Better Late Than Never! The #redoctober Hawthorne!

From the bottom of my heart, I'm so sorry it took forever to get photos! 

So like, this has been finished for weeks. In fact, I finished it the day before Halloween except for the cuff buttonholes. And I have five or six makes, including things I made for the kids, finished PRIOR to this dress than I have yet to take anything but cell phone photos of. I'm seriously slack here.

But you love me anyway, right?

Pattern: Hawthorn from Colette Patterns
Fabric: rayon challis from fabric.com
Notions: 14 Shell Buttons from Lyanwood  $5
              Interfacing - stash
              Thread -stash
Amount of Fabric: 3.5 yards x $7
Total Cost: 29.50
Time To Complete: Five hours. Largely because of the cuffs and the fact that my first collar I stitched and pinked the WRONG SIDE and had to redo it.

Ok, so on with the show!  Somewhere around my 2TB hard drive are process photos but I didn't feel like hunting for them. I started with the size 14 and did a 4 inch total FBA. This is actually my third one but the first one with 3/4 sleeves. And my first time doing plackets! And they came out OK and I can't tell you just how happy I am about that. Oh, hey, I do have photos of that. I was very happy I decided to use light interfacing on the challis because they were fiddly enough as it was. Here's what I pulled from Instagram.

I block fused whole pieces on top of a towel with silk organza as a pressing cloth. The towel is necessary to keep from ending up with shiny patterns from the metal mesh of the ironing board.

I had to do a bit of correction with the lines after the fact. I have to say that the tutorial on doing plackets from Colette's blog has, by far, been the easiest to understand.

Top stitched goodness!

And here they are in all their finished glory! Pretty right? I used matching buttons for the plackets because I didn't want that red to be broken up. Oh, and I added pockets to the skirt because everything needs pockets. Ok, More photos!

Its Llladybird post Number One!

I should mention that I have found my new favorite place to take blog photos. I hadn't used it before because the doors to the storage area under the sun room (aka my sewing room) were rotted and falling apart. The Mister and his brother replaced them this spring. The wall is south facing and gets great afternoon light.

The fabric on this dress makes me super stinkin' happy. For realz. I was grinning like a fool the whole time. When I got most of it done and put it on my dress form I was like "Is this an old lady dress? It sure feel like it could be!" But the lovely sewcialists talked me into not giving up. Its all about making yourself happy, amirite?

And I shall leave you with my second favorite photo of this series. Did anyone else finish red makes late? What do you think of the Sewcialist color themes?

Llladybird Post Number Two!