The first days of spring, oh how we're loving you

How exciting that it's spring! Given that we've just experienced what we hope will be The Crappest Winter Ever, the springtime this year is more welcome than ever - bring on the new growth, both literal and metaphorical, I say! My hair's growing back (it feels like a little baby lamb!), we're slowly recovering our energies after the exhaustion-inducing chemo regime, and everything is looking extra sunshiny and new given the deepened gratitude we're experiencing as a result of the last 6 months or so. We've been absolutely revelling in the warm sunny days, picking early raspberries, resting, enjoying spring rains, watching our chickens loving the new shoots of grass, smiling at rosellas in the kennedia, and working working working on the garden - weeding, mulching, harvesting and spring planting yay!

We've also been...

Crocheting veggie tea cozies for lovely gardening sisters,

 Debuting new birthday frocks and devouring the goodness (mushrooms! Honey! Profiteroles! Jersey milkshakes! Crazy amounts of beautiful, bountiful veg! Fresh and smoked fish!) at the Moruya Farmers' Markets,

 Being thrilled by big digging and dreaming about another little strawbale house growing from the mud over the next couple of years,

Crocheting around jar-lid-rings to make bangles for the Mumbulla School Spring Fair,

 Eating duck egg omelettes with greens from the garden and bartered kimchi in the sunshine almost every morning, and loving our life.

How about you? How are you heralding the warmer days?

A frock in action

One thing I love love love about making clothes for people is getting feedback on the clothes in action, seeing the clothes in action, and getting photos of the clothes in action - especially when the action happens to be on a stage playing beautiful music! 

A couple of days ago Hilary Blackshaw (the recipient of a rather lovely pregnant-singing-mumma-stage-frock) sent me these gorgeous photos of her frock in action, accompanied by the following words: 

"Your dress has been so comfortable to wear as my midriff has been expanding with our new bubba- I'm due on Tuesday, so your dress has served me very well so far! I've had so many lovely comments about it, too. And as you can see, it worked brilliantly well with my electric guitar ; )"

What better compliment than a dress working brilliantly well with an electric guitar?? I was so pleased to see the pics, and to hear that the dress had lasted the distance and performed its duties as an on-stage preggo dress, that I just had to share these pics. Makes me wish I was in a folk club, listening to Hilary and her Philosophers and sipping an ale right now....

A graduation dress for Carly

Last session at Uni, I had the absolute pleasure of having my friend Carly in my class. Not only is she an awesomely funny, dynamic and lovely person, but she's also the smartest person I've ever taught. This was good - smart people are always great to have in class - but also intimidating and challenging, though ultimately rewarding.

When Carly came to me with a request to make her a dress for graduation, I was thrilled and honoured. She brought a dress for me to copy, which she'd found at the op-shop, and we picked out some fabric from the stash (the last of the Temora Hospital nurses' quarters curtains, also seen here and here), then Carly went home and left me to it.

When I pulled out the dress and actually looked closely at it, I completely freaked out. It felt way too hard, way beyond my capabilities, and way more tricky than anything I'd ever made before. There were too many different kinds of panels, in-built pockets with pleats and a split up the back. I had the phone in my hand to text Carly to tell her I couldn't do it, when I thought, "What the hey! I'll give it a go! The worst that'll happen is that it's a major disaster and I've wasted a bit of fabric, but I can always chop it up and make something for the kids."

So I put on some music and sat down to (carefully!) cut out the dress. I took my time and concentrated, I used mathematical trajectory calculations (kind of..) to work out all the pieces, because I wasn't allowed to take the original dress apart to make a pattern. And then I sewed it all up and tried it on... 

And  it was lovely!!!!

Carly was stoked, and looked frikkin gorgeous in it, so was (appropriately) the star of the Uni of Gong's 2013 graduating cohort. I felt proud of Carly, and proud of myself for rising to the challenge of not piking out on the dress before I'd even started. Thanks Carly for giving me the opportunity to challenge myself both in the classroom and at the sewing machine: You're a rock-star, lady!!!

