Look at this, life’s been getting away with me again! I’ve, yet again, had another busy few weeks that have meant blogging has been put on the backburner somewhat, plus an awful cold that may have actually been flu considering how truly poorly I was and that it’s still hanging in there now more than 2 weeks later. Before that hit though, I started on a new sewing project that I was ridiculously excited about, something I was so pleased to be involved with: #ThatsSewGeorge!
I read Sarah’s blog post featuring her watermelon dress made from a George duvet cover and decided immediately that I HAD to make one of my own. Within minutes I was browsing the website trying to decide which of the duvets I would choose to make my own version. Fortunately I was lucky enough to be offered the chance to jump on board this, as George provided me with two sets of the same bedding – the Sailor Girls Pin Up – one for the bed (duh), and one for me…to make my own dress out of! It’s such a simple yet genius idea – bedding sets often have the most amazing prints and are cheaper than you can buy fabric as it is (at least around here anyway!).
So I chose to make my double duvet set into a version of my current favourite pattern: Simplicity 2444, the one which my Lighthouse dress and the Beach Huts dress are made from. Due to the large print of the pattern, it took quite a bit of maneuvering to figure out how it would all work. I did think about lining it, but the pattern doesn’t call for a lining and I didn’t want to confuse myself by attempting it, so it is a little bit see through, but that’s nothing that can’t be fixed with some good skin toned underwear in my opinion! In the end, I pulled apart the seams of the pillow cases (to make maximum use of the fabric) and figured out a way to lay out the pattern pieces on the front piece of each pillowcase to create the back and front of the bodice. And this is where the difficulties began: I’d decided I wanted to use the border around the bottom of the duvet as the bottom of my skirt, but the bottom of the skirt pattern was just slightly too full for this. So the improvisation began (and bear in mind, I was just recovering from the peak of my flu when doing this!). I ended up folding up my skirt patterns to shorten them enough that the border would fit around the bottom of the skirt, but I also needed to fit my pin up girls on the skirt too. Soooo, I took the scissors to the border part, chopped that right off in one single piece, then figured out how my pin up girls would fit into the (shortened) skirt pieces. For funsies, I decided to try on the dress with the shortened skirt pieces attached – yep, it was short! BUT, I used my ever trusty Maeve to finish it off – she wore the (uber short) dress while I pinned the border piece around the bottom, then sewed it in place and, BOOM, it worked!! Okay, so I know that’s not the amazing skilled sewing thing ever, but it felt like it to me – major sewing achievement!
The reverse side of the duvet doesn’t feature the pin up girls pattern, but is blue and red stripes on the white background, so I’ve got the back of the pillowcases (aside from a small part I used for the pockets) plus the back of the duvet cover still available as fabric, with more than enough to make another full dress. In fact, I bet I could get 2 dresses out of it since the pattern matching wouldn’t be as difficult as this one – woop!
Dress: Handmade (from c/o George at Asda Duvet set/Simplicity 2444) | Cardigan: New Look | Tights: ASOS | Heels: ASOS
A quick aside – the back of the dress looks incredibly wonky in the above picture – I’ll just say now, that’s just me. The sewing might be a little wonky (I don’t know, I can’t see when I’m wearing it!), but it’s mostly just me being an odd shape and standing weird.
So this is an interesting selection of photos you’ve got today, mostly inside thanks to the utter gale that picked up suddenly when I decided to take photos – I’d worn this outfit all day, but with my raincoat over the top when I’d gone outside on my lunchbreak, so when I stepped out the house that evening to take photos – yep, it was dreadful! In fact, I may even treat you to one of those outtake photos on my Instagram, so keep an eye out there!
As another quick aside, I think the outside pictures here may have to be my new house picture spot. Unfortunately these didn’t come out as well as some that Charley took for me there the other day (those are to come), but these were taken very quickly (wind!) and with my normal lens as opposed to my portrait one, so hopefully those will come out better in future. The point of my telling you this though was something else. I thought I was getting away with taking photos here without looking too weird. I’m fairly used to the strange looks now, and although I’m still hesitant to do tripod photos there, the ones with Ben and Charley had been fine…I thought.
In Brownies the other evening, I noticed one of the girls doing some weird posing then pointing at me while talking to her friend. They’re just little girls, I thought though, who knows what they’re talking about. That was until we were sitting in the circle, having a bit of a chat. She turned to and said: “Baaaarn (my “Owl” name), are you a model?” Uh, whut?! I uncertainly said no and asked her why…to which she responded that she’d seen me with my photographer and I must be a model! I managed to eek the information out of her that she’d been playing cricket on the green (behind me in the pic below) with her friends and had seen me doing some photos – I’m thinking they must be the ones I was doing with Charley, but had been completely oblivious to the fact that I was being watched by a group of children! Ah well, I explained to her that I have a blog and I post pictures of my clothes on it, then quickly explained that I actually don’t really know anything about fashion though. Fortunately I had to go off to chat to the District Commissioner at this point, so that stopped any further questions, but it looks like my secret is out at Brownies now! The Leaders already knew about my blog, but I’ve never said anything to the girls, but I guess they’ll all be asking about it now, oops! When I was teaching, I tried to keep it as hidden as possible from the students, thinking it would be the end of the world if they found it (and even now I wonder what they might do if they ever came across it and recognised me as their old teacher!), but I suppose Brownies is a little different from that, so I’m not as worried – just a little bit surprised that I was caught looking more than a little bit odd, but never mind!
Oh and before I go, I wanted to share a few other posts from bloggers that have also created a #ThatsSewGeorge dress: Amy at Almod Rock created hers out of the Hare duvet cover, which was on my list of choices; Rach at Rach Against the Sewing Machine chose a duvet cover that looks like gorgeous watercolour flowers; and Char at T*Rexes and Tiaras chose the same pin up sailor girls duvet as me but used a completely different pattern so that hers uses that border print for the bodice and has a gathered skirt. Seriously, how much do you want to use ALL the duvet sets to make ALL the dresses now?! This one was next on my list but unfortunately is sold out now, boo, but no worries because there are a ridiculous amount of other gorgeous ones (and I’m totally not planning to go to Asda tonight just to look at them…definitely not…)
