Frangipani vintage Vogue 5434 mash-up

Haere Mai - welcome to 2016.

India was awesome - absolutely in love with the south. Kochi, the Kerala Backwaters and Mamallapuram have been added to Udaipur in Rajasthan, and of course Navsari and Surat in Gujarat (shopping - oh the shopping!) as places I'll visit again.

Back home, there's a well-timed challenge over at The Monthly Stitch - The "UFO Showdown". I confess to numerous UFOs, so there's a pile I'm determined to tackle this month. Scroll down if you'd like a sneak-peek.

Waitangi weekend saw me tackled the first. You'll remember the Frangipani frock was a toilé for the red silk dress I wore to a wedding earlier this year. That dress was a huge success, which prompted me to finish this one.

I unpicked and recut the bodice using Style 1751 again. Dilemma thought, a perfectly colour-matched zip was a wee bit too short. "Make a feature out of a flaw" I could hear my tutor Jeannie Gander saying. So I placed the zip as per usual into the lower back seam opening, hen recut the back facings with extensions and finished the closure with a button and fabric loop at the neck. and finished the closure with a button and fabric loop at the neck. It slips it over my head without being unbuttoned, so no weird yoga moves required to get it done up.

The finished frock is my new favourite!

Onto the remaining UFO's I'd like to tackle this month. These are by no means all of them, just the ones I think I can complete, and would like to see completed, in a month. In no particular order:

1. Self-drafted "Melba" Jacket. Started in 2013. Made up to the point where I was deciding whether to make Spanish Snap buttonholes, or just do regular keyhole buttonholes by machine at the end.

2. Vintage inspired frock with full skirt (flower embroidery at hem) and cute pockets. Started in 2011. Abandoned after the ridiculous looking collar was unpicked.

3. Perfect Purple Pants. Second draft in my quest to make the perfect fitting pants (the first attempt so bad they were never blogged about - they're now odd looking capri pants worn only with 'outie' shirts). Cut in November 2014.

4. 70's inspired floral shirt. Can't actually remember how long ago this was started, sometime between moving back to Wellington in 2005 and my first blog in 2009. Yep, a while. Once again, think I had collar issues. Still, you have to try these things to figure out whether you like them or not.

5. The newbie. Ambitiously cut this dress out about 3 weeks before leaving for India - wasn't going to happen! The teaser was a newly acquired vintage pattern working perfectly with a stashed fabric - how often does that happen?

Wish me luck!