Self Stitched September: Week 1

Despite having very few of my own makes I've decided to take part in Self Stitched September, a challenge lots of sewist bloggers have taken part in the last few years. Like Me Made May, the idea seems to have been originally conceived by Zo of Collette Patterns, though this year they seem to have been quiet on organising it. Here's a link to her post last year.

This year I'm not aiming to wear something I made every day, just most days, here's the first week's line up...

1st September...Waking up to wearing my new nightie, not yet blogged! It's New Look 6984, more info to come soon on a future blog post.

2nd September, New day, same nightie!

 

 3rd September, the Joanie dress (New Look 6000) got brought out for work.

4th September I wore my favourite blouse New Look 6963, the original version. 5th I had a break with nothing else clean / suitable for work!

 6th September, for a meeting and birthday drinks with friends I wore my other New Look 6963, the Japanese Blossom Blouse.

Who else is taking part in Self Stitched September? Drop me a comment if you're a fellow blogger / tweeter, would love to see other people's outfits!

The Joanie dress

I've finally done it! After weeks of delaying because I felt intimidated I've tackled and completed the Joanie dress (New Look 6000). I was so sure it'd be difficult, and I was really unsure about what fabric to chose, due to the fitted and curvy style, very different to my other dresses so far. 

There's lots of inspiration out there, it's a really popular dress to make up, as you can see over on Burda Style. People tend to call it the 'Joanie' dress thanks to the 1950/60s Mad Men style worked by the beautiful Christina Hendricks. 

Once I'd got round to building up the courage and bought my fabric (a navy jersey knit from Fabrics Galore) making the dress was remarkably simple!

It's pretty fitted, and I'm delighted with the lined sleeves - never thought it could be so easy! I started just a few weeks ago and since then the fabric choice has become obviously wrong one. Taking these photos at 9am I was already pretty warm!

The pleat details worked out mostly ok, though they're not perfect...

And the button was a hard choice but was eventually picked up at Liberty's - their very last one in this size.

It was a cool day up in Liverpool so I decided to wear it for a good friend's wedding, what do you think? It's with nude shoes, a cream knit jacket from Zara and lots of red lipstick...

I have absolutely no idea where to wear it more normally - it's not really my normal style for work. How would you wear it, and what do you think of the finished version?