Monday 24 December 2012

Seasons greetings

A short post to wish you all Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

It feels a bit strange, since the weather feels completely unseasonal, but I'm sure we'll get used to it! Today is hot and tomorrow is expected to be about 26 degrees! Our jumbo prawns are ready for the barbie!

So folks I hope you all have a good one...

The tree is all ready...

And to whet your appetites, here is a picture of the Christmas cake I finished icing today!
  Hungry??

Merry Christmas all, may it bring all you wish for!

Sunday 23 December 2012

Our wedding...

Warning: picture heavy post!

Finally I've got the photos back from our wedding (well about a month ago!) and even though I didn't make my wedding dress, I know you're all than a little interested in the photos!

As I've said, I didn't make my dress. That was designed and made by Alfred Angelo! :-) I originally intended to make it, but when going out trying on dresses to find a style which I liked, I fell in love with this dress and realised it would be more heartache to make one than buy it ready made. With the year we've had moving from the UK to NZ, it was possibly a very wise move!

My shrug, however, was homemade (but not by me!) One of the girls at work does a lot of sewing and has made wedding dresses, she offered to make my shrug for me! I found this beautiful fur fabric in Fabric Warehouse here in Wellington. The exact same colour as my dress. I think the pattern was from the Burda website, but I've forgotten! It's made out of three pieces, so it fits snugly. The fabric is lined and I found a frog closure for a fastening, these came from Spotlight. So the shrug...

 Can you see the side seam? Carol picked the fur to completely hide the seam.
 
 Like the fabric?
The closure

So the day itself... dawned typically spring-like here in Wellington, wet and windy! The weather forecast mentioned things like don't go out unless your journey is necessary - I'm sorry, but mine was! The make-up girl came from over the Rimutakas and an hour after she drove over, the road was closed! That shows you what kind of day it was - I didn't care! My bridesmaid was Mr N's daughter and his brother came from China to be best man.

All these following photos were taken by our photographer and friend Cameron McIntosh.

 Hair up with sparkly bits
 The dress and shrug
 All my jewellery was made by hand to order from a company I discovered on the Internet called Gorgeous Jewellery
 Sparkly burgundy sandals
The flowers were gerberas, dark red and cream. I love gerberas, they are such smiley flowers!
 The church is Old St Pauls here in Wellington
Mr N and I assessing the weather afterwards!
 We had photos in the church!
 My lovely Mum
 Mum and Mr N discussing! :-)
 My dream car was our car for the day, a MkII Jaguar
 Finally outside photos by the Parliamentary Library with the Beehive (parliament) in the background
 Possibly my favourite photo

 For those of a sweet nature, our cake(s) cam from Cupcakes in Miramar

Tuesday 18 December 2012

A Five Dollar Vogue

Hello all, I'm still here. It's all been a bit busy lately with one thing or another.

I've been promoted at work and it's been quite a steep learning curve. Although I finally feel as if I'm using my brain again, which surely is a good thing?

Also Christmas started early with getting $80 worth of cards and presents in the post back to friends and family in the UK - ouch!

On top of that I've had extra rehearsals for choir. We sang The Messiah at the Michael Fowler Centre here in Wellington with the NZSO (New Zealand Symphony Orchestra) last Saturday. It was a blast, we've had great reviews and the buzz in the choir green room after the concert was amazing.

Sewing and even blog reading has gone on the back burner. I manage to read blogs on the bus to and from work, but it's not easy to comment using my mobile. I'm here and reading you're blogs, honest, just not commenting.

Anyways, this is a post I should have written eons ago and never got round to it...

This dress I call my Five dollar Vogue. Simply because it's a Vogue pattern and the fabric cost me the princely sum of five bucks. To those of you reading this from the UK, that's about £2.50!! Not bad, eh? Oh, you want to know more...

Well this is my second go at Vogue 8789. The first I made in September when I made view A. For this second one, I thought I'd make view B with the slash neck top. Again I made this is a bit of a rush, I wanted to wear it for the Wellington Bloggers meet-up.

The fabric..., well it was a single duvet cover from the local op shop! I saw the cover and thought I had to have it. And at five dollars what could I loose? I actually saw it one day and decided no, but couldn't get it out of my head and so went back the next day and bought it!

