idleness cured

Up to 2 months ago I worked for a large company as a French something or other and then they went in search of cheaper labour and we were sent on our way to the dole office with a generous amount of money to cover our living expenses for a few months.

The first thing I did was to go on holiday and indulge my Miu Miu handbag obsession.
During my travels, I also decided to prepare for the idleness that laid ahead and to start sewing.
I already had a sewing machine, my trusted vintage Elna Stella/Lotus so I invested in fabrics, trimmings and buttons.

The bf and I went to Paris and Thailand and I picked up lots of treasures along the way.
Since we came back 3 weeks ago I have been looking for a new job which is so far proving elusive but the sewing has kept me on the straight and narrow side of sanity!

So far I have made 2 dresses and a blouse.

First effort was the famous Macaron dress from Colette patterns which I made from a glazed crumpled linen I bought in France with 2 kitty buttons from La Droguerie. I picked the buttons and patterns because they both reminded me of the Miu Miu 2010 summer collection.

Overall I am pleased with the way the dress turned up. The fit is superb and I didn't have to make any alterations.

The next dress was Vogue 1353 Kay Hunger design. For this, I used a paul smith linen and cotton fabric from the Croft Mill fabrics website. The lady who runs it has some real gems at very reasonable prices.
As an afterthought I decided to hand sew (this morning) a pleated bronze ribbon from la Droguerie to the neckline; just to give it a bit of an edge on the original design. I sewed the size 12 and I have no complaint about the fit: Vogue patterns are very generous with their ease allowance. I am a 36'' bust which they say is a 14 but I used their 34 '' measurements because I read on other blogs their fit was on the large side . I guess it's sheer luck on my part.

The original plain neckline

With added ribbon.

Then I made a blouse with a cute kitty print cotton fabric I bought in Bangkok for 150 baht a meter (that's about £3) . As an aside, the fabric shops in Bangkok are amazing, they have a great choice of locally produced cottons as well as Japanese ones and the prices are much cheaper than in the UK. I bought all my fabrics at the store on the corner of sukhumvit soi 21 (opposite side of the road of terminal 21 shopping mall) and at the fabric room on the second floor of central world. both shops have a great selection of cotton fabrics.
For the blouse I used a vintage simplicity pattern from the 70's but made the Peter Pan collar less humongous:

cute kitty galore close up

and here is a sample of some of my Thai  fabrics purchases:

 The spotted cotton I plan to use for Vogue 1970's dress pattern I just got from Etsy and I will post this later. I am planning a Miu Miu inspired project based on the autumn collection she showed in March.

And I actually want to make 'a linen skirt' out of this linen print which mentions a linen skirt! But we shall see later in the summer.

My new project is a Carven inspired Vogue pattern and a few sewing blogs have already mentioned the similarities in the designs:

I bought a silver threaded denim from Truro fabrics and as i'm a bit self conscous about exposing bare side flesh I bought a small piece of blue corded lace from Stone fabrics for the side panels.
Here are the 2 designs (Vogue is the red dress)

I cut out the dress yesterday so it will be a few days before i can post more pictures but anyhow
I want to carry on  posting my sewing progress as I go along and maybe engage dialogue with fellow sewing fiends out there. So let me know what you think.