Silky blousy pleaty drapey + sister love.

I feel like just about every post that I have worked on this year is about my sister in some way, so I feel the need to introduce her to you properly. Her name is Miriam. She writes a number of blogs – this is her main creative one. She has two gorgeous sons whom I adore, and an awesome husband who feels like he has always been a member of our family.

Miriam is very creative and loves making in all forms. She is also a huge contributor to her church where she speaks, designs creative services, runs sessions for creative peoples and lots of other things I have probably left off here.

Her biggest motivator and greatest attribute is for including people. Miriam makes people feel welcome, loved and special all day errrry day. There’s been some real #meangirl behaviour in certain quarters of my life over the last six months, and to have someone as kind and giving in my life, as Miriam, is a blessing not to be overlooked.

She and I are VERY different in many ways. We look so different, when we were young people used to assume we had different fathers. Miriam is also very good at not sweating the small stuff, which is a good foil and challenge to my perfectionism. She is very colourful and has her own incredibly unique sense of style and she is supremely confident at sporting it.

All this adds up to #perfectsewingbuddy as there is so little cross over with us that we often share patterns and fabric with spectrum-ly opposite results. Miriam is the queen of fancy dresses, where as I am all about them separates. We both share a love for vivid prints and colour but usually our tastes head in wildly different directions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Butterick 6731 pattern was from a bulk lot she was given: she took all the dresses, I took all the pants and tops. I also bought this fabric on a trip with her to our fav second hand fabric haunt, ReStore, a local op-shop. I planned to make a second iteration in some lovely chiffon she gave me for my birthday last year, so yes, this was intended to be a #wearablemuslin.

This fabric is 100% virgin polyester of the sweat-inducing variety so I will be wearing a long sleeved t-shirt underneath it mostly as I’m not an anti-perspirant kind of gal #hippieproblems.

And before you ask, the pleats are totally meant to be different depths – not. Sigh. My brain and maths really have problems with each other and pleats kinda undo me because of the ‘measuring and seeing lines equal’ thing. Whatevs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While I’m pretty happy with the outcome of this make, I can’t see myself making it again – sorry special chiffon. The upper bodice piece is too long on me and as a result the fabric pools in the upper chest, and the pleats ride up onto my neck obscuring the cute detail of the forward shoulder seam. The arm syce also sits in a weird place, a little too forward. Usually I would alter this, but my brain legit cannot get around how to do that while keeping the shoulder seam in play. (See above for brain’s challenges with pleats also).

Outift deets:

• Grey jeans – seen here
• White sneakers – seen here
• Bracelet – a gift from my grandfather when I was a teenager
• Makeup – MIA