I figured, people have a right to their hobbies, and I have a right to find those people creepy.

Hi all! It's been a bit of a rollercoaster of a day, here. Our family dog, Paddy, has been ill for the past week. The vets said he had a dangerously low white blood count, but they didn't know why. After carrying out a lot of tests over the past few days, they told my parents this morning that there wasn't anything more they could do for him and that he should be put to sleep. Daddy didn't want to do that, and certainly not in the surgery, so argued with the vet to take the dog home.

We all expected that the dog was coming home to die, but this evening he has showed some small signs of improvement. It's not a full recovery, but things look a lot better than they did this morning. But I've been a bit of a mess! It's hard being so far away from my family when I know they're having a hard time. And it's hard, when you're a sobbing mess at work, to have to explain that it's because of a sick pet. But that's been today. I can only hope poor silly old Paddy gets better. He's a very special dog. I must say as well, that the vets were very kind. They refused to let my parents pay for anything except for the medication - even though they had brought in an ECG machine and specialist vets from another town, and kept Paddy in for a few days. With any luck, all that love and care will help Paddy to recover.

Anyway, I have a few days off work now and after all that emotion, they're needed! We're off to Cardiff in the morning and the mini holiday will be nice. But, October is coming to a close and I have one more Sew Red October make to share! Brace yourselves. It's more By Hand London, and more polka dots. I'm nothing if not totally predictable. I had an inspiration dress, too. This beauty from Vivien of Holloway. I can't get a good photo of it to put on the blog so you'll have to click the link, I'm afraid! As ever, I don't really have £110 to spare and I'd rather make my own if I can, so I did!

Distant Sun dress - worn with Vivienne Westwood for Melissa Lady Dragon shoes

Soooo, I said this was another By Hand London dress, and it is! This is the Anna bodice again, but this time with the v-neck rather than the slash-neck. It looks like my inspiration dress but without the fear of accidental flashing that comes with a wrapover bodice. Hurrah! I really, really like how it looks. I added a circle skirt, which is hemmed with horsehair braid. It's quite long, but as this is not an everyday dress I don't mind. I'm wearing it with a petticoat here.

I get a fair few hits to the blog from people who are into petticoats - it seems specifically into spanking people with petticoats so I feel kind of weird posting this. But I also get some questions about petticoats suitable for these kinds of dresses, so whatever. Fetishists, knock yourselves out. The rest of you - this petticoat is by Hell Bunny and I got it here. 

I don't often wear v-necks because I'm weirdly modest these days about showing any kind of cleavage. I became conscious of it when I was a teacher, and I suppose it stuck. But I like this. It's cute and flirty and I feel comfortable in it.

I think I might actually be about to sneeze in this photo!

Nothing to say about construction that I haven't already. Again, I used a lapped zip in the back because I like them. When I have used horsehair braid for hems before I have encased it in bias binding, but this time I stitched it to the outside of the hem, turned and gently pressed it, and slip-stitched it. It took ages, but I like hand-sewing so I found it quite enjoyable. I just love how kicky the braid makes the hem!

Going against my grumpy, not-a-joiner grumbling, I've really enjoyed taking part in Sew Red October, and I'm very pleased with my four dresses. It's been good to see how everyone interprets the brief and red is one of my favourite colours, even if I don't sew with it a great deal. Hell, I guess now I don't need to!

That's me for the evening. I'm pretty exhausted, and it's time for a glass of wine. Night!

Bludge. It's quite good, actually. You don't even have to drink it. You just rub it on your hips and it eats right through to your liver.

Evening, dudes! Stormageddon hasn't hit Leamington yet, but Nic and I are battening down the hatches anyway. I have a presentation to make at work tomorrow and, if I'm honest, being rained in is probably preferable! It's been a busy and exhausting week. I've been too tired in the evenings to sew or blog, which has been irritating because I spent the first few days of the week in an angry blur and the hum of my sewing machine usually soothes that angry beast. I've calmed down a lot now, and my friend L has promised to give me a gold star for managing not to slap anyone this week!

