Laurel - Take 2

As some of you may know, I have made a second entry in the Laurel contest, this time, in the "best detail" category. 

I started sketching ideas after Mister and I sent a week end in Rome where I fell in love with the dresses of the Valentino store! From that day, I wanted to buy some lace fabric, cut out the flowers and sew them back on a netting sort of fabric.

After a few visits to my usual fabric stores, I realised that this original idea would be quite pricy.

In the same time, we just booked our holiday to China and I thought I would need a nice linen dress to deal with the warm summer days. I decided to mix both ideas: a white linen dress, with lace appliqués. 

I gave this one a little bit more ease for warm days. I decided to hand sew all those little green lace flowers and have a spreading dandelion effect, as you blow them in the spring sky. And the same flowers would twirl on the back up to the opposite shoulder.

This was a lot of hand work. First, finding out where to lay them, and than actually sewing them. It took me a few evenings, watching TV series in the background!

I also encased the neckline and the sleeves hems with a bias i made with the same fabric as the dress.

That was my second Laurel!

I have a lot of ideas for the next post. Hint, I scored a Burberry coat for 47 EUROS! I was thinking about taking a few close ups and explain to the blogosphere why I will not even try to replicate it :)

I am a Laurel contest prize winner!

Hi everyone!

If you surf around the sewing blogosphere, you must have come across Colette's Laurel pattern contest. The results came in and I won the 2nd prize in the "Best use of fabric" category!


Let's have a little flashback. Back in March, Sarai launched what is the biggest sewing contest I have ever seen, to go with Colette's new spring pattern: Laurel. I decided to take part in it! I started with thinking about which fabric I wanted to use. I have sketched at least 15 versions, all crazier than the other. But my mind kept on coming back to the fabric I bought in Indonesia.

During our honeymoon, I fell in love with the process of painting Batik fabric: it is a cloth that is traditionally made using a manual wax-resist dyeing technique (for more info, please visit this page).
I purchased two different silk Batiks, and I decided to use one of them for the Laurel. It has a beautiful print, changing gradually to a beautiful edge print and I knew it would look great along the hem of the dress and also of the sleeves.

I chose to try for the first time the downloaded version, Living in Europe, I found it much easier and our cats had a lot of fun with the puzzle making process! Evidence below!

I had to upgrade the pattern, I went for the size 20 from the shoulders to the waist and for the size 22 from the waist down. I was a little afraid at first because I usually wear dresses that have a clearly marked waist but the quick muslin proved to be a great surprise. All I had to work on was the sleeves. They were a little bit too small. I also prepared my own bias to encase the neckline and the sleeves.

And here is the result! A few photos outside, and a few indoors too! It was really fun taking the photos. It was still quite cold out and there was static electricity, making the dress very clingy! I shook it off a few times, and I hope that my neighbors did not see it :)

I was so happy to see the results this morning! I have watched with a lot of distress all the wonderful versions of your pattern and I was somehow sure that I would not win anything because so many ladies made such a great job! I also thought that the fact that I am a plus size misses was not going to help out.

The results appeared in the morning and I bashed my colleagues ears in! Completely unable to focus on the stuff I was supposed to deal with! This prize made me feel so great about my sewing skills and ideas and also about myself. 

And this is not the only Laurel I made, I will post about the second next time! So tune in!