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Wednesday 14 May 2014

The Green Grass of Home

I had a lovely May bank holiday weekend looking after my grandparents' house and pooch whilst they were at a wedding. The Saturday was particularly glorious; sunshine, luminous green grass and spring flowers. There was plenty of wildlife about, including a sparrowhawk who decided to join us for breakfast on the patio - I WON'T have what he's having...

Let the Dorset tourist board advert commence!


Spine of Purbeck - Poole harbour on the left

The stick muncher herself

Both sides still alive!

Fetch Cara!

Not so native wildlife

Sparrowhawk having breakfast



Tuesday 6 May 2014

Victory and the Hedgerow Dress

I finished my Sew For Victory dress in time! I posted a little while ago about my bodice muslin using the Colette Hawthorn pattern as a base, and my adventures in scallops, so here is the final product. I'm not sure the pattern of the fabric is very 1940s, but I couldn't resist it! The scallops do get a little lost, but I know they are there and I am quite pleased with the outcome. I ended up doing split tulip sleeves using the tutorial in Gertie's 'New Book for Better Sewing'.They came out well and it makes the dress much more summery; I think I'll be wearing it a lot! I'm also happy with the raised neckline and the length of the skirt. It was really fun to play around with a pattern and see what I could come up with, and I really enjoyed looking at patterns and photos from the 1940s for inspiration, although I am probably drawn more to 50s and early 60s silhouettes. Right, more poses for you!


Pockets of course!
I really tried to make an effort at finishing the insides properly. Side seams are french seamed, I bound the waist and armhole seams, and used pinking shears to trim the facings.


To do the scallops, I drew out a template after testing spacing and size on my muslin. I then used carbon paper to trace sew lines onto the facings, so it was nice and easy to stitch up. I clipped the curves well then went for topstitching to make it all behave! There are two scallops on the skirt front, then I stitched up the rest of the front. Someone post a pic of a vintage pattern on the flickr group that used scallops in the same way, so I stole that idea!

So overall, as I'm sure you can gather, I am pretty pleased with my first sew for victory make! I think I'll try and make something a bit more authentic next year ;)

Thanks Baoxiu for the posing photos!