Category: dress

dress, life, sewing

I have a (sewing) problem – Luck Be A Lady Dresses

christinahopgood
I admit that I have a problem. So far I have bought two versions of the beautiful Luck Be A Lady dress from Modcloth. I love them both to bits – they fit well, look great with or without tights and cardigans, are work appropriate, come with a cute belt, and have pockets. Pockets, you guys. I wear them ALL THE TIME. They are quite pricey, so I thought I was done.

The dress in ‘dots’, which I wear a lot to teach and work.  I love that it looks like an aboriginal dot painting.

The dress in ‘Blue Dots’, which is now totally sold out and gone.  This is more of a party dress, but super comfy and rad.

Then, recently, I went through my dresses to assess and downsize. I realised why a lot of my dresses don’t get much wear: they’re all made of patterned fabric, which makes it hard to pair with other patterned things. I need some solids! Enter the Luck Be A Lady Dresses in the original green colour and in Violet. Two beautiful jewel-toned dresses perfect for upcoming autumn and perfect for my wardrobe. I can just see myself bustling around in that gorgeous purple one with mustard tights and a ponytail…

Gorgeous, amirite?


And forest green!  Beautiful!

I decided to wait until I’d earned some money this year, since they didn’t look like they’d sell out and ANYHOW, Modcloth usually sends me an email before things on my wishlist sell out. I did a few hours work and earned $100, then sold a dress online, so I figured I could buy them.  I went online to do so!

VIOLET IS SOLD OUT.

Whaaaaat.  Modcloth, y u no email me? I don’t want to buy just one, because it’s expensive shipping and also, violet was the one I wanted MORE. Which brings me to!

CAN I SEW MY OWN?

I have looked on the McCall website (which has the patterns from McCall’s, Vogue, Butterick, and Kwik Sew) and couldn’t find anything like it with those lovely neck-pleats. The skirt part is easy enough without a pattern.  I’m going to keep looking. Imagine how great it would be to be able to make my own Luck be a lady dress in whatever colour I like! More like Christina be a lady. Dress.

So please fellow sewers, keep an eye out! I’m even considering unpicking one of my own to copy, and we don’t want that to happen!

Has this ever happened to you? What would you do in this situation?  Would you just buy the one in Autumn Plaid?

dress, sale

A couple of dresses for sale :-)

christinahopgood
Please comment if you would like one of these dresses!

KidsYoYo blue floral Mary Magdalene replica dress.  Includes two detachable bows, has back lacing and side zipper.  I’d like around $75 but please make an offer!

Dear Celine black velvet dress.  This also has two detachable bows and back lacing.  This one’s a little big for me.  I’d also like around $75.

Original sales post here! Includes worn photos and details etc.
cardigan, dress, earrings, OOTD, outfit, review

As promised, Modcloth package and review!

christinahopgood
I’ve been patiently waiting for two weeks for my Modcloth package to arrive!  It finally arrived yesterday afternoon!  Exciting!
“How do you open this thing?”

 The box was super cute and had writing on the inside.  One side says “So what shall we do together?” and the other says something about how we’re all unique and we should tell each other about it on the website.

Cardigan!  YES
This is the Classic Remixed Cardigan in pink.  Everyone on the website reviewed this cardigan saying it was too small.  It fit me just right!  I bought the small size, against everyone’s advice 🙂 Snug but comfy and roomy enough.  I love the sparkly silver dots.

Tights!  AWESOME!
These are the Tights for Every Occasion tights in Teal and Wine.  They have heaps of other colours too!  They’re very stretchy, soft, and comfy!

Dress!  ZOMG!
This is the Luck Be A Lady Dress in Dots.  They also have this dress in a lot of other colours.  I already have this dress in blue dots, which I adore to bits and I frocktober’d here.  I loved it so much I bought this pattern too!  Apparently they’re not stocking the blue dots one any more.  This dress fits me like a glove (well a glove that fits really well) and flatters beautifully.

Earrings!  Super rad!
These are the Bouquet Brilliance Earrings.  I just love them to bits.  All the gems are just so shiny and gorgeous.

Outfit!

 The best bit about this dress – POCKETS YOU GUYS

 The cardigan does up fine, no fit problems at all!

 The skirt has a nice amount of flare and I already received two compliments wearing it today!