And as for blogging; well, I learned the hard way that blogging while angry isn't a good idea! But as ever, I do have a backlog of projects to share and stories to tell. These photos are from a fortnight ago, hence the sunshine in them! For some time now, I've been addicted to Alexander Henry's pin-up fabrics. I like them all, but most particularly the fabulous cowgirl print in From The Hip. It's available in a variety of colours and I have made dresses from the blue, the pink and the red. I once owned a Get Cutie dress made from the black version of the print, but it was so low-cut it was indecent and I never wore it so sold it on ebay. God, I'm boring, sorry. Anyway, although I only very rarely wear black, I wanted a dress made from the black version. I wondered if four cowgirl dresses was too many, and consulted with my friend D at work. She advised me to go for it, so I did. I bought the black fabric on ebay and got to it. If you've been able to hang in there during my tedious rambling, here's the dress:

Absent Friends dress and Topshop shoes

Yes, it's another Simplicity 2444. NOT EVEN SORRY. I love this pattern a lot. A whole lot. There is one slight issue with it though, when you're trying to combine it with 44" wide fabric that has a one-way print - the skirt pieces are too wide to fit. I redrew the skirt pieces, keeping the shape at the top, but curving the side seams in gently towards the hem to give it a slight (very slight) tulip shape. It meant I was able to get this dress out of under 2 metres of fabric and the skirt is slightly different from the other 2444s I have crowding my wardrobe.

I wore this on a beautiful Saturday afternoon two weeks ago. Nic and I walked to Warwick and back to get some fresh air and have a look around the shops, and to have lunch in Wylie's Cafe. It was a great day, but sadly I think the long walk broke my long-suffering Topshop shoes and I had to bin them after they basically disintegrated. I have no shortage of shoes - and no shortage of red shoes, even - but I am sorry to see these ones go. I've already started looking for a replacement pair on ebay. 

Nic took these photos on Warwick New Road, which is the route we usually take when walking to Warwick. It's a very pretty walk, and I'm always intrigued by these gates to nowhere. There is no longer a Sunshine House; the building was redeveloped in the 90s into luxury apartments. I'm glad they kept the gates, though.

That's one of my favourite things about living in Leamington Spa. It's twee, middle-class and very middle-England, but it's very beautiful here. I feel lucky every time Nic and I go for a walk to live somewhere so beautiful, even if I do spend a lot of my time tutting at the parents of all the Jemimas and Olivers making a nuisance of themselves on micro-scooters on the pavements. I'd say that makes me grumpy, but it doesn't. I'm already grumpy. 

All right, I'm all talk. I'm not really that grumpy. How can I be, surrounded be beauty and covered in totally bitchin' cowgirls?!

I'm hoping that this week will be less stressful. It will be as it's a three-day week for me. Nic and I are off to Cardiff on Thursday for the weekend, as he's speaking at a conference there. I'm looking forward to my first visit to Wales (shameful, I know) and to poking around whatever fabric shops Cardiff has to offer. First I have to get through Monday-Wednesday. I have a big, important meeting tomorrow and I have to give a presentation. I've been practising, don't worry.

And then I might very well go and buy myself something pretty. Because, you know:

Night night, now!

I'm a steak and baked spud man myself, but Mrs Lewis likes to live on the culinary edge.

Afternoon all! It's another one of those Sunday afternoons where I'm curled up on the sofa with my laptop and a blanket and a cup of tea and it's lovely! As I mentioned previously, the past week at work has been pretty busy, and then yesterday I had a long day in London. Nic was speaking at the British Music Experience at the O2 in Greenwich, so naturally I wanted to be in the audience. This happened to coincide with Amy being in London so I spent the morning fabric shopping with her, Alison and Rehanon before hopping on the Jubilee Line down to Greenwich. Of course I totally neglected to take any photos, but it was a brilliant day. It was wonderful to see sewing friends and to buy some fabulous new fabric, and then it was really special to be at Nic's lecture. Afterwards we went to the South Bank for Mexican Food and cocktails with our friend Charlotte, had a night-time walk around Soho, then some dessert and wine before catching the train back up to Leamington. So, you can probably see why the laziness is something of a necessity today!

