Breatfeeding Dress DIY

Hello everyone! 

I’m here! I’ve made it back to the blog! Spud has fallen asleep on the sofa, and did not wake up when I moved away from her! It’s a miracle of epic proportions.

Life is very different here, I seem to be feeding almost constantly, did anyone else realise babies feed basically constantly?! I tend to do this lying down, I think I mentioned on instagram recently, this is mostly as I am lazy but also because it seems that Spud feeds better that way. Plus there is always the chance I can creep away from her if she's nodded off and quickly fill the dishwasher, start tea or put a wash on. These are my main life goals at the moment and I’m pretty happy with that. Mr T gave me some time to myself for the first time on Saturday and it was pretty brilliant, I made my adapted Coco pattern in 2 ½ hours! I surprised even myself.

I have decided to start something called #speedysew. This is my programme of sanity building whereby I'll work on my sewing in five minute dashes. This will necessarily mean leaving things out on the sides, but if I get five minutes in which to do anything, sew a single seam, or cut out one pattern piece I will still keep moving forward with my sewing, and watching my fabric pile whilst feeding won’t be quite so painful.

Today I'm going to show you my solution to the breastfeeding issue... how do I get at my boobs? I'm still figuring this out, it's difficult to find things that cover skin but give access to your boob. But when I went to Mamas and Papas to get a car seat for Spud, I found a super amazing black and white dress which had overlapping layers, and a top that folds down over it. Difficult to explain but take my word for it, it's the best. Inspired by this, I've made the following dress!

I decided to take some jersey tops that I no longer wear, and create some dresses with boob access. This is the first of this batch, the hem fabric is a piece that I bought in Abakhan when I used to work there, that's quite a while to stash some fabric! I never knew what to do with it, but having plain black fabric and piecing this together into a border print has made a beautiful fabric in itself. 

In order to do this yourself, I have taken some step by step photos for you. I (again) used the Washi pattern to identify the length of the top half. Apologies that the black doesn't really show up the cut lines that well.

This is the length that I cut it to, it should fall just under your chest.

Trying on the top, I pinned where the cuts will have to go, so that they fall right over your nipple

I then cut these as in the photo below, and then overlapped the two cut layers.

Stitch with a zig zag stitch two inches up from the bottom, and two inchess of the overlap from the top. 

I hope that makes some sense, here is a flash of bra to give you a better idea. Don't say I never treat ya.

I flipping love this dress, it's so comfortable and I feel really glam in it! I'm not having any excuses to be so glam at the mo... plus I look kind of tired in these photos... and my hair is all sorts of mess. 

But I kind of like that. I look how I feel, a bit tired, and not caring about my hair. I have other things going on! I want to be honest in this blog, I don't want people to think I'm breezing through this motherhood thing. I'm having a good time, but it's a tiring watching four hundred episodes of Stargate with a baby attached to you kind of good time.

In that vein, it has taken me three goes at writing this blog post, but I've done it! Niiiiiice. No promises about when I'll be back, but I hope it's soon.

Accessories and Venue

The veil, I wanted to buy my veil by the time I had finished the dress, I was tired to be honest and a bit wiped out with all the other making we'd been doing. Unfortunately we couldn't find a nice one under about £100 so out came the sewing machine! I mean veiling is about £5 a metre for goodness sake.

To make the veil I picked up the 1 1/2 metres I had bought, clipped it to my head with a kirbi grib and marked on where I wanted it to end. I then led it out on the ground, cutting off any excess. I then folded it first in half lengthways and then downwards, and rounded off the edges. I looked up how to make one online but couldn't really grasp their instructions. But once I had the fabric laid out the material all became clear.

I had made the flower for my bouquet but as I had two it was making the bouquet unbalanced, so I used it on the veil! I used a variety of lace including that used in the wedding dress, and then attached a small veil comb underneath. To finish the edges I used 3metres of ivory lace trim, just sewing it flat onto the raw edge as veiling does not fray.

The bouquets were a joint effort between my mum and me, the two at the bottom were made using the excess off the bottom of the bridesmaid dresses so as to match my beautiful bridesmaids! The leaf you can see poking out of the top one is a felt cut-out of a leaf I picked up when Terence and I got engaged. I knew there was a reason I was so sentimental!

Here you can see a sample of the (over 100m!) of bunting that we made for the wedding. My sister and I cut out the majority of the triangles (with some help from Mother in Law), and my Mum sewed basically all of it together herself. Don't know how she managed to keep going, it was amazing! We used all sorts of colours and designs, trying to stick mostly with the blue and green but adding in the odd galaxy fabric to keep things interesting!

One of my favourite elements of the decoration were the centrepieces, they were made with hand-made flowers, spray painted candelabras, dinosaurs and animal toys and a whole mess of help from all of our amazing friends and family. Thank you to you all, I'll leave you with the pics as they tell the story of their construction better than I ever could.

