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Esme Dress: Lotta Jansdotter Everyday Style
Lotta Jansdotter's Everyday Style is a perfect place to start a new sewing year. It's packed with inspiration and includes five easy sewing patterns that can be adapted to make wearable every day...
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Avant Garden Dot Spot Esme Dress
The Dot Spot fabric I've used to make a second Esme dress is part of MoMo's Avant Garden collection for Moda. I bought it in the sale at Worthing's Eclectic Maker fabric shop last Saturday. The...
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And then I sewed an Astrid bag
I'm on a roll with Lotta Jansdotter's Everyday Style sewing book and have run up an Astrid cross-body bag to go with the Dot Spot Esme Dress.Such an easy bag to make, I cut it out yesterday evening,...
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A Nod to Matisse Esme Dress
This wonderful printed cotton by Windham Fabrics is from designer Jan Avellana's first fabric collection for the brand. Her print designs in the A Nod To Mod range are inspired by artists including...
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Spring House Dress: Marcy Tilton Vogue 8813
This is a light, spring edition of the Marcy Tilton French House Dress made from a fine-gauge bird print cotton fabric bought last summer. This is my third version of Tilton's Vogue 8813 and though the...
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Gudrun Sjödén's Patchwork Perfection
The stand-out piece from Gudrun Sjödén's Spring 2016 collection is her Murano knitted cardigan coat. The Murano is a sensation in all colourways but the lupine with its tones of blue and turquoise...
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Trapeze Tree Dress
Always on the look out for another novelty tree print fabric, this beauty called to me across the floor at Chichester's C&H Fabrics shop. It's a lightweight polycotton, not a fabric I'd usually...
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A Groovy Kaftan
The joy of sewing new dresses exceeds the routine of photographing and documenting them and so I have a small backlog of 3 new frocks which I shall endeavour to photograph and blog soon. Garments that...
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Fisherman's Blues: Merchant & Mills Top 64
A trip to Rye, East Sussex saw me heading straight for Merchant & Mills shop and headquarters. I had resisted buying their sewing patterns this far as to my mind their clean, simple designs look...
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Spanish Tile Esme Dress
Painter Laura Gunn's latest Valencia fabric collection for Michael Miller Fabrics features this amazing Spanish Tile design alongside other richly printed fabrics in her signature floral motifs.I...
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Rainbow Forest Fen Dress
I made this Fen dress back in May but wasn't entirely happy with it at the time so it hung unworn and unblogged at the back of my wardrobe. Sorting through clothes for autumn I tried it on again and...
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Corduroy Contemplations: Ottobre Art Teacher Dress and another Esme
It's two years to the month that I made my first Ottobre Art Teacher dress and I can't fathom why it's taken me so long to reprise this super sewing pattern. The dress is a very quick sew and easy and...
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Grainline Farrow Dress made from a Storchenwiege
Seeing Lempo Bee's version of Grainline Studio's Farrow Dress on Instagram made me want to make one too. I downloaded the sewing pattern but then dithered awhile and allowed other projects to overtake...
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Floral Circle Grainline Farrow
Since sewing my first Grainline Farrow dress I have made three more, two in novelty print cotton fabrics (glimpse them here and here) and this one in Sevenberry's Floral Circles - my favourite so...
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Bauhaus Self-Draft Kimono
The extraordinary colourful fabric I used to make this self-draft kimono was found in my local fabric shop. It's lawn cotton and I think is by Peter Horton Fabrics, however I there is no imprint on the...
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Quilted Infinity Dots Coat: Easy Cute Straight Sewing
The quilted square coat I made in 2015 from Yoshiko Tsukiori's Easy Cute Straight Stitch Sewing book is one of my most worn and loved homemade items. Three years on and the book still isn't available...
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Marcy Tilton Hotchpotch Reprise: Vogue 8813
Some sewing patterns are worth repeating without delay and this is the second Marcy Tilton Vogue 8813 dress I have made this month. The fabric is a light weight fine Indian cotton with hand printed...
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Super Heroine Tendencies: Stylish Party Dresses - Dress O
This is Dress O from Yoshiko Tsukiori's latest English translation sewing title Stylish Party Dresses (published as Formal and Little Black Dress in Japan). There are several elegant dresses in this...
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A Dress for Midwinter
My final dress make of the year is a Cinema Dress trimmed with embroidered ribbons and braid. It's the second dress I've made from this Liesl + Co sewing pattern and this time I used a soft floral...
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Cycling Post To The Coast Art Trail
I picked a sunny day to cycle Post To The Coast art trail. An evolving heritage project by Creative Waves Community Arts, this year-long coastal trail covers a 6 mile route starting at Worthing Lido's...
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The Fig Frock: Simplicity 1080 Dottie Angel Dress
Having resolved to cease blogging my dress makes (as documenting them often takes as long as making them), I will break this resolution to join in with the collective outpouring of joy at having...
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Postcard from Berlin
As I set the alarm for the start of a new school term, I'll take a few minutes to mull over my summer holiday photos from Berlin. In four short days we explored the city on foot, from the top of a...
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Gudrun's Friends' Diary
I was invited to document my week in photographs for a new feature on Gudrun Sjödén's website, Gudrun's Friends Diary. I regularly photograph my world for Instagram so jumped at the chance to be...
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Avant-garde House Dress: Marcy Tilton Vogue 8813
Marcy Tilton's Vogue 8813 sewing pattern is her take on a vintage French house dress but I'd say it owes more to the Japanese avant-garde designs of Issey Miyake and this is why I love it. The sheared...
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Signing Out
This blog began in 2011 and is now defunct.The archive (2011-2018) exists as a record of; the dressmaking years, the ukulele years, the Etsy years, places visited, and my time living in the seaside...
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