I haven't done any sewing this weekend, but I did finally manage to get a recent project photographed. A few weeks ago, I was offered the chance to review a fancy iron from Argos. This was good because I'm a bit hard on irons - I think seamstresses often are - and mine had started to leak. Like, quite severely leak unless it was turned up to the max. The timing was perfect and I swear I've never been so happy about shopping for an appliance! I chose this one:

That's the Philips Instant Care Pressurised Steam Generator*. But my friend Fiona told me that stylists use this iron on photoshoots, and she described it as "the James Bond of irons" so I named it James Bond. I don't make a habit of naming my appliances, apart from my coffee maker. It's called Rusty Shackleford because it makes a noise like "sha-sha-SHA" when the coffee is ready. Anyway, I digress. Once I'd ordered James Bond, I decided that I needed to sew something special. I was daydreaming at work about making a spotty pencil dress - something like this one that I already have from ASOS:

ASOS pencil dress - I bought this on ebay last year and wore it all last winter. I love it.

I bought a job-lot of 5 metres of red polka dot cotton lawn on ebay, which arrived the same day as James Bond so my first job was to wash the fabric and then to iron it. I don't love ironing - nobody does - but James Bond made that job really easy. I'm not going to say enjoyable because, duh, but it was really easy and quick. And the novelty of the whole thing meant that the giant pile of ironing that's been on the armchair in the living room for weeks got dealt with really quickly. Because the water is all in a separate reservoir the iron is really light and it doesn't leak, and you can control the steam really easily. THANK YOU, JAMES BOND THE IRON!

So, anyway, the dress. The shape of the ASOS inspiration dress is the same as the Rachel dress mash-up I did a couple of weeks ago, so I went with that again. I lengthened the sleeves, as per the instructions on the Anna sewalong on the By Hand London blog. The only other alteration I made to my previous version of this was to omit two of the darts on the skirt back. The woven fabric is a lot more stable than the stretch sateen I made my Rachel dress out of, and the skirt and bodice wouldn't fit together without that alteration.

Down in the Street Below dress - By Hand London Anna bodice and Charlotte skirt, worn with Irregular Choice No Place Like Home shoes and vintage wicker handbag

I shortened the length of the skirt to the knee because I didn't want to put a vent in the back, and the woven fabric obviously doesn't have as much give to it as the stretch! As you can see, there isn't a lot of ease in this dress so I won't be wearing it on days when I have to run for the train or eat a big meal! I changed into something more slouchy when I got home, for the purposes of lounging on the sofa! But for a morning of dandering around the markets in town and taking in the unexpected late October sunshine it was grand, and I look forward to wearing it on days when I want to look smart but sassy.

I particularly like how the sleeves turned out. One of my favourite elements of the Anna bodice is the kimono sleeves and I think they look really pretty extended to this length. Unlike the sleeves on the ASOS dress, these aren't cuffed but it would be easy to add cuffs to them. Some cute cuffs would be simple enough to draft or I could even use the cuff pieces from New Look 6000 as as basis. I think this pattern mash-up would look great with the v-necked variation of the Anna bodice, but slash necklines are my favourite:

While I was making this dress, I was making another one out of the remaning polka dot fabric. I got fully into Sew Red October, it would seem, after all my crabbing earlier in the month about how I'm not a joiner. Working in an assembly-line fashion was the other excellent thing about James Bond the Iron - I was able to leave it switched on standby while I sewed. It was far less of a faff than my old iron, and much better at ironing all the darts and pleats in this dress!

Back view, although I am standing a bit stupidly here. I gave this dress a lapped zip because it seemed to suit the style of the dress, and I prefer them.

I named the dress after a wonderful song by The Divine Comedy and because, well, that's where I get the photos for my blog. The lyrics gave me a little inspiration, as well...

Everybody's on a secret mission

Everybody's got their own ambition

They would tell you if they thought you'd listen

They would tell you lately they've been wishing

For the chance to meet a handsome stranger

Lead a life of elegance and danger 

Down in the street below

I think this dress would be perfect for someone who wanted to lead a life of elegance and danger...

...although, you know, maybe I already do. I certainly managed to meet my handsome stranger.