You made it through the wedding posts! Well done! Just wanted to add a quick note to say thank you to everyone who helped us with this. It was the biggest thing we've ever done/ will probably ever do again. Thank you to all those who had a hand in our wedding, whether you made things, or just listened to us gripe for months on end about all sorts of nonsense. We love you guys! You made our day what it was.

Dino Blind

So I've been trying to tweak the bathroom, make it as colourful as possible to detract from the strange grey geometric tiling. I think i'd quite like the tiles if they weren't on every wall. I'm not a big fan of this in general, I think it has something to do with going to university housing where all the walls and floors were covered in beige tiles.

So anyway... dino blind! Not much to this one, me and Mr T each chose a dinosaur, (me being stegosaurus, his being a velociraptor, and we spent a happy evening watching tv and cutting out dinos from sticky back vinyl plastic pieces (from amazon, you can choose whichever colours you want!)

I adjusted the blind (got to play with a hacksaw), measured the blind and marked where the dinos would go, and that was it! Love this blind, kind of want to put ones in every room of the house now.

MMMay, Great Gatsby and a Pyjama Party!

I'm going to confess... I failed the Great Gatsby Challenge. I just didn't get inspired, I didn't have any really good fabric for it in my stash and in the end... I was lazy. Sorry ...!

Second confession... I didn't achieve everything I wanted to with Me Made May, I liked the outfits I wore, but I didn't get much sewing done at all and therefore once I'd worn those outfits I ran out of stuff to wear! I kept wearing my clothes but really it was pretty boring of me to put up more and more pics of me in a straight skirt and Mathilde (no matter how much I love them). So what did I learn? I need more me-made clothes! Plus, I need to adjust my New Look 6723, looking at amazing dress makers like Dolly Clackett, I'm just not happy with the fit, and so surprised myself by not wearing it at all through May. So, I've got the seam rippers out and I'm starting again. I'll let you know the results!



In order to try and redeem myself to the sewing gods I am immediately signing up for the Pyjama Party over at Did You Make That. This is a great challenge to try as I have already cut out some pyjamas! Though I did cut out one of the pieces the wrong way round.


All I need do is finish them before the deadline of the end of June. I can do this! ....Right? Never been good with deadlines, just the word sends a shiver down my spine. But I like that I'm trying to push myself to achieve things on time. That's got to be good for me.



And here's the reason I haven't been doing much sewing recently, I've been spending time outdoors! I can't help but play in the garden when it's this sunny, so difficult to stay indoors! Sorry, not sorry :-)

 Not sure how interested in this you guys are... but love my garden so here's another pic for good luck!

I've been working on lots of home things recently (and by working on I mostly mean going to IKEA) I've got an excellent dinosaur themed post planned. So happy with it, hope you like it!!

A Mathilde Blouse and New Look 6128 skirt

My Mathilde Blouse!

I made this (it feels like) months ago! and we've finally had some sunshine so I thought I would show you my homemade outfit.

The skirt was so boring I decided not to post about it, but in short it's another New Look 6128, in a red and black check (which definitely doesn't match at the seams).

But it's perfect for work, and it fills a whole in the wardrobe.

Hope you like the boots! I was pottering around the garden in my work clothes and walking boots before these pics got took, and I'm far too lazy to go get fancy!

To the main event!

My Mathilde blouse. I'm so proud of myself for making this, I'm sure there are mistakes and tiny things I could do better, but this was the first time I've ever made a blouse, and the first time I've used a slippy fabric. I love this blouse and I'm not afraid to raise my arms to it. In fact, I've begun a second one immediately! And in the over-confidence from the black blouse, I decided to make it in a chiffon/ georgette from my stash, wish me luck!

Here's a sneak preview:

More to come! If you'd like this fabulous pattern, along with the wonderfully in-depth instructions click below:

Spring Clearing

Hello people!

Apologies (again) for my lack of posts once more. But I promise I haven't been resting on my laurels (never sure what laurels are... and although I'm sat at a computer and could totally look it up I'm not gonna. Cos that's how I roll!

So anyway... I've been in the garden, which is nice :-) This is what's occurred over the past couple of weeks.

So now we have a very messy back yard, covered in ivy (mostly in one massive pile), and my arm has come out in this mental growing rash of some kind... but other than that I am ridiculously happy. There is sunlight in our garden! I was pretty worried about that as it's north facing. But I think it's going to be great in the summer. I've also now extended the back border into one very large square which will be great for growing veg in squares. I'll keep you updated.

The other thing I did last weekend (when doing my massive garden weekend) was build the box below for the front yard. This was great, as the front of the house is South facing, so I can use this border for all of the sun-loving plants (I'm thinking specifically tomatoes)

 I built this with my Dad, it was fun and made me feel like just because the cube I tried to make in School was such a beautiful failure, perhaps woodwork isn't the worst, as exemplified by the big grin and thumbs up below.

Me and my friend then filled it up on the Sunday, with some of the ivy from the garden, and then loads of cardboard... and then about 7 bags of soil. It's still not full, but my bank balance cannot take the hit that 10 more bags of top soil would require. Plus bandq don't deliver soil! What's that all about?

So anyway... Deborah out!