The colour of sunshine, lemons, The Tour de France and summer.
Yellow is such a fun and friendly colour and always brings a smile to my face when worn in big bold statement clothing. Sadly it looks utterly dreadful on me and I can never find a way to wear it that looks in any way good.
So until I can find a way to make it work, I will continue to admire it from afar.
To see more Yellow, take a look at our Pinterest Board. This is part of my ongoing series where I am looking at individual colours each Friday . Mostly it is an exercise for me in not always choosing the patterned fabric to make from.
From pastel to vibrant, fluro to matte, I love pink. In every shade and variation I will wear it, buy it, sew with it and more than once I have gone literally head to toe in it. Pink hair, pink dress, pink shoes. I just love it.
Not only do I find it massively cheering and fun to wear but it suits me! With pale complexion of pink tones I can overdose on pink and instead of looking washed out it makes me look more vibrant.
The odd thing is I barely wore it as a child, I certainly didn’t have a pink barbie princess room and the entire love affair with pink didn’t start until well into my twenties. Now I have so much of it I often have to make a conscious decision to not keep getting more.
Despite having a lot of pink it tends to make things easy as so much of my wardrobe co ordinates together, so if you find a colour that suits you, go for it!
To see more Pink, take a look at my Pinterest board dedicated to the colour.
Now we all agree that Roisin has incredible style and how awesome is it that everyone has been able to jump in the deep end and wear everything from shellfish to tea cups in glorious waisted dresses with big swishy skirts.
I have to admit I was on the fence about joining in, didn’t want to crash the party as I don’t know Roisin in real life. Thankfully on a trip to Cabramatta the wonderful Sydney Sewists practically slapped me silly if I didn’t join in and they even found the amazing fabric.
But first the dress.
Simplicity 1873 is a style I have made before and I had planned to do the sleeved version for this make. At the cutting stage I decided that there was no way the slippery fabric would behave well enough to deal with sleeves so the sleeveless version was the only choice.
I cut a straight size 14 except I added in heaps of extra fabric into the skirt. The back skirt is basically twice the width it should be and I doubled the front skirt panel too. This adds plenty of swishing possibilities but was slightly tricky to figure out all the pleating with the slippery fabric.
I had planned to move the centre back zip to the side seam but then it didn’t fit? So I moved the zip back again and did an exposed zip to make up for the fact I had just slit the centre back panel. I usually make this style in a cotton and the sizing works but in this rayon cotton blend it was just not working at all. I had to shuffle some seam allowance around and nip some darts but nothing major. Honestly if I hadn’t left the make to the last minute I’m sure it would have all been fine.
Now the fabric (have I mentioned it’s slippery? Am not a fan of slippery fabric) it has a wonderful hand feel and drape it’s just a bit unwilling to stay where you put it and likes to grow in some unusual ways. But all of that is forgiven for this wonderful print.
The secretary koalas are planning their holidays. Tossing their paperwork in the air, leaving the type writers behind and donning flower leis for their exotic destination of the Gold Coast, Darling Harbour or Bondi Beach.
For those unfamiliar with Australia the Gold Coast while it can be nice, is known for hordes of drunken teenagers on a spring break style vacation, Darling Harbour is in Sydney and is essentially a near empty shopping mall with tacky tourist gift shops and Bondi Beach is packed with people it is by far the nicest of the three destinations.
Thrown into this mix of office working koalas desperate for a holiday is a platypus wearing floral pants and saying cooee. It is unclear if the cooee is his “hello ladies” line or not? But I like to think it is.
Oh and the tag line written on the print is the rather nonsensical “Manufactured under the sun, somewhere down there”.
So on that rather cryptic note there is nothing else to say other than congratulations to Roisin and Nic, hope you have a wonderful wedding and have thoroughly enjoyed the few hundred brightly dressed virtual gate rashers to your party.
I adore grey, in all of its shades and characters from charcoal to grey marle. I love its abilities to make other colours pop, to make something seem dressier and its ability to feel sporty. For me it is a true wardrobe basic and I want more of it to help balance out my over abundance of patterns and saturated colour.
I’m planning a new winter coat and am strongly leaning towards a grey wool, I’ve not yet decided on anything else apart from the fact my snow boots are grey which means I would match when I have winters in England (not much call here in Sydney for snow boots). Who knows I may change my mind yet but so far grey is winning.
After much humming and haring I’m taking the pledge
‘I, Susan of Measure Twice Cut Once, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May ’14. I endeavour to wear at least 1 handmade garment each day for the duration of May 2014’
It’s going to be interesting to see how it all works out. In my mind I feel like I wear things I’ve made almost all the time, so here’s to hoping that is what actually happens. I’m also going to be repeating garments. That’s what I do in real life so that’s what will be happening during the challenge.