There will be more polka dot pencil dresses. I bought some pink polka dot cotton sateen on Goldhawk Road yesterday with the intention of making another one of these. I can never seem to make just one of anything! But I suppose that's the thing about knowing your style and what you like, and it makes it easy to get dressed in the morning and still enjoy some variety.

Now, I must be off. Nic and I have started watching Twin Peaks recently - to my shame, I'd never seen it before - and I'm quite hooked. I shall be back later in the week though, with another Sew Red October make! Until then: LEMON OUT.

If there is nothing wrong with me, maybe there is something wrong with the universe!

Evening dudes and dudettes! I'm having another busy work week, but whatever, it's nearly the weekend. I've been too tired to want to sew, even, but luckily for me I have no shortage of dresses so it's all good really.

I've been having a good week. Work is very busy as always, but I had my mid-year review this week and I'm very happy with the feedback I was given and with the development suggestions my line manager made. In a weird way it feels like a betrayal of previous me to say this, but I'm so much happier at work than I have been for a long time. It's good! I mean, yeah, getting up in the morning is still hard (I have to be in extra early tomorrow morning for a very early meeting...FUN) but it is in every job. I feel very grateful to be in this position. Long may it last!

So, anyway, you don't come here for work talk now do you. It's about the dresses, right? Well, that and my sparkling wit of course. Naturally. You may remember that earlier this year, I did a knock-off of a Bernie Dexter dress. Twice. I like her designs, although as the designs themselves are very simple it's actually the fabrics I like and it's fortunate that mostly the fabrics are commercially available. That makes it easy to recreate the look at a fraction of the cost! One of the dresses I've admired from after for some time is this one:

Bernie Dexter "Lush Landscape" dress

The fabric is beautiful, but even if I were in the market for a cotton dress costing £120, I couldn't justify this one as it's so similar to a Bernie Dexter dress I already own:

Bernie Dexter Happy Valley Jessica dress - I bought this on ebay nice and cheaply!

Still, though. I liked the Landscape dress a lot and when I saw that Annette Tirette had made a fabulous dress from the fabric, it put it right back to the forefront of my mind. Totally unprompted, Anneke kindly sent me a link to where she bought the fabric and then I was able to find a UK shop that happened to have some in stock. Miss Gingers is a new shop, and they have a small but well chosen selection of fabrics. I bought 2 metres of Park Landscape by Michael Miller and not only did it arrive quickly, but it came with a thoughtful note. I'll be shopping with Miss Gingers again!

I decided that, as the colder weather is approaching, I didn't want to make a copy of the Bernie Dexter original. Instead I used a faithful pattern mashup - the bodice of By Hand London's Elisalex and the skirt from New Look 6824. Here's the finished article - the Green Ginger dress:

Green Ginger dress, Mel 'Raspberry' shoes and that vintage wicker handbag was a gift from Emily.

I'm biased here because I made this myself, like, but I think this fabric is so much more beautiful than the Bernie Dexter dress shows it to be. It's so pretty, I'm almost tempted to go and buy the 3 metres that Miss Gingers has left in stock! As with all of the Michael Miller fabrics I've sewed with before, this was lovely to work with and comfortable to wear. I know a lot of people are wary of sewing with 'quilting' cottons, but it's been my experience that these designer US quilting cottons work well for some types of garments - you just need to make sure to prewash as there will be some shrinkage!

I wore this the Sunday before last, when the weather was unexpectedly glorious. Nic and I had a few errands to do in town and then we spent the afternoon rambling through the fields to the Saxon Mill, where we were able to sit outside in the sunshine. I changed into flat shoes for the walk, though! When I tried on the dress I wondered if I had hemmed it a bit too long, but decided to give it a few wears before deciding what to do with it. I love midi-length dresses in the summer, and I think the length looks good here but after wearing the dress to work on Tuesday I decided to take the hem up by a few inches. It sits just below the knee now - still cute, but it'll be easier to wear with tights well into the cold weather! I hand-hemmed the dress and I finished the seams by turning and stitching them. The bodice is lined but the skirt isn't.

Last Sunday was also the first time I wore these Mel shoes, and I looooooooove them:

I might have a problem with shoes with hearts on the front. I now have 6 pairs. But they're all different, kind of. I could stop any time I wanted to though. Probably. After I've bought them in a different colour.