View B for this pattern actually has buttoned shoulders. There should be three buttons on each shoulder with loops. As pretty as this may be, muggins as usual was in a hurry and I decided I didn't have time to make this feature and I just did shoulder seams as normal. Well, that's what I thought, until I realised the facing for the arms and neck were in one piece... I ended up sewing the facing so far, then opening it right out to sew the shoulder seam in one go. The rest of the facing was stitched by hand. Sounds complicated, but it was how I did the shoulder seams for Vogue 8020. I didn't take any photos unfortunately, sorry, will try to remember another time.

Once I'd made up the bodice I tried it on and thought, help, that slash neck is really high... I really wasn't convinced.

Is that neck to high? I'm not convinced...
But don't you love that pattern?

Anyways, not really having much time to do anything different, I decided to go with it and hope it turned out OK.

The main alterations were to lengthen the bodice by an inch. It may be a wee bit too much with this pattern, but it certainly is too short otherwise. I've also put a pocket in the side seam. Well you all know how useful pockets are...

I also decided that I didn't want the skirt gathered, I'd rather pleat it. The sheeting is perhaps a tad stiffer than dress-making cotton, although I have to admit, this is a very soft sheet! I spent ages trying to work out how to do the pleats. I'd cut the skirt pieces using the pattern placing them on the fold so there was no centre seam front and back. The trouble was, I had to calculate the pleats myself, as for the life of me I couldn't workout how big they should be (and I'm a mathematician!) After about the fifth go, just as I was about to give up, I managed to suss them out - hooray! The pleats may not be completely even inside, but they certainly look it from the outside, they are all exactly one inch!

So the final photos...

Not the best I'm afraid, they were taken in our rumpus room/my sewing room/book room downstairs. And I forgot to take the belt off to show the pleats!

 I look far too serious in this!

 Not my best side!

 The obligatory twirl!

I do have to say this dress is a success! I really love it. Because of the grey pattern with white flower it doesn't look completely summery. It's possibly a wee bit tighter than my previous version of this dress, but the bodice is cut on the bias with view A and so will give more.

Oh and the best thing - if it gets dirty, I can chuck it in the machine and wash it with my bedding :-) He he! A dress I can tumble dry and not wash on a delicates wash!

Saturday 1 December 2012

The Great Wellington Patten Pyramid... another one!

This has now closed. Look out for another giveaway soon!

If you've seen the Curious Kiwi's post, here is another Patten Pyramid ready to go flying it's way through the post to one lucky winner from sunny Wellington, NZ.


Possibly like me you have been stalking the sewing blogasphere in the hopes of winning the pyramid which was originally started by Karen of Did you make that? Well here is your chance to win again! Oh, and Karen, you can certainly enter this!

Following our Wellington Bloggers meet-up we had lots (LOTS)  of patterns from our swap left over, so we decided it was time for another Pattern Pyramid, well seven to be precise!

So here is the selection from Nikki's Stitches... I have seven delightful patterns to send out through the post in Santa's sack!

A Style pattern which I would love to keep, but no, it's going in the swap, it's just a classic style which would be great as a blouse or dress.
A Simplicity pattern for that energetic man in your life

A great simple Style dress, perfect for the beach (well it is the first day of summer here in Wellington!)
Another fab easy Simplicity pattern, perfect for lightweight summer fabrics.

Butterick two piece set, waistcoats, trousers, skirts, blouse, what more can a girl ask for?
McCalls simple trouser and long skirt set.

Finally another Style pattern (oh I miss that pattern company!) with a knitted jacked and skirt trouser combo

What a great collection I have here to send out. And looking at these, I'd forgotten how much I used to use Style patterns.

I digress... On to the rules, we're using the same as those which Karen used earlier in the year...
  • Anyone, anywhere in the world, can enter by leaving a comment on this post bymidnight NZ time (GMT +13 hours)on Friday 7th December but you must have an active blog.
  • I will randomly select one winner, Person A, and post them the collection of 7 patterns.
  • Person A will then pick one pattern to keep for themselves, then host their own give-away. They will randomly select a winner, post the remaining patterns to Person B.
  • Person B will pick a pattern for themselves and promptly host their own give-away and post the remaining patterns to the winner, Person C. Person C will do the same and so on until there is a last pattern winner…you get the idea.
  • Some people like to replace the pattern they are taking with another from their stash, this keeps the pyramid going longer, but is not compulsory.
Please comment to say you're included and I'd love to know which pattern floats your boat. I can't guarantee this will travel on Santa's sleigh (he's a busy chap this time of year!)bearing in mind he wants all post by Monday if it's going any further than Australia! It's still certain to bring some festive joy to the winner!

Coming to another blog near you... the other Wellington blogger Pattern Pyramid giveaways.
Where will this end up this time?