deadlycraft

I recently attended the wedding of a close friend in New Zealand.  If you aren't aware, early August in New Zealand is COLD!  Cue a lot of googling on what to wear to an (outdoor) winter wedding :)  I even made a pinterest board of ideas I also took inspiration from my #SewStyleHero as part of the theme month that was running via The Sewcialists .  You can read about that here . Here is what I came up with: I used a heavy stretch navy sequin ( Pitt Trading ) for the skirt... ...and a soft silvery beige colour stretch velvet (from Tessuti ) for the top. The skirt was self-drafted and designed to be as full and sequiny glorious as the amount of fabric i had would allow.  I will probably cut off the skirt now to make it more wearable in everyday life, though I loved the effect for a fabulous winter wedding. The top is the  Seamwork Astoria  and was a bit of a revelation.  This was my second Seamwork pattern and I really liked it.  I know it's tren

I recently had the opportunity to pattern test the new Ali Sweatshirt from Sew DIY . This test was very well-timed, as we were heading into winter in Sydney, as well as going off to even colder climes in New Zealand for a holiday. I made my test out of a super snuggly organic sweatshirt fleece which was from fabric.com about a million years ago.  It felt really good to finally use it for something! I made the scoop neck version and added some length in the bodice and sleeves, which is a pretty usual adjustment for me (I am six foot tall).  I might remove a touch from the sleeves if I made this again, but I do like how snuggly it is with the longer sleeve! The pattern has a shoulder yoke which offers opportunities to have a contrasting colour or fabric there (you can see a good example of this on the pattern page itself ) and can see where it is in the picture below. I should note at the point that the pattern has changed a little since I tested.  One of the common fee

I don't post a lot of kid makes these days - and to be honest, I don't make many!  When they wear school uniform 5/7, there isn't a lot of additional clothing required.  It's also possible I would far rather sew for me, as I don't grow out of things... However, we recently went to a winter wedding in New Zealand and couldn't find something for Isabelle to wear that was both warm and appropriate. This posed the challenge of what you should make to wear to a wedding in the middle of winter!  For Isabelle (aged 11) I knew that something with a bit of sparkle but still fairly young would be right.  She would also need sleeves! Here she is running around at the world's most spectacular wedding location: The bodice of the dress is a combination of the Made by Rae Skinny Flashback Tee on the top, with a RTW top she liked the fit of. I used a simple jersey for comfort (from Spotlight) which had some glittery dots on it.  I underlined it with a plain w