It's been so long - winter floral shirt

Yet another UFO I can tick off the list, and now that it's finally finish, got to say I love it. It was too mature for my tastes at the time I started making this, but now 10 or so years later, it's perfect.

All it need was to lose the big '70's collar and cuffs. The other changes I made were to topstitch pretty much the entire garment, and swapped out  the nasty plastic buttons I was orginally going to use with some lovely Romanian glass buttons found in Taupo's Oakleaf Antiques a few years ago. Absolutely worth stopping here if you're travelling along State Highway 1 as they have the most fabulous collection of glass buttons bought over from the actual factory where they were made in Romania when it closed down. Be careful if you're on a budget though - those little buttons quickly add up when you can't leave any of the lovelies behind!

The pattern was traced out of an old Burda magazine, and the fabric is lite-weight wool, with a floral barkcloth-style print. I think it may have come from The Fabric Warehouse, but I can't really say for sure after all this time.

Looking forward to wearing this once the weather cools down.

Going dotty – Burda 7253 (shortened)

Haere Mai! Welcome to 2015!
Here in Wellington (actually, most of New Zealand) we've been blessed with the most glorious weather since the start of the new year. Hence, lots of time outdoors and not much at the sewing machine. However, I do have a bit of catching-up to do with things made between this post and the last.

First up is another summery top for work. The fabric was a last minute purchase at Fabric-a-Brac I wanted to spend every cent of the $50 I took, so offered the last $3.60 to the vendor for this piece, which they happily accepted. (BTW, bought loads of lovely fabric and quite a bit of thread for my $50.) I normally don't look twice at viscose but couldn't pass up the cheery print and colours.

I managed to squeeze a shortened Burda 7253 and a tie belt out of the teeny tiny scrap with a bit of difficulty. The grain was completely up the wop and no amount of tugging and steaming could get it straight; eventually I crossed my fingers and cut, hoping no one would ever notice it was off grain because of the crazy circles.

Eliminating the back seam and zipper made it was super speedy to put together, yet it still slips easily over my head without them. I'd nearly settled on a black button, before deciding to have one last look in a precious box of my grandmothers buttons, where I found three darling little clear glass buttons. Because the buttons are purely for decoration (there's no buttonhole) I stitched them close together to look sort of like a brooch. Lastly, after a couple of wears, I added fabric belt loops to hold the belt in place.

This is my favourite of the three tops I made recently. It works just as well with a skirt as it does with jeans. Plus, it used pretty much every inch of fabric = nothing left to add to the scrap bag. Don't you love it when that happens!