My 2013 Christmas Dress

Before I show you the finished outfit, I'm going to talk about the rest of the construction process.  Feel free to skip to the bottom!!!

The next step after making the bodice was to put on the trim pieces.  On the Blue Roses dress, these were edged in piping, so I thought I'd do the same thing with this dress, but in gold.  So I bought some gold satin to turn into bias.  What an experience that was!  Even drawing the diagonal lines on it to cut out the strips was a nightmare, so I gave up on that idea.  I could see it taking waaaaaaay to much time.  So I crossed all my fingers and toes and headed to Spotlight in the hope they'd have some gold bias.

THEY HAD TWO TYPES!!!!  Gold satin and gold lurex!  After putting both with the shoes, I put a post on my Facebook page to see what people preferred, and the unanimous vote was the lurex (on the right of the photo), which is exactly what I thought too!

So I tried to make piping from it... it shifted around and no matter how slow the machine went, how careful I was, or how much I pinned it, this happened:

I'm surprised I have any hair left after trying to make this...

So I gave up on that idea, and decided to use the bias as bias, and I trimmed down the seam allowance on the top side of the trim piece, and wrapped the bias around it.  Then I attached these pieces to the bodice!

Then I had to pleat the skirt.  This took FOREVER!!!  I had a pleat pattern I wanted to follow from a lovely vintage shirtwaist dress in my collection.  It looks like this:

The pleats are in groups of four, with a little more than an inch in between the groups

I had two lengths of fabric to pleat, both a little over 2 metres, one for the front and one for the back.  It took several attempts to get it right.  I'd pleat up half a side, measure it, it would be too long (or too short) so I'd have to pull the pins out, iron it flat, and start again.  Thankfully I was doing this in front of the TV watching Call the Midwife, so really it wasn't that bad!

Eventually I got it right, and I attached the pieces together and attached it to the bodice.  Then I hand picked the zipper, because I figured it would be easier to do that with all the layers.  And here is the finished outfit!

I swear, all that work with the pleating was TOTALLY WORTH IT!

 

 

Crazy Christmas shoes (actually called Santa Baby) by Irregular Choice

(sadly these are now sold out worldwide)

 

Amazing poinsettia fascinator by GGs Pinup Couture

Gail also is on Facebook and Instagram, and sells on Etsy

Seriously worth checking out her work - its AHHHMAZING!

I am 100% sure that this is my best Christmas outfit so far, and its setting the bar pretty high for next year!  Do you dress in the Christmas theme at this time of year, or on Christmas day - or is it just me?

Beccie
xxx

The 2013 Christmas Dress

It all started with a crazy pair of shoes:

I had been looking for inspiration for this years Christmas ensemble and it came to me in the form of these Irregular Choice shoes.  I know that they aren't for everyone, but they are over-the-top and I love them!  I set about finding fabric that matched them perfectly and I think I found it:

The black, red and touches of gold go perfectly with the shoes.  Next job was to work out what I wanted the dress to look like.  I've been wanting to remake the Blue Roses dress that I made for the Fall For Cotton challenge, so I thought this might be a good opportunity!

And I decided to employ my new technique for making a sleeveless lined bodice with ALL the seams on the inside and photograph it for you!  I'm sure that I didn't invent this, and I'm sure someone knows a better way, but this works for me.

Step One
Cut out bodice fronts and backs (lining and fashion fabric) and sew up all the darts, then pin the two fronts and the two backs together lining up the neck hole and the arm holes.

Step Two
Sew around the neck hole and the arm holes, leaving the shoulders open.   Clip the curves and trim down the seam allowance at the shoulder.  Do the same thing to the back pieces.

Step Three
Turn the back through so its right side out and iron the seams.

Step Four
Insert the turned through piece inside the un-turned through piece, so its right sides together.  Line up the shoulder seams and pin.

Step Five
Sew the shoulder seam and then trim down to eliminate some of the thickness.

Step Six
Turn the un-turned piece so both halves are right side out.  Iron the seams.

Step Seven
Work out which side you need to put the zipper in (somehow, locating the left side is always REALLY HARD!) and open the right side out so that the underarm seams line up.

Step Eight
Sew along the seam - you may have to pivot the needle on the underarm seam.  Press and you're done!

I really hope that all made sense!  I've done it a few times now and it works for me every time, I'm really happy with doing the bodice this way as its all neat!

Stay tuned for more updates on this dress - I have one more day to finish it off, cause I need to wear it on Friday.

Cross your fingers for me!

Beccie
xxx

And so it begins - Christmas 2013

I love Christmas.  I've always loved Christmas.  First Santa Photo and I'm not even crying!

Ok, to be fair, Mum didn't let me see who's lap she'd put me on... and I have a feeling that in the next photo of me in this series I'm totally melting down.

But Christmas when I was growing up was always a happy time full of love and family.  We have a special tradition that was started before I turned 1.  My Nan and Pop (Mum's Mum and Dad) came over early in my first December with a Christmas tree, and Mum and Dad, and Nan and Pop put the tree up together. And then all through my life until they were no longer with us, Nan and Pop would come over to help us put up our tree.  As my brother Matt and I got older we'd always make sure we were there - even if it was only via a computer screen:

Matty is on Skype from Canada in this photo.  We invited some of his friends over to help with the tree - yes it takes 4 people to fill the hole that my brother leaves!