Hilary's growing frock and spiced mandarins

Yesterday was a beautiful day. It was sunny, but not too hot, and I spent the morning sewing and preserving. What fun!

Preserved mandarin segments in spiced syrup

First up was a dress for Hilary, who needed something to see her through all the gigs she has booked in the lead-up to the birth of her second child.

She was after a simple A-line dress with capped sleeves that she could wear on stage, sometimes over jeans, and then layer up as the weather gets cooler. Oh, and of course the dress needed pockets, as all the best frocks have.

vintage floral pockets

The result is a bias-cut A-line dress, cut extra wide in the front, but with a tie at the back so that it can grow as required, and then be pulled back in once the bubba is born. The brown spotty is the last of a queen size quilt cover I picked up at some stage, that has seen me through quite a lot of sewing projects. I love the irregular polka-dot! The dress has doily cap sleeves (thanks Zara!) and pockets from a vintage floral print. 

doily sleeves and stripey bias binding

Turns out that Hilary and I are exactly the same size, so I got to try the dress on to make sure it was alright. I checked I could fit a pretty big bump in the front (yes!) and then contemplated keeping it for myself, as I very often do when I make something I particularly like for a similar-sized lady. 

Tie at the back to make it just the right size, all through the growing

Once the dress was all done, I set to work preserving some mandarins that came our way recently. Last week sometime we came home to a big bag full of mandarins sitting on our outside table. We had no idea where they came from - there was no note or signal of any kind - but we were grateful nonetheless and immediately ate several each. A few days ago Oscar and I were across the road picking native raspberries (yes! It's that time of year!! I love that we can tell the date by what we're picking and eating off the side of the road) and our neighbour's dad came up and asked us if we'd like more mandarins. Mystery solved and yes please! But what to do with them all? While they are tiny and delicious, there's only so many a family of four can put away. I thought some preserved segments in some kind of sugar syrup would make a pretty great winter dessert teamed with Tilba Jersey cream, so here's what I did:

First up, I sterilised my jars in boiling water. 

While they were boiling away, I peeled the mandarins, getting rid of all the white stuff. That stuff is the pits, though I did force myself to eat it when I was pregnant because apparently it has something good in it... 

Then, I made my sugar syrup, which was about 2 parts sugar to 5 parts water. I added to this a couple of cloves, a star anise and half a cinnamon stick, which I fished out of our chai mix for extra tastiness. 

When the sugar was dissolved I packed the mandarin segments into the jars, poured over the syrup, then closed up the jars and boiled them in a water bath for 20 minutes. 

I haven't tasted any yet (gonna wait 'til fresh mandarins are all gone and I'm hankering for some sweet citrus) but they sure do look purdy.

The belle of the ball

You know sometimes you meet a person and you think to yourself: "Wow. If my kids turn out half as awesome as this person I'll be happy"? Well that's how I felt when I met Ella and her brother Rhys. They're incredibly lovely, warm, talented kids (kind of like their parents, really...), who are interested in the world and passionate about the things they love. 

Beautiful!

When Ella recently confronted the project of finding a year 12 formal dress, she found that the dresses in the shops were not her style, didn't make her feel good, and just didn't fit her properly.

Happily for me, Pearl mentioned to her mum that I'd be happy to make her something perfectly suited to what she was after. And what a fun and rewarding project it was for us all! I was thrilled to be making a special dress for such an awesome young lady, and she was thrilled to be having her first custom-dress made for her.

After an initial consultation at our place, involving some drawings, some looking at pictures of other fancy dresses I've made, and some looking through the fabric stash, we set upon a dress that was a little bit 50s inspired, and quite similar to a couple of the wedding dresses I've made for people in the past. My mum scored the fabric for me (not a lot of choice here in the Beegs) and then I set to work.

