The Dreamstress

I love bright red. Bright red lipstick, bright red clothes, bright red shoes*… Every time I see a pattern I like I think how good it would look in bright red.  And whenever someone makes one of my Scroop patterns in bright red I am super envious.

So why don’t I make all my Scroop stuff in bright red?

Because bright red is a glorious colour for making me cheerful, but a terrible for showing construction details.

So, when  I choose fabric for Scroop samples  I have to prioritise things that photograph well over my personal taste, so no bright red.  And by the time I’m done making toiles, fit test samples, and modelling samples for Scroop, I usually have more than enough samples of a pattern in my personal wardrobe (which I try very hard to keep within reason), and I want to sew something different!

Happily, and eventually, things do wear out, and I get to make new ones, and I get to make them in wonderful impractical colours, like black, and bright red (yay!).

So this autumn  I finally get to add a Miramar in bright red wool crepe knit to my wardrobe.  Oh happiness!

I finished it this morning, and paired it with a Scroop Fantail with added pockets (tutorial coming Wednesday!) in dark blue chambray, really awesome 1940s inspired two-tone brown suede shoes, and a vintage 1980s leather bomber jacket.

The jacket is my favourite non-me-made wardrobe item at  the moment.  It’s NZ-made, and I found it at an op-shop in Nelson over Christmas.  When I brought it home Mr D saw it, grabbed it, and said ‘Mine!’.

I’ve had to wrest it out of his grasp a number of times since then, and remind him that he already has his dad’s 1980s suede bomber jacket!  Still, the jacket is definitely ‘borrowing the boyfriend’s wardrobe’ material, which means you can pair it with anything from jeans to cocktail dresses.

 

For the photos I wanted to go into town and  use some of the amazing graffiti murals around Wellington as backdrop, and Mr D wanted to go hang out in the woods, so we compromised and went to Trelissick Park, which is somewhere we go walking almost every week, but weirdly, I’ve never used for a photoshoot – we tend to get excited and go further afield, out to the beach or something.

Trelissick Park is mostly stream and woods, but it includes the remains of the Kaiwharawhara powder magazine.  Not quite graffiti, but a little more gritty than usual woods.

A powder magazine is a building to store gunpowder, and smart ones are built far away from any other building, just in case…

Not only is the powder magazine one of the few remaining (well, for a given degree of ‘remaining’) examples of a historic  powder magazine in New Zealand, it’s built to a plan devised by the 17th century French military engineer Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban** (with the exciting addition of windows).  There was an attempt to restore the magazine  in the 2000, but the masterminds behind New Zealand’s biggest robbery noticed the newly-roofed building  as they were planning their heist, and decided it would be a good place to set their  getaway van on fire.

So, alas, all that remains of the magazine buildings are the stone and cement walls, and a few bits of floor.  Still, it’s a great bit of history, and it makes a good photo location.

 

Mr D managed to capture the hilarious moment when I was posing and saw a kereru (NZ wood pigeon, the size of a small chicken) fly past, and I made an excited Oooh! face and accidentally did the best Taylor Swift impression ever.  Check it out:

Normal posing me:

Accidental Taylor Swift me:

And in the two photos above you can just see the second most awesome thing*** about my new Fantail: the hem facing, which is ‘Atom Red’!†

Yay red!

*sadly, bright red shoes look rubbish on me.

**a pause to appreciate the utter beauty of his name.

*** the first, of course, being pockets!

† ‘Atom red’ is a slightly more ominous name now than when I inherited this bias tape from my grandmother, but I’m telling myself that atoms are still good, and generally extremely necessary.  It’s only the part where you start fissioning or fusioning them that gets problematic…

My summer wardrobe got a bit of a thrashing last year, as it got carried over into a Hawaii trip in June, and an LA trip in August, so by the time October came around and it started warming up  in NZ I was pretty short on summer frocks and tops.

In anticipation of nice warm days, I started making Scroop Henrietta Marias – my summer wardrobe staple.  I made one with a drawstring waist in rayon crepe (learn how to add your own drawstring waist here), and one in a Liberty of London silk-cotton blend.

I’m not usually a huge Liberty fan.  The prints don’t really make my heart pitter-pattern, and the new Liberty fabrics just don’t feel as nice as ones from 15-20 years ago.  Liberty fabrics are NOT cheap, and I don’t feel that the quality of the fabric is good enough to justify the price any more.

However, this Liberty  IS from 15 years ago, is delicious to wear and work with, and was ridiculously, ridiculously cheap.

Plus, I actually really love the print.  It’s just a bit cleaner, and less  fussy, and reminds me of lemonade, and sailboats, and tiled swimming pools, and all things summery and wonderful.

So, the perfect fabric for a summer frock!

I was going to call it the ‘Hello Summer’ frock.

Alas, summer never really came this year in Wellington.  🙁

We got one week where the temperature hit over 20 every day, and that was it.  It’s been cold, and wet, and grey, and blustery, and altogether entirely disappointing.

I’ve managed to wear my drawstring Henrietta Maria twice, and this one once (not counting the photoshoot, where I wore it, and then huddled in the car with a blanket wrapped around me  as soon as we were done getting photos).

At least this means it will be in nice, pristine, condition for LA again this year (yay, Costume College!), and can carry on in to next summer.

And hey, maybe we’ll get a week of awesome late Autumn weather at the end of April?

After Cyclone Cook (a cyclone is a hurricane that happens in the South Pacific) finishes clobbering us that is…

Wellington isn’t expected to be hit that hard (comparatively, seeing as this is predicted to be the worst weather event in NZ since the infamous storm that cause the Wahine Disaster), but we’re still battening down the hatches and preparing for lots of rain.  Lots more rain actually – we got hit by the tail end of Cyclone Debbie last week, and Wellington got as much rain in 12 hours as it usually gets in the entire month of April, so we’re feeling a little damp and soggy.  I’m very grateful that our little Castle is perched way up on a hill!

We’re doing much better than other parts of New Zealand though.  My heart goes out to Edgecumbe and the rest of the Bay of Plenty, which had only just stopped flooding from Debbie.

The only nice thing I can say about the upcoming weather predictions is that at least it will be good sewing weather, and even if the power goes out, I have hand crank and treadle sewing machines!

Clearly it’s time to start sewing LOTS of winter clothes, and hoping I won’t have any excuse to wear those either!

But first,  I’m off to the supermarket to stock up on consumables  for the next three days, so we don’t have to break into the emergency kit if everything goes down…

If you’re in New Zealand, the Pacific, or Australia, I hope you’re OK after Debbie, and please stay safe with Cook!