My Sister

Last year my sister asked me to make her a dress which she designed... 

she wanted a kind of 50's style. I used fabric I already had, and she liked it well enough!

I finished it for her birthday last November and here is her original sketch

This is Grace!

and the end result of her dress...

one of my favourite shots

silly one together... 

this one reminds me of Downton Abbey 

We did this photo shoot in her new dress because she (really liked it) 

 was going to cut her hair and we needed some nice shots of it before it went! She got a bob and donated like 12" to wig makers for people with cancer!

 It looks really good and healthy now...

But yes, that is the dress!

Embroidery time

I do have a Janome Memory craft embroidery machine... 

but it is quite old now and doesn't have the technology for me to put new patterns onto it... which would have been really handy right now for... I have to do this by hand

I sketched out a pattern that would fit my bodice...

and started stitching!

I sat through a few cricket matches to get through this! 

Anna does also have embroidery on the shoulders of this bodice... but I just decided to give them a miss

I was pretty happy with this result!

The Bodice

More of Anna's dress...

I started with just this:

  Basic princess line bodice pattern

after it's been body mapped and fitted to me...

these are the panels now

I had some black velvet and I thought that would be perfect for this!!

the lining

Now sewing it all together!

Transition Corset

This one was inspired by Lydia and Kitty's in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice



This was my first attempt



It was good. It worked and all that, I made a dress for it and everything...
But it wasn't very detailed and I thought since I've already got the pattern I first created for this one...
I'll make another!

(I realized after taking these photos that I actually had it laced very loosely... which really gives it not as good an effect. But you can see how there is much more detail in this than my first attempt.) 

THE MAKING OF:

 my little Elizabeth Rose tag

for this corset I hand sewed the eyelets just for a more authentic look

So that's it! My second attempt at the transition corset.

Transition Dress

New Coat Rack

I recently bought myself a coat rack. My creations were becoming too numerous that the wardrobes of my mum and sister where getting taken over! 

Re-reading Pride & Prejudice 

one feels so old fashioned when sitting on and being surrounded by these sorts of things...

Rapunzel

I was pretty much obsessed with Tangled when I first saw it!

I memorized (and still know) basically the entire film...

and I just wanted to be Rapunzel!

This was like a few years ago and I really didn't know how to sew heaps well then.

- BUT - I wanted to be this Disney Princess so much that I was determined to create her dress!

The whole process took me months! 

It had to be perfect. So I was watching the movie heaps, looking up Google images, 

seeing what others had done, figuring out how to make this and that work etc.

And in the end I decided to have a Disney party because I had put all this work in to this gown which if not having an occasion to wear it would have been quite pointless...

dying the bodice fabric

Before // After

How I did the sleeves

The bodice all put together.

These are some photos of a shoot we did!

at my party

Sleeping beauty and Rapunzel (my sister and I)

I made here an Bria Rose out fit!

Mother Gothel

I was so happy with it!

But know looking back I with I could re-do it... I've learned so much over this past year that I could make it exactly like Rapunzle's now (even though she is an animated character)

That is why I'm so excited for my Anna dress. ITS MY SECOND CHANCE!