Part payment for the dress came in the form of Ella picking up some of our slashed grass and making a hay-stack for us, which she did while I sewed away and occasionally called her up from the paddock for fitting and trying on.

And we were both very very happy with the result. There's purple piping around the neck, and a series of tiny purple bows down the back, above the big bow from her purple sash. The net petticoat is separate, so she can wear the dress out without it, if she wants, and we made it short to show off her legs!! Part of what was great about making this dress for Ella was really listening to what she wanted, and helping her to have something that she felt (not just looked) really good in.

The photographer who took this amazing photo of Ella at the formal, Angi High, said that it was the standout dress of the event. And while it is a pretty lovely dress, Ella is pretty amazing, so she probably would have looked stunning in anything. So thanks Ella for asking me to make your dress, and thanks Angi for letting me use your gorgeous photo!

Zara's Blue Wren Shift

One of the great things about making custom clothes for people is the opportunity to make things from other peoples' imaginations. 

When Zara contacted me with her dress request (which is part of the July teatowel-a-thon), she came well prepared, with a selection of pictures of frocks and details she liked. This gave me a great foundation from which to start working on a shift dress for her. 

Some things, she was quite definite about: she wanted doily pockets, for example. 

Other details were a little more general: native flora and fauna was put out there as something she might like, and lacy details were also mentioned with some enthusiasm. She also definitely wanted a shift dress, which was fun, because I've only ever made one before, years ago, for a friend's daughter's year 12 formal. It was gold lamé, and she looked awesome. Zara's dress is a few steps away from the uber glam nature of the last shift I made (just a few...) but no less awesome. 

I am so happy with how it turned out, so pleased with how it looked when I hung it from a tomato stake in the veggie garden to take the photos, and so grateful to Zara for taking me out of my comfort zone. 

I've never made a dress completely from teatowels before, which is somewhat bizarre. I love the look of the finished teatowel 'patchwork' that makes up the dress. I think the pretty little wrens and wildflowers look perfect alongside the doily cap sleeves and pockets, and gorgeous polka-dot bias trim.

As you can perhaps tell, I'm a little bit in love with this dress, and am thinking something similar may well be on the cards for myself, one day, if I ever got time to sew something for myself... I can always dream, eh?

So thanks Zara - I feel like this was a beautiful collaboration between your ideas, and my sewing skills and fabric collection. Nice work! I hope you love it even half as much as I do.

sewing again

It's funny to think now that this blog used to be just about sewing and craft. These days, not a lot of sewing gets done around these parts, on account of all the life-craft going on. Gone are the days of staying up all night with a bottle of red and some audio books, churning out skirts (sometimes 10 in one evening!) for Georgie Love or my market stall.

Not to say the life-craft isn't the most immensely rewarding thing we've ever done in our whole entire lives - it is. But it's also the most exhausting and the most time-consuming.

So I feel kind of out of practice writing a sewing blog. Sure, there have been the odd skirt, dress and bolero orders, but there's just so much else going on around here (this blog has more tags for strawbale-buiding-related posts than it does for skirt-related ones!) my beloved sewing machine has been a little neglected.

Testament to how neglected my sewing machine is (and how sewing-time-deprived I am) is the fact that my turnaround times for sewing jobs has crept up from 2 weeks (usually less) to more like 2 months! 

Take these dresses: Beloved and very dedicated P&E customer, Yolanda, requested these little babies back when I made this dress for Olive. Yikes! I'm a little horrified and ashamed of how long it's taken me to get them in the post. My only consolation prize is the fact that it's probably been to cold in Switzerland (where Yolanda lives) to wear them anyway.

It was, as always, fun sewing for Yolanda. It was especially fun sewing a grown-up sized version of the 'Olive', which turned out pretty sweet! One of the major perks of being a VIP&E like Yolanda is that I'm not at all hesitant to use my very most favourite fabrics for orders from these folks. In this instance, the crazy-good, immaculate flowers-and-fruits still life came out to bat for Yolanda. Pearl was a little bit miffed I wasn't using it for her (we've both had our eyes on it for years), but she recovered when she saw how cute the dress turned out.

