Odds and sods

So this week I’m going to post about two things I made that don’t really warrant an entire post by themselves…..

Firstly last year I adapted a lolita dress I got very cheap to fit me when it was originally far too small. It took me till well into this year to get proper pictures though.

I’m not sure what the formal name of this dress is (lolita dresses tend to have names- often fairly random and highly imaginative ones) but it is by a Chinese brand called Infanta. It’s several years since it was released and I clocked it pretty much immediately as a dress I was very interested in (I saved it on my tumblr back in the day in several iterations) but it was a lot harder back then to get Chinese lolita dresses sent to the uk and I couldn’t justify paying full price for something I was clearly going to have to rip apart to fit me.

But I was overjoyed when I found it on the lolita sales community last year for not very much money in really good condition.

So this is the front, this is just what it would look like anyway, you can’t see any of my adaptions on it…..

It’s worn with a bell sleeves top and necklace I made myself, the wristcuffs were a free gift with a dress I purchased and the flowers are probably H&M from back in the early 00’s when H&M for about 3 years was the place to go for cheap good quality silk flowers. The headband is Topshop, also several years ago.

& here’s the back, this is the bit I altered…

It’s hard to see because helpfully I’m wearing black with black, but there is a panel of shirring in the centre back. I unpicked the side seams of that and inserted panels of a matching crepe backed satin on either side, making the gathers at the back of the skirt looser to fit.

So now I’ve done that successfully I’ve got another two lolita dresses lined up that I intend to adapt the same way.

The other thing I made that doesn’t really warrant its own post is yet another Sewaholic Renfrew Top, this time in Liberty jersey for my husbands mum.

This is it on its recipient…..

I wasn’t sure that it wasn’t slightly too big, I ended up taking measurements about a year before I got round to making it , but Jon’s mum said she likes it so that’s ok.

I have about 4m of this jersey left, in two different pieces. I’ve ended up acquiring three lots of it, all from different places, but it all seems to match. I’m not sure what to do with it though. In comparison to other liberty jerseys, like the one I made this dress out of, it is very very thin and drapey. It’s quite hard to work out what to use it for.