Wedding frou frou

I have a very exciting commission on the go at the moment - a dress for a three year old girl and a suit for a six year old boy. The special occasion is their parents' wedding.

The suit has been great fun from the very start. Lovely little F has an enviable sense of style and an obsession with cheetahs. This was a good opportunity to combine the two things, and, ta da! A safari suit with appliqued cheetahs was born. Well, conceived.

I've used raw (or natural) silk for the suit. It's lovely and light to wear (the wedding is in January and it'll probably be very, very hot), and even if it does crinkle a little with all the sitting down, a slightly dishevelled safari suit will still be classy. The material is ok to sew with but some of the detail, like the top stitching, is lost because of its texture.


The family is down south at the moment, so I've got the pants of the suit as finished as possible without a fitting. Once the fitting is done, there is just the waistband, zip and hem to do. As you can see, I've made them extra long because I'm pretty sure that F is taller than the average six year old.


I cut out the jacket out this morning. I'm a little nervous about it actually. I want the jacket to have a safari feel but I don't want it to be too...um...I guess too much like a costume, though I have every confidence that F would be able to carry it anyway. I've also not been able to find cheetah print material for the appliqued cheetahs so I am experimenting with painting my own. Hrm, quite a considerable task but rather good fun at the same time.

I found these fabulous buttons yesterday. Rather cheetah-esque don't you think?


V is a gorgeous girl bursting with life and isn't frou frou by nature, but this is a wedding, and so a party frock is called for.

I've put together three materials for the dress and have a vaguely 50s idea for the dress.


The main material is the pink, green, and silver/blue stripe; with the pink silk I plan on making a wide sash, gathering it at the sides and having a long bow at the back; and the silver/blue silk dupion is for an underskirt (it's nice and firm so it will add volume and shape to the skirt which may have been a little floppy looking if I'd just used the cotton). I plan on a very full skirt because this is a party frock gosh darn it; plus I want V to be comfortable and still able to run around, and I also want the skirt to withstand all the sitting down, so having a full skirt, and the underskirt in dupion silk, will help avoid crinkles.

I need to hunt down some buttons for the frock too. Not even sure where to start at this stage (possibly pearls??) but I'm sure it will come to me.

Medicinal frou frou

Ahhh, there's nothing like a good cup of tea and a lie down.

And speaking of cups of tea, this was an especially good one - white peony in a Queen Anne bone china cup.

 

Frou frou gone sad.

I'm feeling tired and old and a bit fragile today. This endless broken sleep is taking a toll, so much so that I'm wondering if I'm going to get everything done.

I've been approached by a government department to come and work for them. Actually, they've contacted me a number of times, the first time being when Remy was only 6 weeks old!

I know that the hours would be part-time, and the money would be a welcome relief from relying on one income alone, but just the thought of returning to paid, in-an-office work makes me feel extra tired, even though it wouldn't be until after Christmas when, hopefully, Remy would be sleeping for longer stretches. And I'm not sure what it would mean for my brand-new, truly-my-passion business.

Maybe this is the time to decide if I'm completely and utterly all-in with van Rose? Or perhaps I can do both policy and van Rose? Hrrrmmmm. Maybe today is the day I have an afternoon sleep and decide not to decide anything...

Frou frou finds a home

Now that my beloved sewing machine is home safe, I've started on the pile of hoodies I plan to sell at Craft2.0 but, instead of showing unfinished work this time, I thought I'd dig out photos of some of my hoodies that have new homes.



Lovely little James is modeling one of the jackets I made over winter. The outer is a wool mix and the inner is a lovely soft stretch cotton. The buttons are the most extraordinary things - they're bakelite and have cute little dogs on them chasing a ball.



The next jacket has an outer of a medium weight cotton in fine red and white stripe from the secret Super Second-hand Store, an inner of quilting cotton that was orginally used in a skirt for me (this is made from the remains of that material), and the buttons are handmade (I think lazor cut and handpainted) from Nancy's in Thorndon.









My first ever hoodie! This went to the nicest home and has loads of good karma because selling this hoodie gave me the confidence to start making more stuff to sell.



One day, I'll take some photos of the clothes I've made that aren't hoodies. Won't that be refreshing?!

Yippee!

My sewing machine has returned home! If you need me, I'll be in my sewing room.

Another day, another cake

We have a new-ish rule in our house about junk food - if you want to eat it, you have to make it. So when either of us have a craving, we either have to make it ourselves or convince the other one to make it for us, rather than running down to the shops to pick it up.

The rule came about for a number of reasons. It was hard to reconcile eating mass manufactured, chemical and additive-laden food with our slow food beliefs. Also, when you are as poor as church mice like us, those chocolate biscuits are really expensive compared to homemade ones! We can also use higher quality ingredients in our cooking, so we actually end up with better, tastier, relatively healthier 'junk' food plus it's cheaper.

Parenthetically, there are moments when this all falls apart and we scoff chippies with reduced cream and powdered onion soup dip. Mmmmmm.

Tonight we both needed cake, and dinner was vaguely middle eastern, so I made Stephanie Alexander's yogurt and semolina cake. I made this for the first time a couple of weeks ago for my darling partner's birthday, so I was confident that it would quell the craving.

It's very simple - no need for the cake mixer because it uses olive oil instead of butter - and quick to make. Once out of the oven, a simple syrup flavoured with orange zest is poured over the top. Yum!

I should really be in bed but...

...as i was about to close the laptop for the day, I remembered that I was planning to blog about one of my crafty projects.

This is a detail of a pocket from a (nearly complete) sleeveless hoodie for a girl:



Now this is possibly even more than Frou Frou with capital Fs. The outer material is from Donna Karen New York, the inner stripes are quilting material and the blue gingham is from the secret Super Second-hand Store. I'm also going to use vintage buttons that I picked up from good ol' TradeMe.

I used the pocket pattern from a dress and altered it a little to suit here. I was rather hoping that they would look more gathered and be more puffy but I'll make sure that happens the next time I want this kind of pocket.