The other dress was born of Yolanda's request for a sleeveless dress. The pattern is an oldie but a goodie, which hasn't been made since back in the days of P&E's regular stall at the Addison Rd markets in Marrickville, when it was a hot favourite of the ladies during summer.

Alas, it doesn't photograph well, especially when Florence is missing in action and I have to lay the dresses down flat on the grass. Hopefully you can use your imagination. - it's a wrap, with a tie-up kind of halter neck, and is made from a bloody beautiful West Australia Wildflowers tablecloth.

Yolanda, I hope you like your dresses. I hope they're worth the wait. I hope your Swiss summer is balmy enough to wear them as often as you feel inclined.

"Is that a Leona Edmiston?"

Recently, I made my little sister Meggy a frock-&-bolero set for a wedding, which she went to last weekend. As you can see, she looked freakin' gorgeous. The wedding was in the mountains, and celebrated the love between her 2 good friends, Hev and Nibs. Yay love! Yay handmade-and-nature-inspired weddings!

Yay love!

As you may know, if you know me or you've been reading this blog for a while, I'm pretty into weddings. I love the party, I love the fact that they get people feeling all out and proud about love, and I love the opportunity to get hands-on with any and all varieties of wedding-related craft activities including (but not limited to) wedding dresses, bridesmaids dresses, and wedding bunting.

Even though I've never actually met Hev and Nibs, I was more than happy to make a frock for Meg (in exchange, she's going to lend us her superb tree-plating skills this Easter holidays) for their wedding, and help out with the little statues that adorned their wedding cake. And what a cake it was! 

Well, unfortunately I didn't actually taste the cake, but it sure looks good, right?? And I reckon it looks even better when you hear that it was made in the mountains, using organic and fair trade chocolate. Niiice...

Now. The dress. The green fabric came from a shop in Cabramatta (an excellent location if you're in the market for new fabric for wedding and/or other fancy kinds of frocks ('twas where we purchased materials for Pearl's and my wedding frocks, and Meg's year 12 formal frock). The bolero fabric - which is nothing short of STUNNING - came out of the nurse's quarters at Temorah hospital, where Meg's super-spunky and uber-lovely boyfriend, Jerry, works as a nurse. It's vintage, giant yellow-and-pink-rose-print barkcloth. Yum. Meg also used it to cover the giant button on the front of her dress, so it's all nice and matchy-match.

Jerry the nurse-cum-fabric-supplier on the left, Meg and matchy curtain adornments on the right

In all, the outfit was a success! Meg looked - and more importantly felt - "pretty much amazing" in the outfit. Someone even asked her if it was a Leona Edmiston! I'm taking this as a compliment, though I don't go in for designer threads much myself. But I suppose as far as designer threads go, Leona does design some pretty wares. Though I doubt she'd do a trade for some help with planting out a shelter belt, and I can guaran-damn-tee her stuff isn't made at an outside table, under beautiful late-summer blue skies, on a machine powered wholly by the sun.

The grand opening

Olive has been urging us to have a 'grand opening' of our little strawbale for some time now. We thought for a while it might be October, but couldn't get it together. November was too busy, and December just didn't happen. But New Year's eve, now that was a contender. And so it was decided - our little home would be very grandly opened to our new friends in the Bega Valley (and a few VIPs from Sydney-town and Melbourne who just happened to be down the coast that day) on the final day of 2012, the biggest, craziest and possibly the most fulfilling year of our lives. 

A fairly decent view of some of the things we've made this year: a home, a fruitful garden, a cubby, and an outdoor loungeroom complete with fireplace and brand new gozleme-rolling table. As Pearl says: "No wonder we're tired..."

