Charlotte, the dancer

Oh hi there! You've come back! Hurrah!

Last week I promised I would post the pictures of my Charlotte dress like the next day, but I never got the chance to.

It was a very eventful week last week. In both good and bad ways

Bad because I was swamped with work one day which required me to stay back, I fell ill with a cold and needed to go to bed early and then had a super large hangover yesterday

But also good as I was randomly invited to see Phoenix on Wednesday with a friend, had my birthday on Friday and birthday dinner on Saturday (hence the hangover) and then an urge to cook a lot of fancy things on Sunday whilst hung-over. 

We had roast pork with all the trimmings and I made banana bread for this week’s morning teas! Yummy! 

So you see. I'm very bad with time management lately, for both good and bad reasons. Add the warm weather lethargy and I'm just a hopeless sloth! I really must learn to get back on top of it because my sewing is looking quite neglected =( 

So finally, I will now give you my lovely Charlotte! 

So you must understand first of all this dress is all about the sleeves! Look how grand they are! 

I had gained the inspiration for this dress after seeing the below image of a "Flower child" couple at the Windsor Jazz Festival in 1967. The girls dress with its ruffled and flared sleeves were the real hook for me. I didn't end up adding the ruffle on the hem to mine as it was decided though an Instagram opinion poll (not really a poll) that it was fine without it. 

The name of this dress by the way, comes from the fact that from the front the girl in the below image looks a little like Charlotte Martin, 60s model and girlfriend to Eric Clapton and Jimmy page. I don't think its actually her, but she was such a popular icon of the time, I think she deserves her own dress. 

I wish I had a giant flower like hers for taking photos with

When I finished the dress I spent and awful lot of time dancing around the house swinging my arms about like a semaphore signalman. 

To make the sleeves I took the angel sleeve pattern from Butterick 5513 and narrowed it slightly. 

I then cut a length of fabric - I think it was 100cm x 15cm, sewed it closed, hemmed it and stitched a line of basting stitches with my machine.

I pulled the thread tails till it started to gather and became the same size as the sleeve and stitched it on. 

At first the sleeves looked too big and I was thinking of narrowing them down, but I decided it would be easier to hem the ruffle up one more time and that seemed to balance it.

Such a serious face for me!

For the actual dress I used what used to be my faithful shift dress pattern. But because I haven't used it in ages, I forgot to make all the adjustments I usually have to make, like widening the hips, changing the bust dart angle and taking the excess out of the back. All very silly things to have to do and made me realise why am I using such a dumb pattern that needs so many adjustments? 

So it went in the bin…

I've made a few very good shifts in the last year so I may retrace one of those and work on this to be my shift dress block.

The fabric being cotton, has stretched around the hips though, so it’s not so tight any more.

It’s actually kind of nice, but around the shoulders and bust it’s still too tight. You can see a kind of fold in the bust there - I call this a mono-nipple

The fabric I used was a cotton from Fabric.com called Dear Stella Hadley Paisley Atlantic. The print is quite bold and very interesting with paisley, Indian type motifs and floral details

Shame I didn't match the fabric at the back!

Other then the practice one, this is my first proper lapped zipper. Not too bad aye? 

But on the plus side, I also mastered a new technique!

I sewed a lapped zipper into the back using this tutorial buy Lauren from Rosie Wednesday. It uses a short cut to get the perfect lap – I love short cuts, especially in sewing   

Pretty awesome overall I think!

It’s a great dancing dress, and I can see why sleeves such as these were popular in the late 60s, they were wonderful to move your arms around with, doing all those sorts of dances that require you to use your whole body. For some reason I think it would work well with a song like this…

What do you think? I really hope you like it

Enjoy your week lovely ones!

Cat xo