So that's basically all there is to say about this dress. It's already a firm favourite and I'm looking forward to those lush green plants cheering up a cold winter. Also sorry for spamming you with lots of photos, but that Sunday was such a bright day that Nic got a really cool JJ Abrams style lensflare in the photos, and I love it:

If I have the lensflare, does that mean that Peter Bishop is somewhere nearby?

That's all my words used up for the evening. I'm away here to watch something silly and doze off on the sofa. Goodnight!

We've tried to study him, of course, but he's much too sophisticated for the standard tests.

Evening all, on this dismal and rainy Monday! I had a super weekend, fully relaxing after a busy week. I opened the blinds yesterday morning, took one look at the torrential rain outside, and got back into bed to spend the day reading. I re-read The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, for the first time since my late teens. Ghoulish though it may seem, the film is in my top 5 (along with Jaws, 10 Rillington Place, Clueless and Short Circuit 2, not even sorry) and, having recently rewatched it, spending the day rereading the book was both enjoyable and weird. Because, there's a lot of sewing in the book. There are lots of detailed passages about construction, and about fitting and that's odd to read. Because, it's like "Hmmm. This is relevant to my interests....

...Yeah. Maybe not."

I am endlessly amused by the sewing that you see in the film. In Jame Gumb's sewing room/lair, there's a bed covered with a swastika quilt. I can't help but get the giggles when I think of some local quilter in Pittsburgh being asked to make a swastika quilt to be in the film. But maybe that's just me.

Anyway, yeah. Some sewing that is not, you know, human skin related. I've been sewing again with Simplicity 2444. Not even sorry; I love that pattern. As with the Passage Over Piedmont dress, I made this with some fabric I bought the last time I visited Goldhawk Road - I think at the beginning of last month. I spotted it in Classic Textiles, didn't buy it, faffed around, got some more money out, and went and bought it. At which point the lads who work there thought I was an easy mark and started trying to sell me anything. They're cute, though, so no worries. Anyway, I initially bought it with another project in mind but something about the zigzags and the diagonal darts of the 2444 bodice seemed to fit together so that's where I went with it.

Locutus dress (Simplicity 2444) and Hard Hearted Harlot 'Reply' boots

Nic and I are on a major Star Trek TNG tip at the moment, which will be obvious to anyone who follows me on twitter, and I was watching Best of Both Worlds when I was making this dress. Poor old Picard gets assimilated by the Borg, and his Borgy name is Locutus. It all works out fine in the end, kind of, but it takes him a few episodes to get over it. I think he starts to feel better after he goes to France and wrestles his brother in a vineyard.

Anyway, the dress. I made my usual modifications to the pattern and I omitted the pockets. This lawn is really light and soft and anything in inseam pockets would pull and drag, so no point. The seams are pinked, and I followed the pattern's instructions to sew the front and then the back and then sew them together. It feels weird, but it works. I did consider lining it, as the weather is getting colder, but decided   not to because I didn't want anything to change the colours and I figured I could always wear a slip with it. Bam, job done.

I wore this last Friday, when I was working from home. I'd had a busy day that was rendered infuriating by various IT issues, so by the end of the work day I was ready to get out for a walk and to go for a coffee, and to pretend to be Christine Cagney.

That is really an NYPD shield. It's definitely NOT an expired Young Person's Railcard with a post-it note stuck to it.

This isn't something that Christine Cagney would actually wear, I don't think. Red cord midi culottes are more Christine's style, but I don't think I could carry them off. But the colours and shapes of this dress, combined with my tan knee boots gives this whole thing a very late 70s feel. I'd blend in all right in the 14th precinct with this, I think. It's why I included the scaffolding in the pictures. It's the modern urban crime environment, and I bet Chris had to deal with scaffolding outside her loft from time to time as well.

This is not the last you'll see of Simplicity 2444 - in fact, I made another one last week. But, whatever, it's a great pattern. Now, if you'll excuse me, there are some sounds coming from the basement...

Nice legs. For a human.

