I got this gorgeous fabric at John Lewis for £2.75 a metre! Say whaaat? I was lusting after it all Christmas, which isn’t surprising. Open my closet and you’ll find the majority of my clothes are floral. In fact, I showed my Mum and she rolled her eyes and said ‘why does it ALWAYS have to be floral?!?’

The lady in John Lewis (I am telling you, we shall know each other by name soon, soon I tell you!) thought it would be a lovely fabric for a 50s/60s style dress – to which I wholeheartedly agreed after drooling over some of the vintage Vogue reissues. After some research, I decided to go with a Butterick reissue :

I know I’ll be doing without the bows, but I have no idea whether to go for the full skirted version or the slim version.

If you recall my Modcloth lust post, I bought some fabric to make the Night Flurries dress

It’s a bit darker in real life, but I hope it’ll do the job

So those are my next couple of projects – I’ve spent far too much money since coming back to Germany, so I’m staying away from the fabric places until I finish these/get paid!

Ohhhh I want iiiiit. It’s £25 sodding pounds though, and I refuse to pay that much for that little fabric! I’ve been searching in vain for similar lace, and the one I liked the most was this on ebay :

It’s not quite the same… and I’m not sure if I’ll find jersey fabric the same colour, so I might do the ruffle in the same lace fabric? If I’m buying a metre, I may as well use it after all! I checked in my local fabric shop today, and lace was selling for about 14.95 euros a metre… which still ends up cheaper than the top itself, but there wasn’t really anything that took my fancy.

As for what I’d wear it with… I am certainly not comfortable with wearing it belly out, so I was thinking of making some sort of black shift dress to go underneath, fairly body-con… I have to figure that out, as well as how to make the actual pattern!

Any ideas or suggestions out there as to how I can achieve this top? I think I have a pattern in mind that could be adjusted, but I’m not sure as of yet.

As for current projects, my skirt is being sewed as I type… well, not really, because I’m typing, ha! Oh, how I wish for a sewing pixie to do these things for me… I did cut out the McCalls pattern last night :

Pun the bodice parts on Sally for tidiness’ sake! Looks pretty crap like that though eh? Can’t wait until it’s done, I hope it comes out well. Bit concerned about the sizing, but I measured myself and it should be correct! … aaand I just noticed my washing visible in the background hahaha

If you look over to the ‘I read…’ list on the right, you’ll see some blogs from my fellow assistants, but also some two from people in the sewing world whose blogs I’ve been following regularly.

First off is Gertie’s New Blog For Better Sewing. This lady has a seriously cool project going on involving vintage sewing. If you want to read the details head to this post where she explains all about it, very eloquently too might I add. Worth following, her projects are so classy, as is her personal style, her discussion of issues concerning us seamstresses and her general writing style!

When I saw her version of this pattern on her website, I thought it was to die for :

 Click here to see Gertie’s version

From the colour, to the shape, to the exposed zipper… I’m in love! I thought I’d have to wait until next payday to get the pattern, but no!! As luck would have it, I searched on http://www.sewingpatterns.com/ and it was there! IN DOWNLOAD FORM! Exciting stuff! I also have fabric I can use for this – it’s a bit of a longshot, but I bought some teal fabric from Ikea in the hope of creating a jacket, but have really gone off the  idea since. I was so excited to have found this online at any rate!

So I thought back to the other seamstress I have on my blogroll, Sew I Thought…, and a gorgeous knit dress that she posted a little while back :

Sorry for the teeny tiny picture, but check out Sew I Thought’s version here, her fabric choice is gorgeous.

I’ve been dying to find a pattern to make a cute woolen dress to wear this winter, and I just found it I adore this pattern, the sleeves are so cute. Lucky for me, this was also on Sewing Patterns, available as a download for only $2.99!

I just need to find the right fabric for this one – I found some wool in Galeria (department store here in Germany) which was nice but a little on the expensive side. Fabric here is a little more expensive, but I’ve found that the cut-offs are always great value for money, and after all, there’s always Ebay.

So those are my next two projects at any rate! I’m so excited to have found both these patterns for such good value for money, I was worried I’d have to fork out a lot to get them. Maybe the second won’t get done for a while mind, I’ve banned myself from buying anymore fabric until I’ve finished with the stuff I have! I’m finshing off a skirt from Weekend Designer at the moment, it’s a bit of a pain in the arse because I must have got my measurements all wrong when drawing up the pattern, but never mind eh!