It was beautiful. Pearl, as always, put on an abundant, delicious, and delightfully local spread, supplemented by contributions from guests (vine leaf rolls made from the grape vines down the road!!) and crowned by an outrageously enormous and delicious pavlova courtesy of the lovely Robyn.

We drank home-brewed ginger beer and chatted and gave people who'd never visited a tour of our place, feeling quite proud and happy all the while. And Pearl, the consummate hostess with the mostess, debuted her new christmas frock and her fireside-gozleme-rolling-table, which was my christmas gift to her. 

I made the table (using a couple of poles brought down by my Nana and Parps, some branches, the obligatory fence palings and a bit of marine ply leftover from the lintels in our house) so that rolling out gozleme doesn't have to be an inside-the-house job, so that when people are visiting and hanging out by the fire she can roll and chat, so she can look at the view while she works her magic, and so we don't have to carry the made-up gozleme all the way from the house down to the fire. I think she liked it.

The kids ran wild in the night, wielding glow-sticks and torches and candles and makeshift jar-lanterns,  and the adults drank and laughed and made new friends. 

And then we all feasted on Robyn's delicious pavlova, which we'd smothered in plums.

Ahhh... plums. We must've eaten hundreds this summer, and I'm happy to say that they have very quickly come to occupy a place in my mind and heart as the motif of our summer eating. And I hope this will be the case for ever more. We eat them at the beach and in the car and at work and after dinner. We eat them stewed on our pikelets and french toast and fresh on our muesli. We eat them straight from the tree by the handful, and give them away by the bagful to anyone who shows even a vague interest in stone fruit.

Delightfully, we've discovered even more trees along our road - some enormous and ancient and some newer and smaller - prompting us to wonder about the provenance of such groves. As far as we can see, there are 4 quite different varieties - the original sunset-coloured ones, from the biggest tree of all, some tiny black ones which are almost like a cherry, a larger purple one, and a beautiful, soft, and incredibly sweet orangey-yellow one that I'm pretty sure is a plumcot. Yay!

The plum quartet

Olive has been so inspired by the abundance that she set up her own little stall at the markets today, selling decorated bags of plums for a dollar per bag. 

Last night, as she carefully and very diligently prepared her signs and bags, picked and packed her produce, and selected the perfect tablecloth and tasting bowl, we saw a side of her we've never seen before. And we loved it! Today, she sat at her stall in the 40 degree heat happily (but somewhat quietly and shyly) chatting to her customers about her plums from the tree down the road, and explaining to people that they really didn't need to ask her the price of the plums because it was written quite clearly on her sign. We were so pleased with our little farmer - her love for the food, her pride in her effort, and her divine signs and table-arranging.

Olive's bowl of tasting plums

And we were happy to be here, in this wilting heat, with our newly (and very grandly) opened home keeping us cool and sheltered from the hot winds that are apparently bringing in 2013. I wonder what's in store for us. One thing we hope is that it's at least slightly less hectic than last year, but hopefully full of just as many pleasant surprises.

The old and the new

I did some sweet sewing a few days ago. It was a beautiful combination of tried and true - a bolero and a classic P&E A-line skirt - and kind of experimental - a new pattern, complete with puffy sleeves, a pocket and a waist. The dress came first, and it was a pleasure and a challenge because it was for my little girl. 

Our Olive is a particular little thing. She's particular about most things, but she's especially particular about her outfits and costumes. We love how expressive she is, how she takes her time and deliberates over the wild and wonderful combinations of clothing and accessories she comes up with. I love how she loves colour, and how her favourite colour is "rainbow". 

A little while ago we made a trip to the fabric shop together, and I let her pick out a few things for a couple of items of summer clothes. I have to say, I was pretty impressed with her choices! The pattern and shape of the dress, though, was up to me, and I was nervous. So I stuck to the things I know she likes: puffy sleeves (the whole time I was sewing I kept thinking about Napoleon Dynamite), a waist, and pockets for keeping her myriad small treasures in. 

