my first dress

This feels very unusual to talk about something non-knitting related with you, but! it is to do with making because yes I made that dress you see in the photo above! It was my cousin’s wedding at the weekend and a few months ago I was feeling very uninspired looking through all my usual places I get dresses from, even vintage places weren’t coming up trumps so, of course, buoyed up by watching the Great British Sewing Bee I decided I would make myself a dress..!

I knew I wanted quite a simple shape, I do quite a bit of sewing with my cushions and stuff but that’s all quite rough and ready and I did bits and pieces of patchwork at college – so I am not scared of my machine, however, I thought I would ease myself in. I went for this pattern, and again inspired by the Sewing Bee I used an African Wax Fabric which I bought from here. The pattern has you line the dress but because I was using quite a heavy weight cotton I didn’t do that (and I’m glad, I would have been roasting!) I just half lined the bodice. I do have a cheapo dressmakers dummy (usually seen modelling my vintage knitwear) and I thought I was quite a standard shape but I had to do loads of rejigging to get the bodice to fit, darts here there and everywhere! For once in my life though I did try and go slowly and get it to fit as well as I could. I also apparently have a very short torso because I had to lop loads off to have the skirt at the thinnest bit of my waist! after I got the bodice to fit the skirt was very easy and it probably took me a couple of days (one full Sunday and a few nights) to get the whole thing finished.

The weight of the fabric made the dress very good for twirling as you can see, and I did lots of Shetland dancing at the wedding – which involves lots of birling! I’m really pleased with how my dress came out and it makes me feel a lot braver about making more clothes for myself. As well as a large yarn stash I also have quite a lot of fabric (your so surprised. Not) Thank you to Ingrid for taking a few picture of me in my dress :)

The decorations at the wedding were lovely so I thought I’d share a photo of the hall where we had the meal and dance. So Congratulations to Aidan and Carly, it was a beautiful wedding.

It has actually been quite warm in Shetland the past couple of weeks so I haven’t had too  much knitting mojo although I have started my Crofthoose Hat for the KAL in the new Shetland Heritage Naturals which are beautiful so I’m sure ill be back soon to share more..!

Happy Knitting (or sewing..) Speak soon, xxxx