Expressing my love for the African wax print

Today I have a very colourful dress to show you.  This is my fourth African wax print dress and each time I wear the others I swear that I'm going another as they make me so happy.  I feel like they fit my style well as they are colourful without being novelty and I also love the great interactions I get with other people when I wear them.  People come up to me on the street or the hospital that I work in and talk to me about the prints which is awesome as Londoners tend not to do that often.

 

I used the Sew Over It Ultimate shift dress pattern.  I've made this pattern so many times but I'd never made the frilled shoulders before as I'm not a massive frill fan but I don't know what got into me and I just went for it and I'm really pleased as these frills I love. 

 

Despite making this pattern a lot of times, each time I do, I think that I need to lengthen it.  I think I forgot because several of them are winter versions that I wear with tights.  However, this is definitely a summer version and it feels like it should be a smidge longer.  However its been doing me well in this heat wave we've been having. 

And just because if there's ever a giant pink flamingo around you, you should definitely give it a cuddle, particularly if you're wearing a dress to match!

 

There's nothing subtle about this

Hi folks, I hope you all had lovely bank holiday weekends and are not too blue at the return to work.  I spent a really lovely weekend with family in Wales and managed to persuade my sister to take some fun photos for this blog post.  A couple of months ago on a shopping trip to Walthamstow, I bought this royal blue and pink African wax print cotton.  I couldn't resist but as the colours were pretty vibrant I figured that it really could only be used as an item of summer clothing.

I've been wanting to make a sleeveless Vintage shirt dress since I made my sleeved version.  This fabric seemed like a good option for my next version.  From the last version I knew I needed to make certain alterations, I sized down in the bodice and lengthened it by 5cm.  I then took 5cm out of the skirt.  However, I seem to have lost more length in the skirt as this dress is considerably shorter than my last version!  I'm not quite sure how this happened.  I like it for this dress as it adds to the summery vibe but I must pay attention for the next version.

I used some plain black buttons that I had in my stash. I figured that I really needed to go as simple as possible with the buttons on this. Although I did sew them on with royal blue thread to match the dress! This is also one of those occasions where I should have paid attention to pattern placement as the slightly off placement of the circles on each side has slightly the effect of an optical illusion. As I don't have to spend much time looking at it, it's not a problem for my brain but if my friends start going cross eyed and throwing up around me, it may be a problem!

I watched the Great British Sewing Bee with a group of lovely ladies pulled together by Ana and Elena.  When international week happened, we all went a bit nuts for the fabulous dresses made from African wax fabric.  I'm so pleased to finally have my own version but there's no doubting you definitely stand out in fabric this vibrant.

I'm sure my aunt an uncle would have been delighted had they seen us taking these photos on their picnic table!  They also had a tree house which I happily climbed up!

Thanks so much to my lovely sister for taking the pictures and putting up with me as I danced round the garden in my dress and demanded that she take even more photos!  I really love this very summery dress which hopefully I can eek out a bit more wear from if the good weather holds but it will definitely form part of my holiday wardrobe for when I go to Lisbon in a few weeks.  

Seriously, how are the 80s vintage?

Have you all been enjoying #vpjuly on Instagram? I've loved seeing everyone's makes and vintage inspiration.  Today I have another make towards my vintage pattern pledge, however, it's a bit different from my usual style. As a child of the 80s, looking at childhood photos means exposure to a lot of bad clothes and even worse hair styles.  So 1980s patterns have never appealed to me much.  Nor is the idea of thinking of myself as Vintage!  Although I may just have to get over this.  

A month or two back, I was on a weekend away in Bristol and spotted this pattern in a charity shop.  Despite being from the 80s, it actually appealed to me, reminding me slightly of the True Bias Southport dress which I have been considering trying for a while as I wanted an easy to pull on casual summer dress.  As the loose fitting, elasticated waist dress is not usually a style that I go for, I appreciated giving it a go with a pattern that only cost me 50p.

I went rooting around in my stash for a suitable fabric and found bits of a lovely chambray which I think may have come from my Grandma's stash and some scraps of a red and white striped shirt.  I thought these would work as a perfect, semi nautical combo.  I made some adjustments to the pattern for a number of reasons.  The skirt is slightly narrower than the pattern pieces as I didn't have enough fabric to cut the full width, I still think it's plenty full enough.  The pattern calls for piping round the neck and arm but I just used binding as I thought piping at the neck and arms would be a bit weird. I did make piping for the pockets though, gotta love a bit of piping.  The tiny amounts of the red and white fabric that I was working with meant that many of the bindings and the belt are pieced together.

I kinda ignored the instructions and made it up as I went along so I can't really comment on what they are like.  They did call for a 1/4" elastic at the waist but I used 1" elastic as I wanted the waist to be more emphasised.  Since this isn't a fitted style, I only had to make one fit adjustment, which was to take it in under the arms by a good 6cm.

Hmm I must stand up straighter!

While it was lovely to work with and feels lovely to wear, this fabric creases like crazy.  I ironed this about a million times but its still so creased.  I guess that's part of the style.  I've never worked with chambray before so I have no idea if this is normal or not.

Overall this is a cute, wearable casual summer dress but don't love it, I guess I still need some work to be converted to the 80s, although thinking about it, one of my favourite makes from last year was this 80s top so maybe there is hope for me after all.  Oh well, I've already planned my next vintage make and it's another 70s one so hopefully my favourite vintage pattern decade won't let me down.