory. Keep an eye out for the after pictures...

:)

A dress for a wedding party :)

Oop, I keep making things and not posting them!

I made this a while ago for my cousin's wedding party back in May.

A wanted a nice summery floral number that wasn't too fancy, and could be worn to many other occasions.

I used the Basic Dress Sloper Pattern that I used again whilst making this dress, adapting the neckline and armholes.

I improvised a little bit with the skirt, making this shape x 6:

Which is quite easy to draw yourself using a large ruler onto a piece of newspaper.

I then attached the 6 skirt panels together and onto the bodice part of the dress and made a waistband from cream satin.

I hand stitched up the arm holes and the hem, and put a zip into the back!

Here is the finished dress :)

A little close up of the fabric. Its an old-ish looking floral pattern, with a teal/turquoise background, bought from my local saturday market for about £2.75/m!

It suited the occasion quite well. I hope I have an opportunity to wear it again before the winter comes!

:)

A little embroidered beach bag

Before I went off on my camping holiday to Cornwall with my boyfriend & his family, I spent a few evenings doing a bit of embroidery :) I did the design freehand, which made it abit messy... (I like to call it 'adding character')

I then stitched this onto some heavy duty calico that I had left over from my university fabric stash,

and made a simple rectangular tote bag with 2 straps.

I stitched around the edge of the square of embroidery and around the edges of the handles with blanket stitch in blues and greens :)

It is a little creased in the pictures, because it was very well used on holiday! It was the perfect size for my swimsuit, suncream and sketchbook.

I'd love to make some more of these in different designs to sell!

:)

Giveaway?

I was shocked to come back from holiday and find that my blog has reached 90 followers?! That's nearly 100?! :D

I never thought that anyone would ever read it, and it has shocked me that I have as many readers as this!

Although I am very pleased. So pleased infact that I thought I would do a little giveaway of one of the dresses I have made.

They are both 60's mod-inspired, and are a UK size 8-10.

This one, or this one?

What do you think?

I'd only do the givaway if people actually wanted the dresses, so your opinions will be greatly appreciated!

:)

A similar dress...

Hello again :)

It has been a while since I did any posting on here, I've been enjoying myself rather too much on holiday in Cornwall...

I recently received an email from one of my blog's lovely readers, Paolina.

She has made her own lace collar, using the DIY I made in this post :)

It's really wonderful, check out her little post here! It really made me smile getting such lovely feedback from a reader, Thank you Paolina! :)

But back to the post...

I made this little dress a while ago now, but I seem to have taken a rather long time to post about it!

I bought a rather huge denim maxi dress from a car boot sale, reduced the hem a considerable amount and took it in by making darts front and back to give a more shapely fit.

I then added some lace around the neckline to create a peter pan collar (...I really must stop making things with peter pan collars, I have too many!!) and popped a little cameo brooch in the middle. I have worn it a couple of times with a brown zara cardigan, and my mum's old leather belt that she has had since she was 12!

:)

Blue Gingham

I have been spending so much time making fun summer memories and enjoying my holidays, that I have not had much time for any sewing!

Here is a dress that I have recently made from a small 1 meter piece of fabric that I aquired from a sweet old lady a car boot sale (for just 50p!) She had a huge box containing her personal fabric stash, and I found it very hard not to come away with the whole lot! :)

I used an adapted basic dress block pattern that was originally the 'Basic One-Piece Dress Sloper' from the Burda Style website, and shortened it, and changed the arm holes an the neckline.

I also added a little frilly lace peter pan collar, to make it look a bit like a 60's style shift dress.

Belt - Matalan

**eep, slight correction, it may have been about 1.5 meters! I cannot really remember, but it seems rather unrealistic that I made it from just 1 meter...oops!

I have a few more things to show you soon!

:)

Finished prom dress pictures!!

...aaaaand here it is! The finished prom dress :)

My sister went to her prom this evening, wearing the dress that I made her.

Below are some pictures that I took using my lovely boy's fancy camera :)

Below is a close up of the bodice-

And here is a close up of the corset lacing up the back of the dress-

...and a full length picture of the dress. I think it really suits her! :)

Finally, a picture of both my sister and her prom date. (I decided to make a skinny tie out of the fabric instead for him to wear so that they could be matching!)

I'm very pleased with how it turned out! & I think she is too :)

What do you think?

:) x

I like this

p.s, the prom dress is so nearly finished!

:)

Prom dress in the making...

Hello!

I have been absent from the blog for quite a while now, but I have something to show you! I was going to wait until it was finished to share it on here, but I thought it may be interesting to show it in the process of making (as this is a rather long job!)

I have been summoned by my sister to make her a dress for her year 11 prom, and after getting half way through making her the first one, her friend had apparently gone and bought one in the same colour and style! So as you probably know, the worst prom nightmare is having the same dress as someone else- I started again with a different colour, style, and fabric :)

I have used a lovely red metallic-y fabric (which I am unaware of the fabric content, I bought it from a fabric market in Beijing, and the man whom I bought it from spoke no english!) and have mounted it on a corset base,which I had in my stash to originally be used as a pattern I could use- and was £1 from a Primark sale bin! I had to cut the corset to shape, and make it a little smaller on the back to fit her properly, and create more of a 'V' shape. I then added boning to the edge and covered it in the red fabric, and then added my own eyelets and black ribbon.

I have had my sister standing for hours on end, whilst I draped the fabric, pinning and unpinning, and getting the drapes and pleated perfectly symmetrical at the back and following the contours of her body shape.

Here it is, looking like something quite dangerous (the amount of pins in the dress at the moment is unreal...and it seems to be proving a slight stabby hazard)

but I have not actually started sewing it yet.

I plan to hand sew all the pleats in place, and hopefully have it ready by Sunday as her prom is on Monday. I hope my poor fingers will last the distance!

I am afraid to say that it looks abit of a mess at the moment... but I am sure you can imagine what I want it to look like when it's finished! The hem is also very wonky, but I will cut this and hem it properly when the top half is done. It will come to just above the knee.

I now plan to spend the next hundered billion hours hand sewing this, and I will show you final pictures when it is done!

I'm also making her prom date a little handkerchief out of the same material, so that he can match her perfectly from his suit pocket :)

Hopefully she'll let me put up a picture of them both together!

:) x