Ribbon and lace

The last of the party stuff - I promise!!

The Outfits:

Always an important factor of any party for our family...

The girls and I saw some really sweet lace and ribbon vintage-styled outfits in Zara recently and so decided that was the way to go for the very girly party.

The apricot skirt I had made previously - layered stretch tulle ruffled onto a cotton base.

The cream skirt is a basic full skirt gathered onto a flat top section with an elastic waistband. It has a stretch underskirt too as the lace is quite transparent.

This is post-party and it was quite cool, they look a bit stiff!

For about the first time ever I didn't pre-wash my fabric for the skirt... bound to be a bad move wasn't it...

Morning of the party, excited birthday girl puts on her new skirt at 7.30am (party started at 3pm) and then got a blood nose...

I first got wind of what had inevitably happened (yep, blood on a cream lace skirt) when I heard her dad say "I better get that in the wash before your mum sees it!!"

He got it washed and hung it to dry but even on a cold cycle the lace shrunk considerably more than the stretch layer, so the bottom layer poked out underneath.

No-one noticed and it didn't really matter but with the day being as busy as it was I didn't get the chance to fix it once it had dried.

Anyway, on to the tops...

There is a small blue spot of supposedly water-soluble marking pen that I cannot for the life of me get off - any suggestions!!??

These were made using the Oliver + S Badminton skirt/top/dress pattern.

I wanted to get the items to coordinate a little so chose to use a cotton lace for teh ribbon casing rather than making a fabric casing.

It worked a treat, as it brought the whole outfit together.

I also used some of the skirt fabric for the ruffled sleeve caps, just doing a rolled hem on the lace ones to prevent fraying.

I may stitch the ribbon as it was a little prone to untying 

I will say please don't look too closely at the top-stitching as it is a long way from perfect, the cream in particular was hideous to work with, the blue marginally better.

Both were very slippery so for making the yoke it was slow work as it was hard to keep it from slipping.

And to keep the small kid happy I made her a new skirt the night before too - a badminton skirt (without the scallops) but you can't see that yet because despite me staying up til 2am to get it done (so she wouldn't feel left out with no new outfit), she decided she didn't want to wear it - and I was too tired to argue the point!

I was really happy with the way these outfits came out - the girls have both worn them again by choice - and that's always a good sign, though they do look a little shiny in flash-photos!

Another post-party-pic

As always the Oliver+ s pattern was a dream to work with.

The skirt (that you can't see) is flat-fronted with a beautifully constructed elastic casing for the back waist.

The tops were made entirely on my sewing machine (except the rolled hem on the lace sleeves) with French seams and all ends/edges are bound in bias at the sleeves and through the yoke.

And that is it for the festival of L and A!!