Colette Rooibos the Second

It’s taken me so long to finish this dress that I’m not really sure what to write about it anymore 😉

After making my first Rooibos over two years ago I always knew I wanted to make a second but like usual I got distracted by other new pretty patterns. When we decided to challenge our contributors on The Monthly Stitch to “Sew Double” in April…oh my, it’s worse than I thought, APRIL?!…I decided it was the perfect time to push a second Rooibos up the sewing queue.

I got it most of the way finished and then I stalled, distracted by other projects and pattern testing. More recently, as evidenced by this poor neglected blog, my sew jo has been sadly depleted so it sat on Scarlett (my dress dummy) awaiting side seams, zipper and a hem all this time…

This month at The Monthly Stitch we are celebrating our 1st birthday (yay, go us!) and so it is fitting that the challenge is “Let Them Sew Cake”, a celebration of all things cake, birthdays and anything else awesome that you can associate with, well, cakes!

Kat, Juliet and I decided we needed our own Editors celebration so we planned a little Yum Cha lunch (Little? Ha! We all know there’s nothing little about a Yum Cha lunch session!) this was followed by an urban photography shoot, cupcakes and a TMS planning session.

That was all planned for last Sunday (August 3rd) and one week prior I KNEW I had to get my Rooibos completed for photos and really just to get my sew-jo back on track. So of course I didn’t sew at all that week, or on Saturday!

On Sunday morning I got up a 4:30am to drive NH to the airport. I got back home at 6:30am and went back to sleep for 1.5 hours. At 8am I threaded up my machines and got to work, I had 2.5 hours, lots of time right?

The side seam was quick and it felt good to be sewing again. Then after I had the invisible zipper inserted it decided to break which made me mad. Despite reading about this happening to others it’s never happened to me until today. I kept my cool, prodded, cried and begged and eventually got it closing properly. Thank goodness the hem was always going to be a simple topstitched job and I was done! I jumped in the car 15 minutes late but it’s ok to be late for lunch if you are wearing a new dress that you just hemmed.

Anyway, yay, a new dress and I love my second Rooibos which is both my own celebration of dusting off my sewing machines and completing my TMS Sewing Double challenge.

I stitched this up in a cotton sateen from my stash, originally purchased from the now closed Arthur Toye (Sandra bought some too), and I piped the seams in a black cotton exactly the same as my first Rooibos. Except this time I cut the piping internals shorter that the stitched seam line so that there was less bulk for the zipper to deal with, a lesson learnt from my first Rooibos. I need to do one final tweak, it’s a little bit big at the waist, so I will bring in the side seams an extra 2cms.

These photos were taken in a random carpark by Kat who also suggested the blue wall would be the perfect backdrop and she was right!

Also orange 🙂

And that’s it, yay for sewing!

THE DEETS:

Pattern – Colette Rooibos dress, size 10

I need to take in the side seams, next time maybe grade it to an 8 or 6 at the waist/hips

Fabric – Cotton sateen from Arthur Toye

Other notions – Me-made piping, black cotton from Spotlight

PS: Hello to the lovely lady who said ‘hi’ to me while I was hungrily topping up my fabric stash at The Fabric Warehouse sale today 🙂 The first time anyone has ever recognised me from my blog, it made my day! I’m embarrassed that I didn’t ask your name, but I hope you snapped up some gorgeous fabric too xx

Happy sewing everyone!