Sixties and Seventies

I thought I'd treat(!) you to another past creation for the nieces.  It's ages since I've done one, and I've completely lost off with doing them in chronological order, so I've just picked one of my favourite (although not at the time) projects.

Last year, sometime in July I think,  I got a phone call one sunny Sunday morning.  Actually I've no idea if it was sunny or not, but it was definitely Sunday.  The school the girls go to was having a theme day.  They were to go dressed in sixties and seventies themed outfits.  Their Mam had a couple of pairs of leggings.  Did I think I could sew some of bits of material on the bottom, to look like flares?  Well I could have, but where's the fun in that.  Why not make two outfits from scratch?  Because the outfits were needed for Wednesday night for the day on Thursday, that's why!  Yes, I had less than 4 days to make something, while going to work, eating, sleeping, minor things like that.  But never one to let sense get in the way of a good idea I got to work.

Once I started thinking about what to make I decided Charlotte has a kind of hippy vibe about her.  All peace and love and in a world of her own.  I didn't have time to buy any fabric or notions for either of these outfits.  I think these projects say a lot about the amount of stuff I have in the house.  I wanted to make a tiered maxi skirt and some type of top.  I had 2 metres of blue polycotton lying around (as you do) and some broderie anglais (that white stuff with embroidery and holes).  The skirt was easy enough.  I made each layer bigger as I went down the skirt, to make it all twirly and swishy.  Yes, those are technical terms(!).  I could have done with more fabric to make the effect better, but never mind.  Put in an elasticated waistband, and Bob's your uncle.

The top was slightly more problematical.  Fortunately for me I didn't have time to procrastinate.  I flicked through some books and patterns and came across an elasticated dress in '101 Great Ways To Sew A Metre'.  I thought I'd just shorten it by leaving off the skirt part.  I should point out at this juncture that the top is actually called 'Ballet-neck Toddler Dress'.  Charlotte was 9.  Make of that what you will.

To complete Charlotte's look I crocheted a headband from embroidery cotton and stretched it.  I added plaits and beads to each end.

And here we have Hippy Charlotte...

And posing...

As you can see, she also got flowers and trailing leaves painted on her face for the big day.

On to Katie.  I thought she would look really cute dressed sixties style, short A-line dress, knee high boots, head scarf.  I also had some kind of vague idea about an art style.  Something with big, bold blocks of primary colours, framed with black lines.

Turns out the artist Piet Mondrian died in 1944, so not exactly sixties, but why let that stop you?

I adapted another pattern from the book '101 Great Ways To Sew A Metre' (I don't know what I'd have done without it!).  This time it was the 'Summer Fun Playtop'.  I just extended it to make it into a dress.  I put an invisible zip in the back.  It's made from crepe-backed satin of various colours.  I knew the leftover bits of princess dresses would come in somewhere.

I made a highly technical and accurate drawing of the dress to work out where the colour blocks would be placed.  I did debate about showing you this.  As you can see drawing is not my forte!

It was more difficult than I thought to place the blocks (using Bondaweb to stick them).  It might have something to do with that plan.  I covered the joins between blocks and the neck, armholes and hem with black bias binding.  I finished off Katie's outfit with a headband too.  It was a long strip of white with blocks of the colours and bias binding applied.

So here we have our Sixties Chick...

Such a poser!  You can see at the back where to binding doesn't meet properly over the section of red.  I think it was something to do with trying to sew straight lines onto a curved dress.  That and the fact that I was in a rush.

A meeting of the decades...

I love these outfits!  Katie did have a minor meltdown when she tried hers on.  It didn't twirl you see!  Her Mam had to find pictures on the internet of similar dresses to prove that's what they were like.  Fortunately, someone else at the school had posted a picture of her daughter in a sixties style dress that she was wearing.  Crisis averted.  Moral of the story:  Always make sure both nieces have equally twirly outfits.  And next time could I have a bit more notice please?!