And it was called yellow – last dress of winter

* I moved to WordPress, I used to blog over at cosercosas.blogspot.com . I changed because I prefer the comments handling and layout options better here *

*** BTW Sorry for the uninspired post, but I am currently nursing a hangover… Like Heather from the Great British Sewing Bee would say, I drowned in a bucket of gin(-tonic) last night…  ***

A lot of sewing has been going on around here, taking pictures just isn’t really happening right now. A combination of drab weather and workload of my husband-photographer are the main reasons.

So far I have made 2 Anna’s, one shirt for my man, an Albion, two man-trousers which were an absolute fail, a muslin for my Bossy-challenge and this Peony. The rest will eventually get up here, I just can’t say when… I have ordered a few patterns online and bought burda’s and patrones magazines and made a lot of future sewing plans and am working on my first Cambie dress. I’m really excited to see how that turns out…

This is my third Peony so far, you can see the others here and here. So that makes this my most used pattern, and I love every single version! This is the last thing I sew for winter, it’s about time the temperature goes up and the sun shouldn’t play hide and seek behind the clouds anymore…

For this one I used a yellow coloured wool I found on a remnants table somewhere. I love to sew with wool, it’s very well-behaving under the machine and presses really easily, and it is a dream to wear.

I wanted to do something different for the third Peony, a little pattern hack if you will, so I changed the back zipper for a button closure. To do this, I just extended the pattern piece with 1 cm at the center back seam and then lined the entire bodice. The new center back sits at 0.5 cm from the edge so that is where I put the buttonholes. If you want, you can just do the same for the skirt part as well.

I have wanted to use trim for a long time now, and I found this green sparkly trim in a haberdashery around the corner from my house. The lady behing the counter is super friendly, so first I made her pull out all kinds of trim in green and purple. After I finally decided on the bling, I wanted coördinated buttons, so she just kept pulling out box after box of green buttons. She told me to take my time, while she was busy with other customers. I think I was in there for over an hour before I finally decided on the buttons…

The waistband on my dress is 80cm and one leaf of the trim is 5 cm, so there was no tricky business involved in matching the pattern on the sideseam. I realized last week that I am now more demanding when it comes to my sewing. I was thinking of wearing a skirt I made a few years ago, but in the end left it in the closet because the total lack of pattern matching was driving me out of my mind. I think that skirt will make a trip to the second hand store real soon.

I didn’t gather the skirt because of the weight of the wool, but I made pleats instead. Luckily when doing the math for the pleats, I wasn’t hung over…

The plan was to put a zipper in the side seam but because of the bulk of the trim (the shinies are sewn to a felt base and is pretty thick) I couldn’t get it to sit right and close at the same time, so I left out the zipper. This makes it impossible for me to put on the dress on my own. It is also impossible to put on the dress while wearing underwear. I don’t have a picture of the process, but there is a lot of grabbing and tugging on body parts involved. Thank God I decided to make useable buttonholes and not just sew a fake buttonplacket…

A lot of love has been invested in the making of this dress. And yes, you can replace the word ‘love’ with ‘hand-sewing’ in that sentence. The trim is sewn on by hand, the buttons of course, the hem is blind-hemmed by hand -I couldn’t be bothered to get my machine out, change the tread and figure out again how the machine blind hem is done- , the zipper was sewn in by hand before I ripped it out again and the lining from the bodice is sewn to the waistseam by hand… I actually love the whole hand-sewing thing. At first it bothers the crap out of me, but after a while, I find it relaxing and I get a great feeling of accomplishment when I finish something by hand.

These pictures were taken at one of our favourite spots in the city, the lighthouse at Cabo Mayor. There is a great walk from the beach up to the lighthouse and the view from up there is spectacular. The best moment is when the sun is setting behind the lighthouse, absolutely breathtaking!