Dressed for Spring

Well, spring has finally sprung! Now if only the grass would...these pictures look so blah with brown dead grass for background. Handsome isn't home to take pics so I tend not to venture to a new location without him. I'm just lazy like that.

This pattern is one of my favorites,(made before here). Simplicity 2444. I really love this retro silhouette and of course the pockets.  I actually made this dress a year ago and have been waiting until Easter to both wear it and post it. I made the belt from and old wool skirt that I had, each flower on the belt is made of many circles folded and sewn together. I love the combination of this outfit, polka dots, flowers, pearls and the spring color. I kind of feel like I'm eight years old, but more sophisticated. Just missing a crazy Easter bonnet.

Happy Resurrection Day!

Black , White and More of the White Stuff

On others blogs I follow, I see that spring has sprung. Lucky ducks. But not quite for those of us living on the east coast of Canada. We just had another snowfall! So here I am still wearing tights and a winter coat. So sad.

On a happy note, I can still wear this new dress with a cardigan or a blazer. This is the first time I used this Butterick 5455 pattern, which was a fairly easy project. I chose this bold black and white geometric print in a cotton stretch, it was sooo nice to work with!

I really like the pockets in this dress and luckily, I didn't have to make any fit alterations. I cut a straight size 12 and although you can't tell from these pictures, it fits me to a T. I omitted the back vent in this dress, I found that it had plenty of room to walk and I liked that it gave it a more tapered shape.

Procrastination

I have a huge basket of items in need of a little mending or altering that I never seem to get around to doing until the last minute before I decide that I want to wear it. Can we all say PROCRASTINATION? I thrift a dress or skirt that doesn't quite fit, is too long or needs attention of some sort with the intention to fix it immediately but then it finds its way into my "Project Basket". That basket should be renamed "The Procrastination Basket". This dress was buried in that basket and I found it just as I was packing for vacation and decided that I had to give it a last minute alteration. 

This White House Black Market dress was a couple sizes too big and just needed to be taken in on each side. Easy really, I just had to make sure that the waistband seams matched up. To do this, I have a new trick... match up the seams carefully then stitch one inch before and after the seam first before sewing the entire side seam. Then I check to make sure that the waistband seams match and if they don't, I only have a couple of inches to remove and not the entire side seam of the dress. When the waistband seams match perfectly, they are already basted together and won't shift when the entire side seam is sewn. Voila!

I wore this dress twice on our vacation, it had just the right amount of dressiness, that made me feel so ladylike in it. I think that it will be worn repeatedly this coming summer...hopefully we will have some tropical weather to go with it!