The earrings are kind of big but not heavy for their size.

Pattern close up.  Looks kind of like Aboriginal dot paintings doesn’t it? And the belt is lovely, can’t wait to wear it with other things too.

All in all I’d have to say that this is my best Modcloth order yet!  I wish their things weren’t so pricy, but  it sure is fun getting things in the mail, especially when they’re super cute and awesome!

craft, diy, dress, fashion, paint

DIY Galaxy Print Dress

christinahopgood
Recently, I’ve been seeing quite a few tutorials on how to make a galaxy dress at home.  I thought it looked fun so decided to try it on my own, and the results turned out great!

You Will Need:

Cheap black/dark blue dress.  Mine is a really cheap thin black dress from Jay Jay’s.  I wouldn’t normally wear something this short!  But I figured, if I mess it up no big deal.

Spray bottle

Bleach

Fabric paints.  I used both normal fabric paint and some old screen-printing paint I had.  I used dark purple, fuscia, red, yellow, gold, silver, and pearly-white.  People in other tutorials used spray-on fabric paint but mine worked really well with normal.

Paintbrushes

Plastic bags 

Let the tutorial commence.

First lay out your dress on top of some plastic bags, with some inside to prevent things from leaking through.
Mix your bleach with about equal parts of water.  You won’t need much, as this stuff is quite potent. 

Spray on some nebulas and galaxies with the bleach.  The more bleach you spray, the lighter the area will become, so it’s nice to have it whiter on the inside of the shape. 

Wait for it to dry… and you’ll see the bits you sprayed more go whiter.

I added some drip drops of bleach to look like little distant galaxies. 

 The fabric of my dress was extremely thin and weird so it was kind of blotchy.

Now you need to put it through a wash to get all that bleach out!  Stinky gross!


Now get a little bit of paint and put it in the (rinsed out) spray bottle.  Dilute with a bit of water to ensure you can actually squirt it through the bottle.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a bit thin, you can layer it up. Sometimes it’ll squirt out little blobs of paint, but that looks cool too!

I started with the darker colours on the outside of the bleached patches, and moved towards the centre with lighter colours.  Make sure you rinse out the bottle each time.

It was easiest to hang it on the line for this process.

 Lastly I sprayed the whole thing with a mixture of silver and pearly-white, which gave the entire dress a gorgeous shimmer.  I sprayed lots of that colour on the middle of the nebulas to make it look like there was lots of stars there.

 Leave it to dry a bit, and then start to paint on little individual stars with a paintbrush.

 Some were little crosses and some were just spots.  I used gold, silver, red, and pearl to do this.

The back of the dress turned out beautiful I think!  It has a cute keyhole back.

Next, leave until completely dry and then heat-set the paint with your iron according to the instructions on the paint.  Probably best to put an old sheet in-between so you don’t get a galaxy print iron.

Done!

 Gosh it’s short.

 But cute!  I’m really happy with this and can’t wait to wear it to all this Summer’s pool parties!  Does anyone I know have a pool?  Guys?  Anyone?

Now I know this method works, I might get a nicer black dress and do it again!  It was a really fun afternoon!


dress, frocktober, outfit

Frocktober 31st! Halloween!

christinahopgood
Today is Halloween!  We thought it was no big deal in Australia, but we were visited but a whole bunch of kids!  Two of whom were our own students who now know where we live!

So I rushed up to the shops to buy extra lollies (we had some but were running low), and popped on my creepy makeup!  I’m not exactly dressed as anything for Halloween (my Starfleet officer uniform fell through as I couldn’t find a jacket I thought I had), so I’m going for gothicy-creepy-but-it’s-too-hot-for-a-blouse.

For my makeup I just used a liquid eyeliner to draw on a spiderweb and a spider.  This was my makeup when we took outfit shots…

And THIS is my makeup after I did some extra!  I just used one of those eyeshadows I don’t like much to paint my entire face blue.  

And here’s an old photo of me in this dress and a black blouse.  Someome’s party years ago.

Well tomorrow I might have a well-earned day off!  But then I’ll post the last dresses in a few days!  I have five more to go: my Emily Temple Cute dress, two Victorian Maiden OPs, a spotty dress from London, and a dress from Cue.  So how many is that altogether?  Gosh.