Hello! As I type this, I'm half watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Bev takes up with some smooth new dude, and of course it turns out that he's a Trill, and that's complicated. But, also, there's a beauty salon on the Enterprise. That explains why Bev's hair is usually so awesome, right?

Anyway, it's been a good couple of days. My sister-in-law had a baby boy yesterday, so my little brother is a father and I'm an auntie to a darling little nephew. I'll have to get on with some sewing for babies before I go home next month (after my youngest sister has her baby) but for the moment, here's some more sewing I did for myself. 

As I said a few posts ago - and be warned for maybe some TMI here - my bust size has increased slightly lately. Not by a huge amount - I'm still more Dolly Clackett than Dolly Parton - but a bit. Enough to make me stop being lazy and do a full bust adjustment on my beloved bodice pattern from the Elisalex dress.

Getting technical about fitting is something I have shied away from before, out of a fear that my silly fluffy mind can't handle it, I guess? I'm sure that sounds totally lame to all you super seamstresses, but I needed to gain some confidence in my own abilities before I attempted it. My recent work successes made me realise that the analytical side of my brain does work, and that really did give me the confidence to give it a go.

Turns out that I don't really have a problem with maths. Or that doing this FBA didn't really use a lot of maths. GO ME.

I used the excellent tutorial on the By Hand London blog, which is broken down into such manageable steps that it's not at all taxing. I sat down after a pretty thinky work day, and after basically covering the living room with tissue paper (I was tracing the Charlotte skirt pieces at the same time) I came out with a bodice modification that I was happy with.

It took about a week before I cut into fabric, and I decided to have a crack at the new bodice using some super cheap cotton poplin I'd bought in Barry's in Birmingham. I reckon it's a knock-off of some better quality cotton - I think there might be a similar Michael Miller print - but at £2.50 a metre, I was happy to give it a go. It's a wee bit on the stiff side, as you might expect from cheap cotton poplin, but it washed well so it's find. AND it's nautical, AND it's red so I'm going to count this as a Red October make!

The Rocksalt dress - By Hand London Elisalex dress, worn with Vivienne Westwood for Melissa Lady Dragon shoes

Um, okay - try to ignore both the scaffolding and the pigeon-toed-ness here. I swear my feet point out the way they should. Look instead at how much better the bodice fits me now. Hurrah!

Now to be honest, I'm still not totally done adjusting the bodice. I made and attached sleeves to this dress, but that caused issues. I'm going to need to drop the armholes a bit and make the sleeves a bit bigger at the top. But that can wait - and to be honest, with this print the sleeves looked a bit much anyway so I wasn't sorry to lose them. 

The slight stiffness of this fabric is perfect for holding the shape of the Elisalex skirt. I know quite a lot of people worry that the exaggerated tulip shape won't be flattering. To be fair, it might not be on some body types but I really like the way it creates an hourglass shape.

I love this skirt. That's why I look so smug. That and the fact that I love my shoes. I loved the pink and navy ones so much that when I saw these for half price in Author shoes when I was in London, I bought them. I'm not going to lie, in the spring I'll probably buy the cream ones with the pink bows on as well. And I don't even care.

I wore this last Saturday to parade around town in. The woman who served me and Nic in the bakery told us we were the best dressed people she'd seen in ages. So that was nice! Of course, I was maxing out on the whole nautical theme by wearing the dress with this lovely jacket from Fever Designs.

Importantly, the dress held up to a full day of fun - including an evening round at Amy's house eating Mexican food, margarita ice-cream and drinking gin. As eating Mexican food and drinking gin are important features of my life, this is pleasing.

So, on the cards for tonight is home-made sweet potato and chickpea burgers and Private Benjamin. Catch you all later, me hearties!

I didn't know they made champagne in New Jersey.

HOLLA. Hoping this Sunday evening is finding you all well - I'm just coming out the other side of a three-day barometric pressure headache. Those things suck. It's not like a migraine where you can't function, but it's hard to shift, and I get fun things like impaired vision. Woo! Still - it comes and goes, so I was still able to do some fun things this weekend. But. Yeah. Headaches fucking suck.

