The BBQ Dress

I think you’ve seen glimpses of this dress loads of times already but I just haven’t gotten around to doing a proper post! 

You might recognise the pattern as Sewaholic’s Cambie. I’d been swooning over it for a while but I just couldn’t justify the £13 price tag at that point in time. Then came the (look away now) giveaway and I got a voucher with which I could buy the Cambie! (As well as Thurlow and Saltspring, yay!) 

I bought this fabric with the full intention of it becoming a Cambie. It’s a quilting style cotton from Fabricland and it was only £3.50 a metre. I love their cotton prints and you can never go wrong with the price. They’re good quality too- I’ve never had any issues with fading or bleeding in the wash. Now you can see why most of my projects are made with cotton!

The great thing about this dress, as demonstrated in these two photos, is that despite its bright, floral, summery nature, it can actually be worn with tights or bare legs so I’ll get year-round use out of it! 

So the dress itself- I cut a size 16 originally because the bust size matched mine, however, in my haste to get it made, I didn’t really switch on my brain and think about the fact that it’s designed for a B cup so of course everywhere else was HUGE on me!

I took a bit in on the side seams and the front darts to overcome the waist gaping, plus I usually wear it with a belt so that pulls it in a bit and you can’t really tell. The neckline was a bigger issue- it was just too wide and came out to my shoulders so my boobs were just out, constantly. Not a good look. Never mind the fact that the sleeves kept falling down and hung halfway down my arms.

To solve this I cheated a bit. I created a little tuck/pleat/fold thing at the edge of the neckline and stitched it down. It pulled the sleeves up and in and the neckline in to give me some modesty. You can’t really tell it’s there. I mean, it wouldn’t win me anything on the Sewing Bee but if anyone’s getting that close to my boobs anyway I doubt they’re looking at the stitches on my dress 😉

I mean, it doesn’t fit perfectly, but I’m happy enough to wear it and I’ve definitely learnt my lesson for next time. I’ve done a full FBA on my next version and something a little crazy with the darts. Unfortunately, I screwed up the pocket placing and instead of spending 10 minutes ripping it out I’ve put it away for a month. That’s logical, isn’t it?

Aptly named the BBQ dress because it has attended precisely 4 BBQs this year. And, as you can see, it allows me to save goals with ease.

 

The Outfit Along Outfit

Hey guys!
First off I would like to sincerely apologise for my absence of late. I’ve been busy getting a new job!
Remember in my goals post I said I wanted one? Well, I made it happen! I am now going to be a full on teacher, which meant a lot of my month was filled with planning, interviewing, all the fun stuff. But now I’ve got 6 weeks off and by golly will I make it count.

Have you guys heard of Andi and Lauren’s Outfit Along? If you haven’t, it’s kind of too late now as the deadline is today. Unless you’re some kind of super knitter or have Bernard’s watch. (God I would kill for Bernard’s watch) 

The idea was to create an outfit, 1 knitted, 1 sewn piece, that complemented each other and you would wear. A knit along and a sew along were hosted by Andi and Lauren respectively with official patterns and we were given 2 months.

2 months? I can easily make 5 outfits in that time……

Turns out I did just 1. And here it is!

 

The cardigan is the ‘official’ pattern- Myrna by Andi Satterlund. 

When she first announced the new pattern I was kind of meh about it. I didn’t like the short sleeves and it was all pretty boring. 

Remember when I said that about Miette?

Yeah… turns out I love Myrna! I lengthened the sleeves here but ever since I did that I’ve been thinking about how nice a short sleeve cardigan would be- that’s next on the list!

I knit this in Drops Karisma, Wine. I bought 7 skeins, planned it all out so I’d have 1 skein each for the sleeves, 5 for the body and it would be perfect. I finished and thought it was a little short but no more yarn and I can deal, only to find another skein!!

I keep telling myself I’ll go back and add some more ribbing but we all know I definitely will not do that. Once something’s done, it’s done. No takesies backsies. 

 

The buttons for this thing took me bloody ages to find.

Did you know Minerva crafts have approximately 27902645782398365490 different types of brown button? I’m estimating, the figure might be a couple off.

But seriously, I think it took me at least 6 hours to find these buttons. Worth it though, they’re perfect! They’re these 18mm crendon buttons with little flowers on them and they’re so smooth and shiny.

And whilst we’re talking about buttons can we just add in how bloody ridiculous with them I am? Remember my previous button dilemmas? I had another.

The pattern calls for 5 buttons. 5. Knowing my previous disasters and thinking I had added in an extra buttonhole on the V, I ordered 6 buttons. 6, to be safe.

They arrived, I stroked their smooth shiny-ness for a while and went to attach them. How many buttonholes did I have? 7. 7 effing buttonholes. Just incase more buttonholes wanted to appear on me I ordered another 3 buttons. I sewed them all on and 7 buttons looked ridiculous! I showed Mark who doesn’t usually give a toss about sewing/knitting and he burst out laughing followed by ‘that’s made my day’

So I cut out every other one and how many buttons did I require? 

4.

Ridiculous.

 

Anyway, whilst I was ordering said buttons I ordered my dress fabric from Minerva too. It’s a balloon print polycotton that was like £2.99 p/m or something and you can tell. It feels very cheap and online it looked like it had a blue background but in reality it’s white. Still, not one to waste fabric, I made it up and I’ve had a few people tell me they like it so I guess it doesn’t look cheap from a distance (just don’t get too close or you’ll hear it crunch!)

I’m hoping it’ll soften up with a few washes and a tumble dry. 

The pattern is Sewaholic Cambie with a modified skirt. this is actually not the first Cambie I’ve made but the other one remains unblogged. The post is written, it just (altogether now) needs photos. This one only got photographed due to OAL time pressures or I’m sure it would sit for 3 months too. 

I did an FBA on this version and spread the dart into 3 since I have to take in 6 inches through my waist. A 3 inch dart results in very Madonna-esque nipple action.

It’s still a tad big- I’ll admit to just eyeballing the darts which probably contributes to the bagginess but it’s a little loose down the sides too so on version 3 I reckon I’ll have it down. (And I will measure, I promise!)

Shall I tell you a secret?

I didn’t hem the dress. The selvedge isn’t selvedgy, no little holes, no weird pattern issues, it just stops so why make extra work when we all know I hate to hem?!

Oh, and I got Mark to take photos for me and he likes to mumble and not tell me what’s going on so I have some excellent outtakes for you

I think I was in the middle of saying something like ‘can you actually pronounce some words and tell me if you’ve taken a picture please?’

‘What? Open your mouth, have you taken a picture yet?’

And finally, the classic stretch out the cardi pose

 

Did anyone else join the OAL?