So cool even non-royalists would approve. Probably.

Just in case you were living like a medieval ascetic in a cave without access to the outside world for the last six months, there was a tiny understated royal wedding this morning. The dress was gorgeous.

Attention sewing dorks: there's heaps of information about the dress and construction here.

Obviously, I would have lost my sewing blogger credentials without mentioning the dress but there's added motivation: my good friends at The Life Craft have been reconstructing the dress since it was first spotted this morning! Seeing the progress pics on Twitter have been fantastic, like this one of the bodice with lace overlay:


But you can also catch the live-stream webcam action here! They're just attaching the back skirt and the lovely model is waiting in the wings for Final Dress. Go have a look-see before they finish. Very impressive.

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Was gutted, got gadget, made glove.

We've had our Canon Powershot for approaching five years now and although it's a decent camera and mostly does the trick, I've become increasingly frustrated with its inability to cope with taking pictures in anything less than heavenly sunshine. Ummm, Canon? I live in Scotland. This camera is obsessed with it's own flash. Outdoor pictures when overcast- flash goes off.

Those things are called 'clouds', camera. You don't need a flash.

Indoor pictures even in glorious natural light- flash goes off. Obviously, my fingers are manually dexterous enough to turn off the flash but then everyone must stay perfectly still. Or you get hands like Pan's Labyrinth:

Those things are called 'windows', camera. They let light in. You don't need a flash.

Due to the rain all of our pictures from the wedding were taken indoors and I was gutted to find shot after shot after shot of blurry people, over-exposed auto flashes, or over-dark muddy messes. Quick and Dirty photo editing can only do so much when the light is totally off.


So in my sadness over having a bunch of sub-standard pictures of a super-standard day, I've upgraded my Canon to a model that is equipped to handle lots of tricky lighting conditions and moving targets. Obviously, above picture of new camera has been taken with now defunct camera which explains why the light balance is off. I cannot take pictures of new camera using new camera, that is too post-modern. But I can take a picture of the same camera cozy:


Isn't that much better? Startling, I know. Joking aside, I've had a tinker and it is 600% better and has lots of nifty features for me to have fun with.


For those of you who are like, 'Dammit, Amanda, just tell me about this camera case', it's a Japanese canvas from the stash, lined with my magic-match-everything-fabric, a neoprene inner lining for protection and a velcro closure. I chose the robots because geeky gadgets get geeky coverings, and I may also let Steven use the camera and my gender enforcing friends assure me that robots are for boys.

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The Reluctant Rose blouse

I bought this fabric a couple of weeks ago when the plan was still for a circle-skirted dress for the wedding. I wouldn't say it is a print I'd normally be drawn to but with a 50's style dress and full pettiskirts I think it would have looked more rockabilly than romantic.

But for the uber-girl, it was perfectly acceptable in it's romantic state. With a channel of polka-dot binding and a bit of elastic, a peasant tunic acquired a flounce.

Speaking of flounces, the tiny girl model spent the afternoon in a fury after falling off a wall at the school. And then down some stairs. Thirty seconds after I told her to get down because that exact scenario would happen.

Her attempts to look continuously furious were not entirely successful.

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Simply scooters

Looking back at my photos yesterday, I realised that I hadn't made any clothes for the kids (wedding dress excepted) in almost two months. After the complicated and somewhat fraught sewing marathon in the run-up to the wedding, I felt like I needed to make something easy and soothing.

A simple peasant top with puff sleeves and an a-line tunic length was in order.

I had thought of complicating it with mixing in other fabrics, and adding some features for interest, but this scooter print is so lovely I decided to just keep it simple.

I am in love with our garden at the moment with the sun shining and petals from the flowering trees carpetting the grass.

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Wedding Redux

For the record, Maia is incapable of taking a picture without making her tongue a feature

We had a lovely day yesterday at the wedding. Maia's puffed sleeve party dress was a hit and perfectly amenable for throwing some shapes on the dance floor.

The kids were fantastic and charming and managed to stay up five hours later than normal. Guess who still woke up at 6AM? Need a clue? He looks like this:

Regretfully, I can't show you a single picture of me in Final Dress with accessories (the shoes are black and the bag green for the interested) as not a single picture was taken. It's hard to comprehend how documenting the minutiae of the dress and me in the dress is not as important to other people. And taking a picture of myself in the bathroom of the hotel would have been a little too sad. But here is one eighth of the dress:

Please do not adjust your monitors to return my skin tone to normal Amanda-shade. I had a spray tan.

And, finally, a bonus shot of the happy couple to illustrate what people in love look like.

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Final dress is Final. Accessories are lacking and vital.

Who would have believed it? I finished my final dress two days before I needed to. This has never happened before. Apologies for the abyssmal photo quality, I had to take these with my phone as Steven has taken the kids and the camera to the Science Festival.


It's just as well I wasn't still working at midnight on Friday because after it was basted together I found I still had a World of Fitting Issues. Because this print is so big and I didn't want to break it up, I changed the skirt from princess seamed to darted one (without any pattern for guidance) so the skirt needed adjustments galore. And I had to take the waistband in five (!) inches at the bottom corner.


The skirt is a tiny bit shorter in the back because I had to take a last minute wedge out where it met the waistband due to my extreme swayback.


I love the shoulders so much.


My original plan was to have a contrasting waistband so I picked a fabric that was a perfect match to the plummy pink of half the flowers. But when the fabrics were together it didn't match the plum pink as much as it clashed with the rose pink (if that makes sense to anyone other than me!)....

The reason Steven and the kids have given me a bit of peace today is because I still need shoes / bag / accessories. So, lovely readers.... would you go with black, plum pink, rose pink, or the green of the leaves?

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Make-up bags in triplicate

In between making my dress and Maia's dress for the wedding (three sleeps!), I had to take a pause and finish a commission. The brief: three make-up bags that are related but not identical. Despite my ginormous stash, there weren't a lot of fabrics I had in three colourways with coordinatings linings... But I found enough Joel Dewberry's to make these:

In order to fit quite a bit of goodies inside, they measure eleven inches in length. As the zippers in my stash only measure eight inches, I did covered zipper ends out of the lining fabric.

Rather than looking like hodge-podge solution to too a too short zipper, I think (do not even correct me if I'm wrong) it makes the bags a bit snazzier.

Each bag has a coordinating Ginseng Tiles fabric inside. Two decor weights and some heavy interfacing means they stand up really well.

There's not much more I can say about the make-up bags, other than I'm relieved that I was able to squeeze them in without disrupting the dress-making extravaganza. I would have hated to disappoint the recipient of the bags or run out of time to finish the dresses before the weekend! Please share in my relief that Maia's dress is complete and my dress just has the skirt to go...

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