A dress

From Country Living Magazine, September 2013

I've been spending a lot of quality time with my Granny's sewing machine lately, it all began innocently enough with the September issue of Country Living landing on my door mat. I immediately sat down with a cup of tea and flicked though looking at the lovely pictures (I have to do this first and then read and have another look later after I have first satiated my impatience!) On coming across this photo I immediately stopped and rang Cabbages and Roses to see how much the dress was. Unfortunately it was a sample made up for the shoot and was not for sale, so after pondering on it for a while and I decided to delve into dress-making! (Despite having only made a few cushion covers beforehand!)

I found a dress pattern that was as close as I could get to the original and decided that I would splash out on the Cabbages and Roses Hatley fabric as it looked so pretty. After enlisting the moral support of my sister-in-law who had studied at the London College of Fashion I was ready to begin! Three weekends later and I have a similar (if not exactly the same) dress and much more confidence with the sewing machine. It has been taken apart and put back together several times and I'm sure it would not stand up to close scrutiny by anyone who knows their stuff but as a first attempt I think it is rather good!

It's first outing will be this weekend at a (hopefully sunny!) September wedding, with a tan cropped tweed jacket, tan pumps and maybe a string of pearls or long silver pendant.