What's your style? Dress Me Up!

It's been a long couple of weeks, and will continue to be a long a couple of weeks in the lead up to the events I organise every July. There's not enough hours in every day for all the things I need to do, and all the things I want to do. Each and every day has become a blur of knitting, changing nappies, feeds, spinning, emails, photographs, making lunch, taking kids where they need to go, sewing, phonecalls, THINK OF SOMETHING FOR DINNER!, quotes, forms, and list making. Always with the list making. 

In amongst all this has been a fair bit of design, some dreaming, motivating and motivation. Ideas growing, being bounced around and built upon. There's been some hard things to face, some interesting points come to, and many things still marinating in my head, as they tend to do. 

For a start - on the lighter end of the spectrum - I'm coming to terms with a 'new normal' post pregnancy. Not only did I lose ten kilos while pregnant (I know, I know - I'm not bitching about it) - but my entire body shape has also changed as well. This means that 90% of my wardrobe no longer fits. Either things look like a sack, or they cling to all the bits I don't want them to cling to. Throw into this mix the fact that we have a wedding to go to in early August as well as two parties between here and then and you have a recipe for panic. 

Enter the fabric stash. The stash I periodically add to by buying decent metreage of interesting things I find on sale. 

Butterick have re released a range of their vintage patterns and I like many of the 1950's styles, so I bought a couple of patterns. One I am still waiting on to arrive on backorder, but the other one came home with me, pattern B5032.

After a dive in the fabric stash I came up with some nice cotton sateen I bought on clearance for about $5 a metre about a year ago. There was not enough for the full skirted version (which I would have liked) but there was definitely enough for the straight version. This is how it turned out:

I quite like it. I added a sash out of red dupion silk, because I felt it needed it, and because I am a sucker for silk. Red silk, to be specific. If I make the same pattern again (and I probably will) I will probably go down a few bust sizes on the top, as I found it to be very loose and I had to do a few tricks to get it to tighten up some. Perhaps I've lost more in the bust than I measured?

This is the pattern I am waiting on the arrival of though:

and I have another dress pattern and the fabric for it sitting down in the studio, just waiting to be cut and sewn. In between, you know, everything else. 

There is progress at least - the mammoth spin is less than 100g of spinning away from being DONE. Which will be nice because I am 100% DONE WITH IT. There's a reason I don't spin more than about 200g of the same colours very often. It's called the sort of boredom that makes me want gouge my own eyes out for fun. I also have a matching set of mitts and a scarf soaking in a bucket waiting to be blocked and photographed before they get popped in a parcel pack to be sent off as a gift. In the same bucket there's also a wee cabled vest for Master BJ to wear to the wedding - he at least already has a button up shirt and nice pants to wear under it (conveniently given as a gift by the same person who's wedding we are attending! - thanks Coll!). A new dress pattern for Miss Chaos arrived today, from which I will make her a new dress to wear to it too.. and that of course means more fabric shopping. All together now.. aww.. yes yes I know, smallest violin in the world playing just for me. Master Mayhem and all of his too - short - in - the - leg - socks - showing - like - michael - jackson pants has not been forgotten either. There's an Ottobre Design mag on the way with a nice vest pattern in it, and I bought a metre and a half of a fabulous tartan fabric the other day to make him some seriously groovy wide legged punky pants from. I'm wondering if it is possible to get pants for him, and a skirt for Miss Chaos out of the one metre and a half of fabric. I'm going to give it a bash anyways!

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It's 1am right now. I had more to say in this blog post. So many thoughts. But again, I am out of time - story of my life right now.  The one question I keep coming back to at the moment however is this - Am I who I want to be? And I think the answer is yes. But I think it's important to note that the question is WHO and not WHAT. Which are the most important things to me, that I allow myself to be defined by? There's a list in that there question. Always with the lists. But for now, I'm just going to leave this here for anyone pondering the same question. 

Take it away, Ms Fucking Palmer. 

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