To accommodate my physical expansion since last year I recently made myself another summer dress from my grey dragonfly fabric.
My finishing skills are improving! This time I followed my mum´s advice about French seams so the interior of the dress is much neater. 
The arm holes are edged with grey bias binding with contrasting white and yellow top stitching while the neckline is finished with yellow bias binding with contrasting white and grey top stitches.
It’s a comfy one and stylish too!
So this little number is the result of my third dress making adventure; using a black on beige version of my dragonfly fabric design which I had digitally printed in the UK by Woven Monkey.
I find the boat neck / empire line combination really comfortable and flattering so I’ve continued it here but by cutting the hem straight and splitting the sides I’ve converted the dress into more of a tunic which allows for much more movement below the waist…I can run in this one but long undergarments are essential for the preservation of modesty!
I wanted to make the bodice of this dress more closely fitting which meant putting in more darts and a zip. I opted to put an ‘invisible’ zip in the side seam (right) and thanks to guidance from several YouTube tutorials my first ever attempt worked pretty well.
I also decided to sew on a long black ribbon to accentuate the empire line and add a bit of flounce round the back.
While making my first two dresses – from my Dragonfly (white on grey version) and Horse fabrics – I’d come to love bias binding so I decided to use it to make a contrasting trim around the neck, arm holes and hem on this dress. I was also inspired (by a pair of black, beige and orange shorts I own) to add an orange top stitch to jazz up the black and beige combination.
Feels jolly nice on and washes well! Yay!
I’m jolly pleased with my horse dress; the result of my latest adventure in home sewing. It’s a variation of the first dress I ever made (a shift style sewn from my dragonfly fabric) and since I mastered the use of bias binding on that project I decided to make an external feature of it this time; embellishing it with contrasting stitching.
The horse motif was inspired by the extraordinarily beautiful hand painted artwork I saw when Carter’s Steam Fair visited Maldon in Essex.
I made a pencil drawing (left) using my photos for reference, taking a morbid turn by adding the skeleton of the horse as part of the decoration.
I vectorised the drawing in Illustrator, used Photoshop to colour it and make the repeat pattern, which I then had printed onto a light cotton by the lovely folk at Woven Monkey.
The dress feels lovely on, here’s me posing about in it on my 50th birthday.
Could it possibly be said that I’m flogging a dead horse? You bet!
I just made myself this dress with fabric printed with a version of the dragonfly design I made back in 2014.
I uploaded my design to the Woven Monkey website and they printed it onto a lightweight cotton.
It’s the first dress I’ve ever made; patterns give me the heebeegeebees so I cut round one of my favourite dresses and made the rest up as I went along.
It was also the first time I’ve used bias binding as I’d previously imagined it to be a right faff but there really is no other way to neatly finish neck and armholes. I watched a couple of tutorials on YouTube and bit the bias binding bullet; it’s actually quite straightforward and I’ll definitely be using it more in the future.
Here’s me doing ‘catalogue’ poses in Cádiz this week, during the dress’s first outing.
Here are my most recent home sewing projects: making cushion covers from light cotton canvas fabric that I’d had digitally printed with my illustrations.
This one (left) features a white on black version of my extra large cockerel circle design.
The cushion cover has an ‘envelope’ style closure and measures 38 x 35 cm, comfortably accommodating a 40 x 40 cm cushion.
The two covers on the right feature my Two-Tone 2CV design, measure 50 x 30cm and have a zip closure.
Click here to contact me about prices and availability.
Two of my latest batch of digital fabric prints…our old friend the cockerel in two sizes
I recently sewed these two scarves featuring my dragonfly and 2CV designs digitally printed on super soft silk. What luxury….
These cushions are my latest cockerel fabric creations, made with love for Blanca and Alain, my dear friends and neighbours at La Casa del Arco in Vejer de la Frontera
Click here to see a photo of the cushions in their new home
This fabric design evolved from a stencil project I started in 2012,
since when Mr Cockerel has adorned numerous hard and soft surfaces.
Last year I spent many happy hours in the Photoshop turning the original image (above) into several repeating patterns (below)
the last of which got made into a baby cushion in light cotton canvas.
I’ve been really keen to make myself an item of cockerel clothing ever since, so I ordered custom printed fabric samples in several cottons until I was totally happy with the size and colour of the design, and then got cracking with sewing an A-line skirt.
It’s had a very enthusiastic reception and I’m cock-a-hoop!
A few months ago I had some fabric samples printed with a few of my designs. I was recently inspired to make these into bunting and cushions to show alongside the digital prints on paper of the same designs which I’m currently exhibiting in the beautiful tea room Chokolata in Vejer de la Frontera.
Here is a cockerel (which started out as a stencil on wood) being sewn with a contrasting border prior to his edges being frayed.
Here is the finished bunting hanging at home. To see photos of the bunting at the exhibition click here
I also made bunting from the fabric sample printed with my 2CV design (which evolved from my ‘7 Days’ illustration project).
Click here to see the bunting at my exhibition.
Here are the cushions.
I backed my printed fabric samples with contrasting velvet, cotton and corduroy to make them go further.
The Dragonfly pattern also evolved from my ‘7 Days’ illustration project.
To see photos of the cushions at my art exhibition in Chokolata click here