The verdict? "It's the most beautiful dress I've ever seen!" What more could I ask for?

I do hope that Yolanda, recipient of my other recent sewing ventures and very loyal P&E supporter, feels the same about her recent wardrobe additions. Though this may be a tough call, given that she's also the owner of what may be the best skirt I've ever made.

When I picked up a rather spectacular scalloped horse hankie in the op shop, I immediately thought of Yolanda, though I also thought quite a lot about myself, given that I'm a bit keen on a spot of equine fabric myself. But then a few days later, as fate would have it, Yolanda contacted me to let me know that she'd like to support the Pump up the Dam sale so I decided the hankie was meant to be hers. Yay!

Green was the theme for her bolero and skirt, and I have to say  I'm a bit chuffed with the result. The bolero in particular is a bit of a fave, made from an immaculate still-life-print vintage teatowel.

One of the things I love about this sewing-with-found-fabrics shindig is that even though I'm basically making the same thing over and over again (unless someone asks me to make something extra-special like a wedding or bridesmaid dress), each piece has its own character on account of the fact that I'm using different fabric every time. How fun! And this bolero is the perfect example: I must've made a hundred boleros (probably more) but this one is so unique, with it's little complementary mustard-coloured cap sleeves with polka-dot trim, roses on the front and a bowl of fruit on the back. And the colours!

Enjoy your wares Yolanda and Olive! And please remember to do a twirl for the joys of unique handmade in all its many and varied forms.

P is for polar bears, pallets, passata and paper logs

And this weekend we gleefully partook in all of these things!

Last night, I finished a skirt/dress for the niece of P&E lover, Bec. As you may have noticed, if you've read this blog a few times, I think Bec is fully ace, and count her as one of my absolute favourite customers. I've never met the lady, but crikeys do I enjoy getting emails and clothing requests from her. This weekend's polar bear dress is actually a gift for Bec's "amazeballs" niece, whose favourite animal is - yep, you guessed it - the outrageously cute, yet potentially deadly polar bear. Bec thought she might like some polar-bear-flavoured frockage action along the lines of this dress. Obviously, I didn't want to just make a copy of that dress (very distasteful) so I just set it to the back of my mind to let stew for a while, so as to conjure a perfectly P&E polar bear dress. On friday, it started to emerge from the shadows... Navy corduroy... a stitched white silhouette of a kind of frowny, crossed-arms kinda bear (modelled on one of the polar bears in the stunning book Zoo-ology by Joelle Jolivet - seriously get it. NOW)... detachable, capped-sleeve braces so you can wear it as a dress or a skirt... a ruffle and, of course, some ric rac for good measure.

I took my time with this one because of the stretchy corduroy, and even used iron-on stabiliser behind the embroidery (never done that before) and even lined the front of the skirt and the little cap sleeves (never done that before either).

Here's me 'modelling' it (if by modelling you mean standing awkwardly while getting one's picture taken).

Kinda cool - I'm the same size as niece of Bec, Pearl's the same size as Bec, so we can provide handy models for the whole family's P&E couture. I was rather chuffed, not least of all because he's got his arms crossed!!!

This morning we all woke up happy and, after about half an hour of in-bed cuddles (this is pretty standard morning fare in our big king bed) had an outrageously delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs with silverbeet, tomato, basil, parsley and jalapeno chilli on toast. Then Oski and I headed off to the tip - yeah!!! One of the awesome, but strangely excruciating things about my job, is that I get to spend quite a lot of time at our many many tips, checking things out and chatting to the staff, and marvelling at how rude people can be and how much good stuff people chuck out. The excruciating bit is that, due to some hysterical adherence to the code of conduct, I'm not allowed to get anything from the tip while I'm working. Last week, this meant that I missed out on an awesome load of very-good-nik galvanised corrugated iron, which would have been perfect for any number of things up at the land. Never mind. Today I borrowed a trailer, and Oski and I managed to get a crap-load of hardwood pallets and chicken wire, which is almost as good. The hardwood pallets are for flooring our sleeping loft in the studio, so as to avoid having to buy any more new timber than is absolutely necessary (various timber-related compromises to be discussed at a later date). I also scored a few awesomely awesome beams which will be perfect for framing the kids' tree-house. Olive and I have been absolutely devouring Tree Houses, and are very excited to get started (Olive has been taking special note of the 'Things not to do' page). On the way home we had some ice-creams (Oski's first of 3 for the day) so in all it was a top adventure.

