DIY Dress

It is Friday evening. My man is in South Africa, my daughter is at a sleep-over, and I?

Am I out and about, dancing, drinking, and being merry?

I guess you know the answer to that already.

No, I am at home (scary, old age?), and it is so wonderful to have the place to myself (well, apart from 3 dogs and 3 cats,
all trying to lie as close to me as possible). If I write weird stuff, Georgia (cat), has walked over the keyboard again.

I am getting to the topic of this post in a round-about way, but please bear with me.
Last week a friend told me about a wonderful concept. Instead of always making to-do lists, we should make ta-da! lists every now and then.

And this is what I have been doing today. So the washing is still dirty, the plants haven't been watered, there is no food in the house, but

ta-daaaaa!

I have been sewing my very first dress.

The inspiration for it came from a German magazine called 'Handmade Kultur', the gorgeous dresses published there are made by Eni from Mein Morgenstern.

It was pretty simple to do and it would have been relatively quick too if I would have managed to sew the right sides together straight away, but, as they say, learning by doing (also very good for those of us wanting to become more patient...).

I made it out of three old shirts from my man and one old t-shirt of mine. Unfortunately, using old shirts here is quite different from doing the same for example in Europe. There are so many people here that would love even an old shirt, so I was under pressure to make something nice if I dare and cut up valuable items.

Not sure if it is nice, but I am extremly fond of my little dress.

Here is how to do it:

The materials I used: 3 shirts, 1 t-shirt and two fabric scraps

Here is the template. I made it 10 cm at the top and 20 cm at the bottom. The length is 55 cm. Round the edges slightly

Cut out 12 pieces (note to self, sometimes ironing is a good thing, even if one does not like it at all)

Start sewing the pieces together (putting the right sides on top of each other :-) )

 Here are the 12 pieces sewn together

Now you have to sew around the top of the skirt, using the biggest stitch possible, and then gently gather the fabric until the width of the skirt is the same as the width of your t-shirt. Sew it on, again putting the right sides together

 Turn your dress around and use zigzag on the right side

 Using different sized glasses and cups, cut out some circles

I used fabric glue to fix them and then sewed them on, again in zig zag

Here is the (nearly) finished dress. I will get some lacey stuff tomorrow and sew it on at the bottom

And here is my little dress dancing in the breeze. It is still cloudy but it STILL has not rained, maybe I should invite lots of people over for a braai (the african version of the barbecue), that normally gets the clouds going...

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