For anyone who is curious you can read all about Me Made May here
My harder challenge will be trying to photograph it all, will have to make friends with a timer/tripod combo or learn how to take full length photos with an iPhone? Any suggestions most welcome.
I’ve been thinking about solid colours a lot lately. I’m stash busting with a vengence this year and it’s come to my attention that I barely own any solid colours. It’s all prints all the way round here.
So in order to think a bit more about colours, each Friday I’m going to share my thoughts on some colours. It may not lead to a big colour revelation but at the very least we can look at some pretty clothes.
I used to hate the colour navy, well hate is a strong word but I just never considered it. To me it was boring, functional and held no charm at all.
These days I love it for its inky wonder, it can be rich and vibrant, makes a perfect companion to many of the bright patterns I so love but is equally well matched to sweet small prints.
So why for so many years was it banished from my wardrobe?
I wore a navy skirt to high school. For 6 years I pulled on a navy box pleated skirt, a white over blouse and a navy tie.
Functional yet oh so boring. While not featuring in the style stakes at all, it was however incredibly comfortable and fairly well suited to our hot and humid climate.
My only issue was my tie which I was forever covering in ink, paint or something from art or design class. After awhile my mum got sick of trying to keep it mark free and I ended up with 2 ties. One to wear on any day I had a practical subject and one to wear on all other days.
Now that I have got past that time I can appreciate navy for all it’s good qualities and love pairing in unexpected ways or in a wacky silhouette. Next trip to Japan I’m scheduling in some time to indulge my navy fascination by seeing a traditional Indigo Dyehouse, surely the ultimate form of navy?
It’s my little fuzzbuckets birthday, so I thought I would share a photo of her when she was only a few months old and her favourite place to sleep was the saddle of my lowrider bike.
1 – sequin purse via Vila Clothes Blog 2 – sequin skirt via The Sartorialist 3- gold sequin jacket – struggling to find the original link for this one, if someone knows can you let let me know? 4 – sequin shorts via Fashiolista
Last night I was walking home and passed Miss Chu’s this cute little place that specialises in rice paper rolls. They have an outdoor seating area that is a miss match of school chairs, random desks and tables all decorated with banana leaves and strings of pepper lantern lights.
All this miss matched but amazingly well put together decor is not what caught my eye. There were 4 women having dinner. They were laughing and smiling and looked so healthy and happy, it was a joy to see.
One of them had paired a black sequin jacket with a t shirt, jeans and flats. It was so effortlessly cool. Just laid back and easy with this shimmer that reflected under the twinkling lights of the paper lanterns.
So naturally I am now thinking about adding a little bit of sparkle to my wardrobe?
Do you like to add a bit of shimmer to your wardrobe? What works for you?
For awhile we have been making our own bread. It’s a wonderfully satisfying thing to learn and you get the added bonuses of a house that smells like freshly baked bread and freshly baked bread to eat!
The only downside is that whatever clothes you are wearing on baking days get streaks of flour over them (no matter how careful I am I always end up with some on me).
So I’m thinking about aprons. I have an amazing Japanese pattern book all on aprons that I am thinking I will use for some industrial/workwear inspired ones but part of me wants some super girly ones with ric rac braid and ruffles! Plus I think they will be an amazing stash buster!
During December I lost a great friend who overflowed with talent. While on holiday overseas I found out that my hairdresser Ben had passed away. He was only a few months older than me and I had just seen him on Wednesday to get my hair done and now he was gone.
For the past 13 years I had seen him every 8 weeks like clockwork to get my hair done and it was always something I looked forward. We would gossip and talk over huge life matters and chat for hours on end. He would come to parties and give me advice and look out for me. He was a great friend and an amazing hairdresser. A few hours with him and you would walk out looking like a rock star and feeling fabulous.
I wanted to do something to honor his talents and so here is just a fraction of his amazing work with my hair.
I never asked or told him what to do. I just went in and he did his thing and it always worked. From Mohawks to shades of pink, purple and blonde, all lengths and styles he gave me magic hair every single time.
Goodbye Ben, you may be gone but you are not forgotten. Here’s to all the times we spent laughing together.
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Hello!
Hi, I'm Susan. A designer and sewing teacher living in Sydney, Australia.
Here I share tales of my sewing, my pattern collection and insights into what it's like to work in the fashion Industry.
Other recurring themes include cat photos, an ever changing hair style and knitting.