While we were out, Pearlie was busy turning another 20kg of tomatoes into passata,

and Olive was decorating the house with mermaids and mermaid-affiliated paraphernalia and generally talking to herself. Alas for the passata adventure, we lost 3 jars to cracking, due to them being put into water that had already heated up too much. Make sure you put your jars in the Vacola unit when the water's still cool!!!!!

And then we made some paper logs.

I've been very intrigued and inspired by the ongoing discussion in Grass Roots magazine about the various methods for making fire logs out of newspaper. Makes sense, right? And apparently they work really well! When we move to the land, we will have no hot water, and will be bathing in a fire bath, under the stars. Fire bath, obviously requires fire, but our block is not heavily wooded on account of it being ex-grazing land, so until our coppiced wood lot gets up, we'll need an alternative to buying in some chopped up old-growth forest. I thought the paper logs could be the answer! Pearl has a subscription to the Sydney Morning Herald, so we have a lot of newspaper moving through our house. The idea is to get them really dense. You can use a paper-brick maker, which smooshes torn up wet newspaper into a brick shape, or you can just roll up the paper, tight as you can, and kind of papier-mache it into a log shape with an outer layer of wet newspaper, then let it dry.

Can't see why it wouldn't work - paper used to be trees, after all - but we'll see how it goes. I cannot wait to get into that fire bath!!! But first I'll need to make another trip to the tip to secure an appropriate bathtub..

Introducing... The Rochelle

A few weeks after the birth of her third bubba, Rochelle is going to a wedding. As many of you may know, breastfeeding in a frock presents a unique set of challenges, which Rochelle has (hopefully) managed to circumvent by ordering herself a custom P&E breastfeeding-at-a-wedding-and-still-looking-quite-glamorous-and-lovely frock.

Rochelle picked out the fabric herself - a gorgeous voile - floaty and light and perfect for a bias-cut wrap dress. As you may have noticed I am a huge fan of the bias cut on account of the fact that it makes a pretty lovely fit. The main criteria for The Rochelle were that it made it easy for her to get her milk maids out when required, and that it fit nicely, but not too nicely, so that any remaining baby-carrying lumps and bumps weren't right out there on display. The bias and the wrap combine so beautifully to achieve both of these things, and also mean that the dress will be able to be worn even after Rochelle's body goes back to normal and it isn't imperative for her boobs to be coming out all the time. Win win!

Because of the lovely floatiness of the voile I knew I needed to pull out my very special rolled-hem-making sewing-machine foot.

I (obviously) don't know what the technical name is for this thing, but crikeys is it useful in a slightly fancy don't-want-to-use-it-all-the-time kind of way. Only for special occasions, you see. On a bias cut it is especially gorgeous-making, as it somehow magically creates these beautiful, soft ruffly kind of hems,

which, teamed with the almost-a-ruffle (but not in a pirate kind of way... not that there's anything wrong with pirates...) collar, make the whole dress a bit special, and maybe even a bit fancy, without being fussy.

Perfect for the summertime when you've just had a bubba.

But the proof will be in the pudding, or perhaps more appropriately in the accessibility of the mama's milk, so we'll wait and see. I would LOVE to post a photo of Rochelle feeding her gorgeous new baby at the wedding, but of course that's up to her. Fingers crossed...