I've now taken over this tradition.  Mum and Dad come to my place to put up my tree with my husband and his two children, and I cook a traditional Christmas dinner for us to enjoy afterwards.

This photo is from a few years ago now - 2009 to be precise

2009 turned out to be Nan's last Christmas with us, so in hindsight it was wonderful to have had her at my place to help put up my tree.

This year with my continuing health issues and other scheduling problems, I only had Mum and Dad and my friend Catherine over to help decorate the tree.  My husband was away with work, and his kids were at their Mum's place.  In one way it was good not to have to deal with all the pressure, but in another way it was sad not to be surrounded by all the usual silliness and celebration.

2011 - Silliness with Miss Stella

But I did enjoy getting all my lovely Christmas things out of their storage boxes and decorating my house with them:

 My massive 7-foot Christmas tree.  Miss Stella loves removing and destroying the poinsettia flowers from the bottom level.  

This is my large dining table, and last year Mum made Santa hats for all the chairs 

This is my small dining table, which I try to leave mostly clear, so we can actually use it!   The chairs around this table have Santa hats on them too.

 This year I decided to bring Christmas to our family area where we spend most of our time, so I bought another small tree to decorate and surround with my collection of tea-light candle Santas

 And I also decided to push my husband's buttons (he's a bit of a bah-humbug) by decorating the staircase.  This is still a work in progress, but its a damn good start!

My Mum presented me with this huge quilted wall hanging this year.  She's been working on it for 2 years now.  The design is based on an Aussie Christmas carol by Rolf Harris called 6 White Boomers.  You can listen to it here

And lastly, this is my new friend this Christmas - I purchased this adorable donkey because I just had to have him.  His name is Joseph.  Mum Christmas-ified him, but I have a feeling he'll be hanging around my house all year long.  He's too adorable to go in a cupboard!

So I hope you've enjoyed looking at my Christmas decorations for this year.  I'm really happy that I put them up as early as I did - I'll be able to enjoy them as long as possible this year!  Does anyone else go as mad at Christmas as I do?

Beccie

xxx

PS.  Guess what turned up yesterday - MY CRAZY CHRISTMAS SHOES!!!!!  I'm so excited about them.  The fabric I bought to make this years dress shouldn't be too far away either, so keep your eye on my Facebook page for updates...

Christmas Outfit No. 4 - My Ultimate Christmas Dress!

Its the last Christmast post!!!

This dress revolves around the most amazing Christmas fabric I have found, and the best thing about it was that there was a full 7 metres of it!

Now I really really wanted to do justice to this magnificent fabric, so I grabbed out my pattern for the sweetheart neckline bodice from my tropical print dress and made some decorative enhancements:

Here is one of them - that bloody bow took one whole hour to make.  Mind you this could be because this was the third dress I was sewing in two days and I was a leeeeetle tired by then!

I then cut out 2.5m from the length of the fabric to make a really full gathered skirt - I wanted it to be as full and as gathered as possible!

What I ended up with was this:

HOW ADORABLE!!!

This is my favourite one of the week, so I made sure to save it to Friday.  I love the way that the bow and the faux wrap bust and halter tie make it look like I'm wrapped up like a present.

I actually got the inspiration for the bow from the print on the fabric - it has bows wrapped around sticks of holly.

And once again, this bodice has six bones - two in the front, two in the back and two in the sides.

Oh, and I also went way out with my accessories for this outfit - if you're going to go over the top, you need to go OVER THE TOP!

The necklace is my last piece this year from Lucy Luxxe, and I call it my Christmas Crazy necklace.  Renee made it for me by casting from some vintage brooches I purchased - see the Santa on the hair bow?  I also have the Rudolf one, but there was no where for it on this outfit...

So that is my final Christmas outfit!  I hope you've all enjoyed the festive madness!!

Merry Christmas to you all!!!!!

Beccie
xxx

Christmas Outfit No. 3 - The Jolly Santa Circle Skirt

If you haven't already worked it out I just LOVE Santa Clause!  So when I found this fabric, I bought it without a second though - even though there was only 70 inches or 1.5 metres of it, which isn't really enough to do anything...

But then I thought about it for a bit and worked out what I could do!

I grabbed out this pattern:

Its for a 10 gore circle skirt, which obviously I don't have enough fabric for, so I also grabbed out some red fabric and some ric rac...

Anyone know where I'm going here?

I traced the pattern piece and made some adjustments and then created this:

This is one of the 10 gores.  I ran ric rac down either side of the santa panel, like this:

I could have skipped that step, but I like details.

I had hoped to get each gore with a Santa on it... but I only had enough fabric for 6 gores, but I had 10... so I decided just to do 5 with Santa's and 5 without.  Thats the thing with vintage fabric, I can't just go down the street and get more!

I also ran a strip of the vintage fabric around the centre of the waistband, for no other reason than because I could.

The finished skirt looks like this!

I have paired it with an off the shoulder 'Bettie Page' brand top I have, and some lovely red shoes.  And this skirt is so huge that I wear TWO petticoats underneath it!

I am going shopping tonight to do all my Christmas shopping, and I'm going to have my photo taken with Santa while I'm there - and I thought this outfit would be PERFECT!!!  Check my Facebook page for updates on that bit of festive silliness!

And here is another picture of Stella, this time wearing her Christmas tshirt.  Its from a couple of weeks ago, before she had her hair cut:

The skirt is not as adorable as yesterday's outfit, but still over-the-top festive.  Don't you agree?

Beccie
xxx