Silk Twill La Sylphide

This will be a short post with more photos than words 😉

This is my third Papercut La Sylphide. I wear my Owl La Sylphide ALL THE TIME, it’s one of my all time favourite makes. My second La Sylphide I hardly ever wear. I did something weird to the button placket, I think I cut if slightly off grain, so it doesn’t sit right. I’m also not sure that the lighter colour combined with diagonals suit me…so I needed to make another and when I saw this silk twill at Fabric-a-Brac I knew exactly what it was destined for.

This time around the fabric was way too narrow even for the reduced skirt width that I left marked from my Owl version so I had to piece on the corners. I cut these, as usual, from the selvedge, so that I could leave them unfinished to reduce seam bulk.

I feel like I’ve written ^^that ^^ in almost every blog post recently 🙂

But it’s a good trick and no one has ever pointed out my pieced on skirt-triangles in the 4 or 5 dresses I’ve done this too 😉

Red buttons!

There’s not much else to say, I really want to make another, I just have to wait for the right fabric to pop up again. It’s nice and swishy, maybe a bit too swishy sometimes for the Wellington wind, but mostly I just LOVE the colour.

Was a bit windy…

Harriet says, “Sew more! MOAR!”

THE DEETS:

Pattern – Papercut Patterns La Sylphide dress, straight size S

Skirt lengthened approx 16cms, full width of skirt pattern piece used.

Fabrics – Silk Twill found at Fabric-a-Brac, $15.00 total, bought 2nd May 2015

The lengths we go to for photos…

Déjà vu

Remember this image?

They took my toys – April 2011

Well it happened again 😦

All gone…again!

But I have good news, the Curious Kiwis have a new burrow, of their very own! Yes! We bought a house! So excited! So many exclamation marks, I know!! I am actually bouncing off of the walls!

Well now I am,  previously I was just battling mega-stress. Hence the lack of posts the last few days? weeks? oh I don’t know, but it’s been a while I know.

I knew this would be a big deal mentally and I thought I’d be able to cope, continue with life as per normal. Seriously, my last year of Uni was pretty full-on, I’ve moved country, twice and I planned my own wedding including making my own wedding dress. I’ll tell you right now, none of those compares to the stress level of buying a house for me.

Placing it firmly behind me, unfortunately we don’t get to move in until June 29th and we have run out of time on our rental. We are out this week, back to living with family. So it’s all getting packed up again, but, for the last time, yay!

There are some goods things when it comes to packing:

Can you see it?

Yay, my errant jeans thread!

As blogged about here, turns out it snuck down deep inside my filing cabinet hiding under a big pile of patterns. Oh yeah, remember those jeans? One day…

So, confession time: My machines are packed because I will have no room at our temporary accommodation for sewing. So there will be no sewing to share but I’ll be around with the magazines and other fun posts as I can, please stick around, I’ll be haunting all your gorgeous blogs plus I can finally enjoy my Sundays again. So instead of traipsing through all the Open Homes I can handle I get to go hang out with the Wellington Fabric Hoarders instead! More yay!

What else has happened lately? We’ve officially been back home in NZ for 1 year, so much yay, but wow! How fast can a year go by?! My 2nd blogoversary passed unnoticed and un-celebrated by me, but it’s all good. My birthday is also coming up and, just like last year’s dress, this year’s dress is going to be fashionably late too. But I do get to fantasise about how amazing it’s going to be for the next 5 weeks, I’ll share with you my thoughts.

On Saturday, post-packing, I did treat myself by going to Fabric-a-brac, here are the goodies I brought home with me:

Wow, I didn’t realise how retro they looked until I stuck them all together 🙂

On the left some sort of jersey/knit that makes me think of The Jetsons 😉 Amy Butler cotton at the bottom, another cotton at the top (three largish pieces) LOVE the colours, and on the right a small strip of heavy cotton that would make a cute belt, bag or purse.

Of course there were buttons too! (and a 20 cent thimble)

Here is a close up on each type

I could have gone mental with buttons but I was actually quite restrained, these ones are my favourite!:

Beauclaire

Check out the back of the card:

Aww! Go New Zealand!

And then to cheer up my sick hubby who waited at home for me:

Cupcakes!

I kind of had to, mostly because they looked so yummy (and sparkly) but also because I gave poor hubby the cold.

Have a great week everyone xx

Fabric-a-Brac and JJ progress

I had a pretty full weekend personally and didn’t get to go to this months Fabric Hoarders meet 😦 but I did manage a quick trip into Newtown for the Fabric-a-Brac.

I arrived bang on time and it was already pretty busy. Curious Hubby tagged along but one look at the crowd of women and he decided to stay in the car. So I ejected myself out at the front doors while he battled the traffic to find a shady car park. Don’t worry about Curious Hubby, he came fully prepared which new music and videos on his cell phone for entertainment and I rewarded his patience with a cupcake.

Between the outside area, the big main room and the slightly smaller room next door there were lots tables full of beautiful fabrics, buttons and other notions.

Here are a couple of pics I grabbed with my phone (I love how the second photo is just heads bent down examining the bargains):

And here’s a pic from the Fabric-a-Brac website that I managed to get in, front and centre baby 🙂

Can you see my elbows? They are in “out-mode”, hehe 😉 That lady in front of me was buying up that entire table and because I really am just far too polite I missed out on a few pieces I was eyeing while stuck behind her wing-man, damn, next time I am taking a wing-woman and together we will nab all the bargains.

So when I got back to the car I was surprised that I only managed to grab 4 pieces of fabric but I do really like each piece.

I probably only have enough of these two pieces to make a skirt each. The black and grey is a heavy cotton, feels similar to an Ikea fabric and the blue is more lightweight with a chunk cut out of the corner.

I can always find use for a grey stripe, this one feels like a really nice quality cotton so I couldn’t let it stay on the table for $5. The pink and white crochet lace/cotton waves was my last purchase, not too sure why but I just LOVE it, it is so 70’s Go Go Girl. Lace dresses are everywhere right now and I can just see a super cute and simple shift dress out of this. Whether I am brave enough to wear it is another story 😉

…and then there are the buttons

I got a little carried away digging thought one box and that’s where all the smaller buttons came from. The table was outside and the sun was so warm I just stayed there digging away and collecting buttons.

I love the metal ones, they are so art-deco. The big one is from another lady, I think it cost me $5 and is about 6cm across (I should have put a ruler in the photograph for scale). The lady told me it is made out of casein (shiny on the front and matt on the back, that’s the give-away apparently) and the shank dates it to 1910. It’s hard to see in the picture but it is an amazing swirly green and looks a bit like tortoise shell. I kind of wish I had bought more from her but buttons can really start to add up in value.

On Saturday afternoon I got this far with my newest JJ.

The first ruffle (the shortest one) is in place within princess seam (I did the other side too). The other two ruffles are finished and waiting to be gathered, front facings are interfaced and sewn and the back princess seams. So once all the ruffles are gathered and attached then it’s collar and sleeves, buttons and done! This will be my 3rd JJ and then I think I’ll give this pattern a rest for a while 😉