I managed to miss the 'Red October' hashtag that went round my sewing friends on Twitter last week and, if I'm totally honest, I'm not really a joiner. I'm not really one for sewing to challenges now, they don't work for me. No judgement on anyone, like, but nothing demotivates me faster in my hobby than having a deadline or a prescription. That's just me, though. I can't really explain it. But funnily enough, I have sewed a few things in red recently so I'm going to hop on that bandwagon because why not.

At the Goldhawk Road meetup in August, Kat and I were rooting around in the remnants box in A1 Fabrics, and we each came across a 2m length of really lightweight cotton lawn for £5. I hemmed and hawed on it, but when Kat said she liked it, I said I'd buy some if she did. What can I say, I'm an enabler in that way. I thought I could use it for lining or something, but anyway I decided to make a dress out of it. One based on one of my favourite RTW dresses; this one from Dorothy Perkins:

I love this dress! It's made from a polyester viscose and is really light and comfortable to wear, and I think it's very flattering. It has a low scooped back and a lapped zip, which is a nice detail in a shop-bought dress. The viscose has a similar weight and drape to the lawn, and I thought that the bodice from Butterick B5748 and the pleated skirt from NL6824 could work well together for a similar result. And they did, so I made it. And then I hung it up in my wardrobe for ages because I suddenly went off it. Not sure why, to be honest, I just totally lost enthusiasm for the whole thing. I put it on again last week and realised that it's actually pretty cute:

Festive Road dress - worn with Carvela 'Australia' shoes and vintage vinyl handbag

I think my reservations about the dress are connected to how light the lawn is. It's really floaty and soft - which isn't a bad thing in itself - but it's hard to wear because it creases. Also, the flowers in the fabric up close kind of remind me of those lotus pod things; those damn things have kind of ruined a lot of stuff for me because I see them everywhere now! But I'm just griping really, because it is pretty. I don't love it as much as I love that blue Dorothy Perkins one, though.

I'm considering my lunch, here. On the day this photo was taken, we were going to go to Bread and Co. Instead we fell into Kayal for Business Lunch. That's what I call WINNING, although the boiled duck egg in Bread and Co is pretty good as well.

Not much to say about how this dress was made, either. I self-lined the bodice because I had enough of the fabric to do that and I thought anything else would show through. I'm wearing a slip underneath the dress here - I don't think the fabric would be see-through, but it was pretty breezy on the day these photos were taken. That Dorothy Perkins dress is a demon for catching the slightest passing breeze - I once inadvertently flashed some of the daytime drinkers that congregate outside Murphy's Bar on Regent Street, and I was keen not to make that mistake again.

"All right, it's lunch-time now though, isn't it?"

For all my bitching, I will wear this dress. I wear a lot of red - the pink and red section of my wardrobe is the most populated part (YES, I colour-code my wardrobe. I have a lot of dresses. It makes finding them easier) but, do you ever get that? Where something you make is absolutely grand, but it's just...okay? Like, it's not a wadder but you just don't love it? Or am I over-thinking it? 

Anyway, that's the Festive Road dress. Festive Road, by the way, is where Mr Benn lived. It's also the opening track on Liberation by The Divine Comedy, and the song is one that often pops into my head when I'm walking down my street (that, and The Street Where You Live from My Fair Lady.)

An ordinary day down on Festive Road

The children will play, and never will know

That when Mr Benn, of number five two

Walks in through that door, peculiar events will ensue

The shopkeeper peers through spectacles round

As Benn wanders in, and shuts out the town

The shopkeeper wears his customary grin

'Cause he knows when they go to try on his clothes

Each fantasy chosen begins...

Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.

Evening! As it's gone all grey and chilly again, I'm going to try to mentally warm myself up by blogging some of the pictures I took when Nic and I visited his parents last week in Kent. Apparently we're due more good weather during October, but I'm skeptical about that so I'm going to reminisce over the sunshine I have enjoyed, hey?

So, Nic and I left for Folkestone last Sunday, and as it was the first time in ages that I'd been to the seaside, I made sure to pack some of my (many) nautical themed dresses. This tickled Nic's mum, who has just redecorated a bit, giving the soft furnishings in her living room and kitchen a more seaside feel. So I kind of blended in, ha!

