The theme for this summer has got to be showing off cute little baby backs (ribs?). Unfortunately for me it's autumn here! Except that it's been a really weird autumn (classic south east Queensland style really) and it's been beautiful perfect sunny weather. Apparently it's an Indian Summer. Which is awesome, and perfect for a Soleil dress don't you think?

I'm lucky enough to have been asked by Lauren of Selvage Designs to sew up her newest (and first?) pattern the Soleil Dress! Here's the part where you get to see the baby back I was talking about:


Also I screwed up the neckline and armholes, I serged everything there instead of using my sewing machine and the stretch stitch so the seam allowances around those areas are way smaller which makes the pieces much wider! Mistakes aside, and mistakes you probably wouldn't even notice if I hadn't have pointed them out to you, this dress was just lovely to sew up! The fabric I've been saving since Project Run & Play, I can't remember whether it was from Girl Charlee or the Fabric Fairy (sorry! I feel terrible) but I looked for it on both those places and neither of them sell it anymore anyway!



Check out her mad kicks she wanted to wear. You cannot come between this girl and her shoes (it was her first word for goodness' sake!). Her leggings are made from my leggings pattern, in the biggest size (9-12mths I believe?). They were originally a pair of leggings I got for myself from Jessica Louise, but when I put them on I was really peeved that there was minimal difference between the front and back rises. Sooo I wasted a lot of money on something that I usually never splash cash on and the leggings sat around unworn because they feel halfway down my butt everytime i thought to give them another go. Eventually I just cut them into leggings for Eddie! They look super fly with her Heart of Gold dress!


I sewed this dress up in the 18 month size because Eddie is short and chunky and my little miss piggy. She's almost 2! I also took a good four inches of the hem to make it sit mid-thigh, but you know I saw a maxi dress of this and LOVED it (by Heidi & Finn) and originally when I was thinking of how much shorter I should make it I was thinking a little peplum top would be cute too! Check out other dresses also by going through the instagram tag #soleildress!

The back features the little 'saddle' blanket thing that was flung over the Bantha's back for the riders to sit on and to tie their cargo to.



I made the spiral horns from some leftover fabric that is like a linen-type thing. I top-stitched each piece to signify the 'knobs' on their horns before sewing them together and stuffing them. Two little slits cut into the exterior of the hood were made so I could slip the horns in and I stitched the slits closed. I also stitched the extra seam allowance part of the horn that was inside the hood forward, which made the horns lie back a bit. They were a little floppy otherwise and dangled around.


She loves her hoodie so much. She was so stoked when she realised she matched her baby Bantha toy (I bought it from NeoTokyo in town which is this cool asian pop culture store that sells manga and anime and heaps of cute soft toys. I'm pretty stoked that they stock some Star Wars stuff too). They also have a Rancor and a TaunTaun I plan on getting as well!


Baby Bantha's need all of the blue milk they can get so they can grow up big and strong!


Her jeans are mini versions of the ones I made for Vincent when I made him his Lego Indiana Jones outfit. The pocket linings come out a little bit which is irritating, but they're nice beige little pants that go well with lots of her cute shirts and hoodies. It's hilarious how much she doesn't grow. I made these in October and they still fit her.


She suddenly remembered halfway through our little shoot that she had horns on her head too and tried to grab them and pull them down so she could see them. She is turning into a good little model just like her beautiful big brother!



I wanted so bad to make her do the lips like her bantha toy, but this shoot had to be super quick because even though it's ona  gravel road, it is pretty popular out in our little country town (is it even called a town? We have a corner store, a hall and a school...) Everytime I heard a car I'd look around (it's just off the main road into town) and we'd scooch off if someone wanted to use it.

So my darling friends the Shaffer Sisters have invited me once again to be part of their Make for Mom series, except now it has been renamed to the very apt Sew-a-bration of Womanhood. Last year I made the 12 Parsec dress tutorial, today I went a little more epic than a t-shirt surgery and made an entire outfit. It's been a little while since I've felt so much muse, and I really ran with it!

Inspired by post-apocalyptic movies & fashion (check out the Sew Geeky pinboard where I've been collecting my Post-Apocalyptic fashion ideas here), I made this outfit consisting of legging, cowl-neck shirt, hooded cowl scarf and a jacket. It's by no mean finished at all, there's plenty of customisations and add-ons I'd love to make in the future but for now I think I have a great base outfit. Each piece is easily mixed and matched with jeans & tees for every day wear too!

If you fancy a little music while you check out the post, this Spotify playlist is one that I found that I played throughout my sewing of this outfit!




So when I was designing the pieces I wanted for this outfit, the one thing I kept in mind was practicality. I created a character in my head of a scavenger girl, she's probably in some sort of tribe but during the day she's out and about alone searching for items and scrap she can use or trade.


My boots were $19 from Kmart. They're actually rainboots! I wear them everywhere though. The legwarmers were made from knitted jumpers cut into rectangles and sewn up. I have a tutorial for some similar here.


