Bow backed Nettie

Hi all, I hope you've had a lovely weekend.  We've had, what I suspect, is the last of the summer sunshine which has made everything very cheery and I've been able to relax and enjoy catching up with some friends.  At the risk of becoming a Closet case files fan girl, I've got another Closet case files pattern to show you today; a Nettie dress.  I love my previous Nettie dress and bought this fabric to make another, months ago.  I found it on the Birmingham rag market, on a trip with my boyfriends family.  They were very long suffering as we did a tour of the market and Barry's. I got the stripey jersey for my boat necked lady skater on that trip too.

This time I wanted to make a Nettie hack that I had spotted on Tilly and the buttons a while ago, the bow back was really calling to me.  I used the tutorial that Tilly had posted but obviously used the dress version of the Nettie pattern.

The bow is not lopsided but it's surprisingly difficult to photograph a back!

The guy who sold me the fabric claimed it was a cotton jersey but I'm not sure I believe him as it doesn't feel like any cotton jersey I've ever seen.  Although I haven't been bothered to do a burn test to find out, I think I'm dressed in 100% poly ponte!  This fabric has very little stretch which means my new Nettie is definitely not a dress to wear on a body-conscious day.

I got my boyfriend to take some pictures of me in this on a lovely walk around Morden Hall Park.  It was such a perfect autumnal day and we got some lovely pictures.

Also some daft photos where we established that I am  not suited to being a model, you should have heard me whinging about the sun in my eyes and uncomfortable lumpy bits of the tree poking into me.  Clearly I am not prepared to suffer for my art.  

I wanted to enter this dress for the 'dressed to the nines' category over on sew independent so we also took some photos once I was ready for an evening out.

Belt from New Look and sparkly shoes from Dorothy Perkins.

If any of you reading are following the Sew Independent 2015 contest could I make a polite request for your vote!  Have a lovely week all and happy sewing.

Sallie jumpsuit

When Heather first released the Sallie jumpsuit I went crazy for it and bought it almost immediately.  However the summer was really busy and I didn't do as much sewing as I would have liked so I only got round to making it now.

I used a cotton jersey that I bought a few years back at Marche St. Pierre when I was in Paris.  I think that it's such a great fabric for this jumpsuit but I should have paid a bit more attention to pattern placement (as usual) as some of the circle bursts are highlighting areas that are not necessarily my best features.

The pattern is really well drafted and the instructions really clear, however, I need a giant post-it note to myself to me that I should not make garments that I haven't tried before on my overlocker.  I made a couple of really silly mistakes when sewing this up and unpicking overlocked seams is the worst!  In fact it's so awful that this poor jumpsuit got put in the naughty corner for a couple of weeks while I huffed and played favourites with other, non-overlocked projects.

This is my entry for the everyday casual contest over on Sew independent.  A jumpsuit is the perfect way of looking put together on a day when really what you want to wear is pyjamas.  However, I did take my Sallie out for a non-everyday outing with my family

 to Kew gardens.

Thanks to my sister for all the pictures of me!  I took all the pictures of ridiculous plants which amused me greatly! 

How great are these?

They had these great Palm/tropical plant houses at Kew which contained many pretty and/or fun plants!

Like this:

Or this:

Happy Monday folks, I hope the rest of your weeks go ok and that you all have secret pyjamas to wear!