On Monday morning we went to Dover to visit Nic's grandparents, and in the early afternoon we went to the seafront. Dover is such a strange town but despite the ferry port, the seafront is pretty cool. Although, I was genuinely freaked out by the enormous seagulls. Some of them were bigger than my parents' dog.

Stay the Course dress and Mel by Melissa flats

Here I am with Ian Fleming. He had a house in St. Margaret's Bay, which is just along the coast from Dover and the book of Moonraker is set in this part of the world.

On Monday evening, we walked along the seafront in the sunshine to meet our friends Mr and Mrs S in Folkestone. It's funny, you know. I've kind of always thought of Folkestone as being Coventry-by-Sea (hey, I'm allowed to be a bit snarky about Coventry. I lived there for 6 years and I work there now) but actually, much like Coventry, Folkestone has some beautiful places if you know how to look for them. The walk along the coast from Sandgate to Folkestone is one of them.

Beach huts on Saxon Shore Way

The last time I visited Folkestone, these beach huts were pretty ugly. They're made from concrete slabs, but in the time since, they've been painted. As we walked along, we saw lots of people enjoying the evening sunshine and the sound of the sea with a glass of wine in their own little beach houses. It made me pretty jealous, I must admit!

We were meeting Mr and Mrs S in Rocksalt, which is in the old fish market part of Folkestone. This is a little bit of town that I'd only ever been through on the bus - and from the top deck of a bus it looks really skanky - but on the ground it's lovely! To get to the bar, you walk underneath the arches of the old goods railway and from there you just enjoy a view of the sea. The bar has an excellent two for one on cocktails deal at Happy Hour, so it was rude not to really...

This is a happy place. A champagne cocktail in the sunshine by the sea. Bliss!

We were tipsy and happy as we walked back to Sandgate for dinner, and I promptly asleep on Nic's shoulder while we watched an episode of The Barbara Stanwyck show.

On Tuesday, we had plans again with Mr and Mrs S. We walked to Folkestone to meet them for lunch at a vegetarian restaurant on Tontine Street. Tuesday was sunny, hazy and warm and it was the perfect day to explore.

"Nope, I definitely can't see France today." - Fang Rock dress and those cute flat shoes again. They're plastic so I was even able to paddle in the sea with them on. On a pebbly beach that's useful.

Folkestone Harbour - it's pretty, isn't it? Apparently there's a proposal to turn that old goods railway into a park, which would be awesome. Can you see the white cliffs on the horizon?

Here's me, mugging with some boats.

We had lunch in Beano's on Tontine Street, which I can't recommend highly enough. This part of Folkestone is becoming the Creative Quarter and is undergoing some exciting changes as well as being the heart of the creative industry in the town.

Tontine Street

After lunch we bid farewell to our friends and set off exploring. We walked across the harbour and out towards The Warren. It was so peaceful and warm - it was heavenly!

The Fish Market in Folkestone. Do you see what I mean about the gulls? That one is nearly as big as those parked cars.

This is the view of the sea from above The Warren. On a clear day you really can see France from here, but it was too hazy last Tuesday.

Nic looks so cute here.

Sorry, not sorry for the millions of photos of me by the seaside.

After rambling across the top of The Warren as far as we dared, we headed back into Folkestone to meet Nic's brother for dinner. Nic did explore a little bit more closer to the sea, though, following some mysterious little steps down to find this:

And I met a Mermaid...

Wednesday was my birthday but I must confess to having been in horrible form. Both of us suffered from terrible insomnia on Tuesday night - neither of us slept for more than an hour - so I was a bit miserable. Still, when you're sad, the sound of the sea is very soothing.

Of course, this lovely view was very cheering too.

My birthday was grand, though. Nic's family spoiled me with gifts and a special dinner and by bedtime I was feeling a lot better. And on Thursday, on our way back up through London, I celebrated myself by buying some ridiculous shoes (which I'll show you in a later post) and Nic treated us both to these:

Fuck. Yes. Cocktails.

So, the moral of the story is that Folkestone is pretty cool. I'm very excited about getting married there next year. I'm also pretty excited about my imminent dinner, so I'm away to eat that. Night!