The jacket I made by tracing around a hoodie that used to be Tim's when he was a teenager and kicking butt in karate. The shoulders are dropped, the armholes are quite straight and square which was pretty cool for this style jacket I was making. Inspired by several different jackets, I knew I wanted a huge hood on it and a sort of revere thing going on. I wanted it to just tie together by one fastener at the waist, and when I saw this bronze kilt pin in my sewing box I knew it was the one. It's simple but practical for a girl who has probably just found the jacket in an abandoned shack.


I lined it with pink fleece because A: you're not going to ever see it and B: it's all I had. It's so warm! I was trying it on as I was making it but having to take it off again real quick because the fireplace was going and I was dying of heat! There are pocket in the sideseams because I love a good pocket. On one of the sleeves there is two black bands. I'm not sure if it's like a mourning thing I was going for or like maybe it represents the tribe she is in. Either way it's cool. The other arm has a pocket and an army patch I scratched up and coloured in with a black marker to stop it looking so shiny!


The hood is huge, I love it. I took an iphone pic of all three of the hoods up and my head looked tiny and lost in there! haha. I've had a thing for oversized hoods for a little while, so being able to just go wild with this really made me happy!

Ordinarily I would have preferred using a khaki or a black fabric for the jacket, however I didn't have that much of either fabric. What I did have was a camouflage-print doona cover I bought at the op shop before Supanova when I was originally going to make Edison an Endor Leia poncho (I'm still totally going to do that!). Eventually I'd love to add old patches and badges to it, random little knickknacks so it turn into a really ratty junky piece!


You know how sewing for yourself is all about sewing for your body type? Yeh sewing this jacket does me no favours. People are always like "Ari you've got a great figure!" but really I just have long legs and know how to dress to my shape and put all the attention on those pins! I never wear shirts that are too tight (well, except for in this photoshoot omg hypocrite!) or too short. My shirts always fit me really well and cover the fact that I have a muffin top and a mummy belly. I'm not sure if I wear the correct size bra, you know how they always say that like 75% of women are wearing incorrect bra sizes? I'm pretty sure I'm in that percentage, but in the end the bras I wear make the puppies look better than they really are.

So you see it's all optical illusions! BUT this jacket is ginormous and bulky and doesn't take away the fact that I have a short and squat torso. I don't mind though, I love it! (The jacket, not the torso)


I made myself an adult-sized Bimaa Sweater! Ha! Yeh you thought my Bimaa-love was contained in shirts for only Edison & Vincent? Puh-lease!

Using Kitschy-Coo's Lady Skater pattern, I made the top of it (obviously leaving off the skirt bit!). Making a giant rectangle for the hooded-cowl (it's not shaped like the Bimaa), I made sure it was big enough to it over my head like a hood. It was a fun time in draping actually!

I added a zip instead of a seam, meaning that this shirt can be worn with the cowl down, with it up as a hood, with it unzipped up it looks like a regular hoodie and with it unzipped and pulled down and out it looks like this...



 Yes I love this shirt so much! I want to make a zillion of these, or at least one in black so I can wear it with EVERYTHING. The fabric is super slinky and combined with the colour it really shows every little lump and bump underneath.

Doesn't matter because I was wearing it under the mega jacket!

OH and it has thumbholes! Which was fun to make and I plan on making thumbholes in the cuffs of everything long-sleeved now. They're a little tricky at first to get your head around, but pretty rad and totally worth it!


 The leggings and the shirt are both made from this lovely slinky stretch fabric I scored from the op shop for about $4. I got several metres of it, which rules! The leggings were drafted from a pair of my Black Milk leggings, which are a fit I love and know flatter me! I added ankle cuffs and a fold over waistband but you can't see them in any of these photos ahha.

Are you into post-apocalyptic fashion? Seriously let me know because I feel like I'm the only one in bloglandia that loves this kinda thing! My muse goes crazy when I look at photos of people dressed up or when I watch movies like Waterworld (favourite ever), Mad Max, oooh even Book of Eli! I want to do a Dystopian Future episode of Sew Geeky one day but Kat thinks I'm the only one who geeks out about this. Please prove her wrong :P

Thank you so much Shaffer Sisters for inadvertently pushing me to commence making an outfit from my dreams! Check out the rest of the sew-a-bration at the blogs below or go straight to Shaffer Sisters Sew-A-Bration posts to see them all in one spot!

 The Life Of A Compulsive Crafter | Serger Pepper | House of Estrela | sewVery | Our Busy Little Bunch

This pattern is about to drop REALLY SOON. It's actually quite simple to sew up, and very quick to make (like all of LouBeeClothing's patterns really!). Keep an eye on Sarah's blog or facebook page to get the news when it's out!

He wanted to do this pose okay? lol

"Gnarly"

"He looks like a bank robber. A cute one." - Banners

You can purchase the Sew Fab Spring Pattern Bundle for $29.95 this week only! The sale ends on May 13th, and once it's over, it's over. You can support independent pattern designers by purchasing the bundle from any of the designers below.