A French House Dress You Say?

"Mais oui, bien sûr."

 an impressionist painting...?

Made from old linen tablecloths given to me by a friend.  This dress has three of them.  The pink top with border is one, the front floral panel is another, and the skirt portion with flowers and aqua border is the third.  And a very simply pattern to sew from Marcy Tilton.

Check out those biiiigggg pockets!

Can't you just see me going to Market to pick up a baguette, les fleurs, a cafe s'il vous plait, etc.?

c'est fini

I liked this so much (to make and to wear), 

I'm going to make another straight away.  

The tablecloths were well loved.  Many had tiny holes and spots.   I had to use nearly the whole cloth for the dress (no selectively placing pattern pieces).  So I mended or embroidered the areas that needed attention.

Sometimes overtly...

and sometimes more covertly.

Want to see more close-ups of the dress itself or the pattern it came from, go my Clothes for Spring page.

Meanwhile, I'll be with the Visibles at Patti's Not Dead Yet Style.  And Mis Papelicios' Share-in-Style: Pink and Bella's Secondhand First Share and Jane of Flight-Platform Living's Shiny T Tuesday.  You really must check out all the fabo parties.

Knocked Out by a Spring Cold

~ painting by Natsuo Ikegami ~

Two weeks and counting.  I surrendered during the first week.  No sewing!  Or reading... Mostly sleeping interrupted by deep coughing and nose blowing.  Not much eating either.  I must admit it's getting better, getting so much better after the second week (can't get much worse).  Still intermittent deep coughing, but I'm free to move about the cabin now and do a spot of sewing between mandatory naps.  yea! 

I made a raincoat B.C. (before cold) but haven't taken any pictures yet.  And I think I still want to fool around with the pockets a bit more...

And I've just finished my French house dress A.C. (after cold) made from old tablecloths someone gave me.  I just love it.  No pictures of that yet either.   I can only do so much on my reserve packs of energy.

I'll do that soon, promise.

I Made Stockings!

~ illustration by Kareem Iliya ~

Not as cool as these, but still...the kind you wear with garters.  ha.  I'll have to direct you back to my refashioned foray into garter belts.  Absolutely fabulous to this day.   See that preposterous post here.

And now for your viewing pleasure,  the black & white, cobbled together bits of stretchy fabric scraps, assembled to create one-of-a-kind (literally) stockings:

oh, yes.

see?  there's the band across the top.

and look at that design for the feet! 

Needless to say, I owe all the design factoring to Mari of the Rose Hips Tights & Stocking Pattern.  I didn't have enough scraps to go all the way, so thigh highs it was.  Elastic didn't work at all with this fabric, so I quickly resorted to my lovely garter belts, that I happen to have in both black and in white. To see the stockings up close go to my Clothes for Spring page.

Now it's time to get on over to the ever-lovely Patti of Not Dead Yet Style and mingle with the Visibles.   This just in:  Spy Girl's 52 PickMeUp Crazy Legs is on!  Check us out!

A Chicago Sewing Bloggers Meet-Up

And I was there!

Ok, I'm not in the picture, cuz I'm taking it.

And here's were we met/ went last Sunday:

The most amazing place on Earth, fabric-wise

Can you believe this place is in Chicago, in the Pilsen neighborhood, and I never ever went to it before!!!!  ooooooommmmmggggggg sums it up.  It's like discovering Tutankhamen's tomb, or Alibaba's cave, or ...

A little back story here.  All this time I'm wondering why are there no Chicago bloggers - sewing clothes ones.  Then one day I follow a lead to some recommended tights for an online indie pattern.  It's the Rose Hip Tights & Stockings Pattern by Seamsters Patterns and I buy it, download it, make it, like it and check out her blog.  Turns out Mari is from Chicago and also wonders where are all the Chicago sewing bloggers, but she goes a step further and actually asks the question.  And people answer.  Including me, even if it was a year later.  I immediately got a reply that the Chicago Sewcialists were meeting at Textile Discount Outlet in a couple weeks.  

Now let's see some pictures inside, yeah?

Layering Underthings

 Don't know where to start?

~ painting by John Lessore ~

Just sit tight and watch it all unfold...

Okay then, hurumph.  I started out.  One day.  Once upon a time.  Okay,   I needed a slip to go under the gauze snap-up dress I made recently.  I chose this ridiculous black & white print fabric of skull & crossbones alternating with pompous looking crowns (??) from my stash.  What really did it was the seam binding I made from some old psychedelic hot pink and purple paisley fabric.  Perfect for the neckline and arm scythe. Once I got going with it, I thought, Hey, this looks good enough to wear on it's own.  Only it was so sheer that, well, it needed its own slip. With the itty-bittiest of fabric left, I made a little kimono-y wrap to go over it.  I call this my slip dress, yes.

So now on to the real slip.  I used a satiny, stormy grey material that was definitely not see-thru.  But really, it was so plain, it was looking like nun's underwear.   Suddenly, I remembered I had all this pale, pale, really pale, wide pink lace in my stash. Perhaps I over-reacted when I added it to the neckline, the hem and both of the side slits.  You be the judge. The coolest part, I think, is that it shows out from under the slip dress - through no foresight of my own, mind you.

Wanna see some pictures? 

check out the beaded fringe

okay, after the break...