HYDRANGEA PRINT BOMBSHELL DRESS with 3D SWEETHEART PETAL BUST

Here is my latest creation - and so far, my absolute favourite!
(Please click on the images for greater detail)

I adore hydrangea flowers, and have several large bushes where I live. Of course, they are suffering in our drought. But still, the lush blue-purple fairly vibrates with intensity! I think of them as a very "old" flower, rather 'olde worlde' and nostalgic. So when I came across this wonderful cotton fabric on-line, I had to have it! It turns out it sells out rather quickly, so I had to wait to get my hands on some. Of course, having yards of fabric mailed over from the US is not a cheap process, so to begin with I bought just enough for two dresses (or so I thought).




I took my time deciding what to do with it - I almost couldn't bare to cut it! But then I came across some artificial hydrangea flowers when out browsing a craft store one day, and I had a 'Eureka!' moment. I knew what I had to do. And I had the perfect olive vintage taffeta with which to pair the lush hydrangea and raspberry print cotton.





So, it's a high-waisted 8-gore skirt attached to a sweetheart-shaped bodice, with matching bolero. The tiny jacket is rather structured and square shouldered, giving a small nod to the 1940s shoulder-line rather than the typical, more rounded shoulder of a 1950s bolero. The skirt has a 141" hem sweep - so it turned out I only had enough to make one dress after all! So, thus far, it's OOAK (one of a kind), in a size ML. It's available in my etsy store! More pics below.

SUMMER FUN DRESS - Kaffe Fasset fabric

I very rarely get to make myself anything - or more accurately, get to make and KEEP anything - but I just ran myself up a new sundress and I will definitely be keeping this one!
It's made from my all-time fave Kaffe Fasset fabric, Flower Baskets in duck egg blue (sadly the colours are really flattened by the flash), a fabric which I'm pretty sure is out of print. The pattern is a mish-mash of a couple of different styles that I threw together, but is basically an empire-line tulip skirt style.



Okay, yes, it's quilting fabric, but who cares? I use drapery and furnishing fabric and all sorts of things to make clothes (please see my previous post about garments made from table linen).