Colette Moneta dress, a t-shirt and Ernest Wright shears!

It’s autumn! The kids are back at school and we’ve had a few weeks to get back to a kind of normal(ish) routine of kids at school and me at work. Luckily for me my work has also involved some sewing commissions and some sewing tuition, which is great, and I’ve still got a backlog of completed projects to share with some great photos taken by my husband who has become a photography enthusiast!

Today I want to show you a new Colette Moneta dress I made during Me Made May earlier this year. I have had the fabric in my stash for ages, and I think it may have been from Abakhan in Manchester, although I can’t be 100% sure. It’s a printed single jersey with a good drape, and in classic navy and white. When I bought it I obviously didn’t pay much attention to the print direction, as it was only when I came to cut it out I realised the stripes were vertical instead of horizontal! Nevermind!

I hadn’t bought this fabric with a particular pattern in mind, so had erred on the side of caution and bought more than I probably needed. This worked out well because it meant I had enough fabric left over to make a t-shirt using the Threadcount patterns ‘Ultimate t-shirt’ pattern that came free with Love Sewing. Although I liked the vertical print of the dress, I really wanted horizontal stripes on the t-shirt so I cut it on the cross grain, and it worked out just fine.

I love the swishyness of the dress, but the t-shirt has probably gotten slightly more wear overall as it looked good with my white jeans in summer and under all of my dungarees and dungaree dresses!

Around the time that I made these, my amazing shears arrived from Ernest Wright. I ordered them in October 2020 but because of the pandemic they took months and months to be made, and I finally got them around May 2021. Still, better late than never! I ordered the 10″ shears which I can just about handle – any larger and my hands would not be able to physically open the blades fully!