On A Mission

My mission this year, and I call it a mission because the idea of a New Year's resolution has never sat comfortably with me, is to dress better for less.  Why, you may ask?  Well, when I totted up how much of our hard earned money was spent on clothing last year, I was slightly horrified.  Now, I know 3 growing kids (including two teenagers) are expensive to clothe and shoe, but this money would have paid for a great holiday.  So, this year it is a case of, how low can she go!  Now let's not get ridiculous about it, I will be buying shoes because let's face it, a girl always needs new shoes but this will be an interesting experiment or let's call it, mission, because this won't come easy, I can tell you!

To kick things off, I have made a top using fabric from my last op shop haul.  There was only a tiny piece of this fabric so actually cutting it out was a challenge.   I used New Look 6179 again but this time I made the version with the double layer shoulder frill.  It is the same pattern as the "shower curtain" blouse that I wrote about recently but because I found this blouse a little snug under the armpits and in the hips, I was keen to add a little bit of width to this version, not an easy task when I didn't have enough fabric in the first place.  Any ho, buy virtually getting rid of all the side seam allowance, I squeezed enough width out of the blouse for it to fit beautifully.  Problem number two came when I wanted to make bindings for the neck and arms.  I could have bought ready made black binding but this would have been way to simple and I felt like a contrast so I dug around in the remnant bin and found a   co-ordinating floral that did the job beautifully, I think.  I didn't even have enough fabric to make the drawstring so the centre of the drawstring is made using the co-ordinating blue and only the ties are the black floral.   Shhhhh...that is a big secret, if you don't tell anyone, they will never know.

I love my new blouse.  The fabric drapes beautifully.  It must have been quite an expensive cotton, when new.  Today, I am wearing it with a pair of Principals Designs beige drill pants that I picked up at the Op Shop and refashioned from flared to skinnies and Clarks leather sandals from Endless.com.