More birds and circle skirts...........

This is another new dress made from cute bird print cotton. This time I combined a halter neck bodice with sweet heart neckline and a circle skirt.

I paired the dress with the same blue petticoat from this outfit post AND under that I popped the red one for super fullness. My dresses seem to get bigger and bigger hahahahahaha.

This combination is great for photo shoots but not very practical in real life. I don't know how the real Peggies, Betties and Joanies used to do it??? I am willing to suffer greatly for the odd occasion but imagining this hoohaa every day??? 

I have also receive my Betty Draper dress fabric for the Mad Men challenge. It's beautiful and I can't wait to get my hands and scissors on it. I will try and make it up this week but can't promise anything. I have family here at the moment and we are going to celebrate my husbands grandma's birthday this weekend. 

Weekend activities........Lots of them and cute bike outfits are back....

This weekend was so much fun. I am over the moon that Spring is finally here and has been around for more than just one or two days. Lets hope it stays like that for a while.
This means my husband and I are pretty much spending the whole time (this is weekend free time of course) outside. We just can't sit still.

I can happily announce that bike rides and cute bike outfits are back!!!!!!!!!!!! Betty Schwinn has been "around the block" a few times already but it wasn't worth taking pictures. I was still stuck in good old jeans and shirts and nothing worth mentioning. I get boring in the winter when it comes to clothes....
This weekend however dresses and colours came back. Welcome back, how I have missed you.

Note: I am wearing shorts!!!!!! It was cold to begin with though

Saturday started very un-vintage-y in running clothes. 12 miles before it got too warm. I have just over one month of training left before the half marathon in April. That is how this crazy girl is celebrating her 30th birthday and 4year runniversary. Maybe I am trying to prove myself that being 30 isn't so bad if I can manage to run that far???

I am wearing this dress from many many moons ago...

The rest of the day was spend on the back of our bikes cruising the country side with the odd pub stop here and there. You've gotta reward yourself right?

 And today was more of the same. More cycling, a picnic and 2 pubs. A relaxed weekend.

this dress is another one from the past, here

We nearly kidnapped this cute little fella.

He was just running around on his own and then hung out with us when we had our picnic. We tried calling the number on his collar to find out who he belonged to but the number didn't work. Seriously people, what are you thinking? Do you want your doggy back? If not I'll have him. He was the sweetest dog ever.

He started following us but after a while we reached a house along our route and he stopped following. The garden wasn't fenced so I assume this was his home. I hope it was.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and enjoyed sunshine like we did here? What did you do?

Not the Betty Draper dress yet but I am sure she'd wear this one, too.

Another sunny day, another Spring-y/Summer-y dress....

I had this tulip fabric in my stash for ages and knew I wanted to make a dress from it. I also knew it would be quite striking once transformed into said dress. But after trying it on for the first time, I was really over the moon with it.

It's nothing special really as far as the pattern goes but I think the fabric print and the colours are enough to turn heads. The bodice ties at the shoulders and a full (VERY FULL!!!) gathered skirt.

I made a red petticoat to go with this one for extra poofy Betty goodness!!!

without the poof

What do you think? Betty or not Betty?

Spring has sprung and birds are everywhere

I think I can finally say Spring has finally arrived. I know officially not until Wednesday but the weather was just so beautiful here today.

This means pretty dresses must come out and be worn after months and months wrapped up in winter clothing. My blog has been lacking outfit posts lately. The main reason is that I do not have a lot of winter clothes that I made myself. I am just not very inspired by the cold season.

Anyways, this is the first of a small collection of bird print dresses I have made recently. They have been patiently waiting in my wardrobe for today and hopefully many more warm and sunny days to come.

The dress is a shirt waist dress (you know my favourite type of dresses) with a full circle skirt. I also made the petticoat underneath.

I also liked it paired with pink accessories

preferably without the blue petticoat and a pink one instead. That is still in the making...

I hope you got a chance to enjoy the lovely weather today.

Mad Men challenge update and inspiration

I am behind on the Mad Men challenge and probably will be for a little longer. This is not because I am not working on it but because the fabric I have chosen for my project is not available until later this month. I shall be patient.

I have had a good look around the interwebs to find the dress to copy. It's not easy with all the beautiful fashion in the series and all the wonderful characters. At first I couldn't decide which character I wanted to chose and then of course which dress???

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At fist I thought Peggy as I would probably get most wear out of one of her wardrobe pieces.

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 Then I thought Joan as I looooooooooooooooooooooooove her style but unfortunately I am just not blessed with her shape. I would need major sock support to fill a Joanie.....

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I also love Trudy's wardrobe but couldn't find any good pictures online of something I wanted to make.

So in the end I picked the beautiful Betty Draper as my major inspiration.

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 I know there are many other stylish women in the series (show me one that isn't stylish) but I wanted to stick with one of the leading ladies.

I just recently started re-watching all seasons and in season one episode 2 (I believe it's episode 2) Don, Betty, Roger and his wife are out to dinner together and Betty is wearing a gorgeous white/floral print dress with a huge blue sash. I am absolutely in love with that dress and can see myself twirling around in it on Summer functions and events.

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 There are not too many pictures of it online but it's basically the one the Betty Draper doll is wearing.

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I decided to make the dress and sash out of this lovely floral print cotton and a matching blue plain cotton.

 I am also planning on making a matching petticoat to go all poof Betty style. Hopefully I get this finished in time for April. My husband and I have booked a little short trip to the Isle of Wight. It would be nice wearing Betty's dinner dress out to dinner myself.

Are there any other Betty-dress-sewing-Mad-Men-Challenge-participants?

What I've been up to lately...

It's time for a little catch up of what I have been doing since my last post. I have not been hiding. Just busy with a  variety of things.

I have been working on a bunch of special customer orders including a satin and lace halter dress to be worn to a wedding this month. I hope my customer Amy is going to have a great day twirling around in this little number (and hopefully she will let me have a picture)

I also enjoyed working on another wedding guest outfit in beautiful taupe silk dupion. 

The wedding this dress is going to be worn at is also this month. I am again hoping for an action shot very soon. There is nothing better than seeing dresses on the person they are meant for.

I also volunteered to try out Suzy's first sewing pattern, which I looooooooooooooove and really enjoyed sewing. Suzy, the feedback will be coming your way soon. Since this is Suzy's pattern and dress to reveal, I will only post a little sneak preview of the dress in progress. 

I had help from my kitty assistant seamstress friend as usual when sewing for myself. I really value her opinion, you know? ;-D

I am hooked on using lace again. Just love, love love lace. If you see my pinterest, you might think I am a little obsessed with it.

I have also been training a lot lately, preparing to run a half marathon in April and hopefully a full marathon later this year (my husband and I are currently on the waiting list on place 14 and 15 so hopefully by October we will be able to still get a place....can't believe how quickly those races fill up)

I have seen I am in good company in Bloggerland with Fleur training hard for the London marathon and Meg running an epic half marathon in cute fancy dress.

My husband Dave and I ran a 10k race just over a week ago. I ran a new personal best of 54:20 on a very hilly course. 

Any other running and sewing bloggers out there?