Look, we can dance all day but it's time to step up. Are you going to buy 4000 rubber nipples from me, or not?

Hi all! I hope this week is treating everyone well? I'm absolutely knackered, having had two twelve-hour days at work - with no real lunch break, on my feet the whole time. It wasn't just me, it was my whole team and actually I'm pretty fortunate in that I was able to work from home today, but still. I'm TIRED. May is a beautiful month for many reasons but it's a pretty hideous one in my work calendar. Mega sadface. Thank goodness for that small holiday we have planned in a few weeks, eh?!

Anyway, that's been the craic around here for the past few days. Not too much fun, sadly! No sewing, a little bit of knitting, a fair few episodes of Law & Order. Don't tell me I don't know how to rock the party, eh?! As ever though, I am sewing faster than I am blogging so I do have another new dress to show you. It's yet another Christine Haynes Emery dress, but this time with a little pattern hack. Remember how smug I was about my 'self-drafted' pleated skirt? YEAH THAT.

Pawnee dress - Christine Haynes Emery dress with a pleated skirt and Vivienne Westwood for Melissa Lady Dragon shoes

This fabric is so loud, isn't it?! It's a Pillow and Maxfield design for Michael Miller, and I bought it when Lauren and I went to the Knitting and Stitching show in March. There was one stall there selling Michael Miller fabrics for £6 a metre and I was fairly restrained and only bought this design.

I found with the last Emery dress that I made that it turned out to be too big so I retraced the bodice and sleeves a size down for this dress and I am really happy with the fit. Adding the pleated skirt was no difficulty and I really like the slightly different feel it gives to the Emery dress.

This great big smug closeup of MY MASSIVE FACE is for you, Sew Dixie Lou. I know you love that.

I was careful when cutting out the bodice that I didn't get one of those big flower/mandala things in an awkward place. That meant I had to look at them a bit more closely, and actually they kind of look a bit like lotus seed pods, which: BOKE. Well actually, I discovered when I was at home at Christmas that my mum has some dried ones in a flower arrangement and they're not so bad. But anyway, I do like this fabric despite the slightly bokey association. 

I seem to spend a lot of time saying things like, "Well, I thought it was really ugly and I wasn't sure if I liked it but then realised that I did" because apparently, I have quite the taste for garish and ugly things and this totally applies to these shoes:

Nic hates these shoes. Well, he doesn't hate them and he's not horrible about it or anything, but he thinks they're obnoxiously ugly. I kind of do, too. There's certainly something totally grotesque about giant shiny red lips and toes together! Despite that, I do like the weirdness of these and I am glad I bought them (especially as they were super cheap on sale. No way would I have paid full price for shoes I thought were possibly unspeakably ugly) I wonder if I will ever develop a taste for, you know, neutrally tasteful stuff or am I going to be like that old woman in that terrible poem about wearing purple? Probably the latter.

I've since gone on to make another Emery dress with a pleated skirt and my mind is starting to wander towards pairing this lovely bodice with a circle skirt, or maybe the dipped hem skirt from the By Hand London Flora dress. I do really like this pleated skirt variation, though - it has the silhouette I am so drawn to, but it's a little bit more streamlined than a gathered skirt. Plus, it's a little bit less labour-intensive than gathering and that's no bad thing!

And as for the name - well, the flowers made me think of parks, which brought me to Pawnee. I think my love of Parks and Recreation is probably fairly obvious by now. It's genuinely a source of some sadness in my life that Ron Swanson isn't actually real. Or Tom Haverford. But not Jerry because DAMN IT JERRY.

Anyway, guys. I am super tired and while I often talk a lot of shit in kind of a charming way, I don't want to just start chatting actual shit. So I'm going to go and lie down and watch a bit more Law & Order. Donna says I should.