Giveaway winner!

After much delay, and procrastinating, and forgetting (on my behalf), it's finally time to announce the winner of my giveaway!

And the lucky lady, as chosen by a random number generator is...

Comment number 17, Miss Emmi!  Congratulations, and I can't wait to send this pattern on to its new home with you!  Keep an eye on your inbox, I'll be emailing you soon to get your address.
One small tradition I'd like to add to this pattern is putting a photo of what you've made from it in the pattern envelope.  I will be enclosing a picture of my strawberry dress, and if it's alright with Debi I'll print off copies of the photos of her dresses to keep to!  And ideally Miss Emmi would be as borderline obsessive motivated as me and occasionally stalk our blogs for any updates, but of course it's not necessary!

Anyway, thank you for all your entries and your helpful tips, finally starting to settle in to the new place!  And welcome to the new followers, hopefully the sporadic posting won't annoy you too much!

Sew Grateful Giveaway - Style Print 1283

Oh my goodness, I can't believe I almost missed Sew Grateful week!
This week has been absolutely insane, with moving house and starting back at uni, and at the moment I am sew grateful for my family and the two lovely girls I am living with - but more on that later!

For today, I'm hosting my very first giveaway - a pattern I won back in the very first Sew Grateful week in November 2011, then made up and posted for the second Sew Grateful week in February 2012.  And now it's time for this beauty to make its way to a new home - don't worry, I've made a tracing so I can make a few more versions, and trust me, you will want to make a few more versions!

This pattern is Style Print 1283, from roughly the 1950s - I can't seem to find the exact date, so if anybody out there knows what it is that would be much appreciated!  It comes with very simple instructions for a shirt-dress with either a (very) full or straight skirt, and short or long sleeves.

I'm feeling a bit presumptuous posting my humble little creation next to the lovely Debi, who hosts this week, but I know how much I love seeing a pattern made up!

Click the pictures for bigger versions!

Left to right: Debi's Mid-Century Madness dress, Debi's Pumpkin Pie dress, and my Strawberry Style Print Sew Grateful dress,

To enter this giveaway, just leave me a comment below (only one!) with your best tip for setting up and settling in to a new home, and include your email address!  I will draw this giveaway next Saturday the 16th of February at 10am AEST (that's midnight GMT, work out your other time zones from there), so make sure you leave your comment before then!  I'm happy to post worldwide, and when I draw the winner I'll contact you to get your address.
This giveaway is now closed, announcement of the winner coming soon!

There is only one condition on this giveaway, and that is that while you can hold on to this pattern for as long as you like, when you do decide that it's time for you to part make sure it's a gift - as a giveaway on your blog, a personal gift to someone, whatever you like, just please don't sell it!

I can't wait to pass this wonderful pattern along and share the joy!
Thank you again to Debi, I am sew grateful you host this lovely lovely week!!

My Strawberry, Style Print, Sew Grateful dress

So, after a lot of build-up on my blog, here is the finished product!  I am so happy with how it turned out, and with my first go at making a belt and belt loops.  Although some of the eyelets are a bit wonky, it does the job and looks absolutely lovely.

The pattern that I used, as you are all probably sick of hearing by now, is Style Print 1283, which I won in a giveaway from Debi over at My Happy Sewing Place - also the host of the Sew Grateful week!

(Just like the pattern cover... except not!)

As you can see, I made view A, with the full skirt and short sleeves.  I also added four belt loops (just a 1 inch strip of material folded into quarters lengthways and stitched down... probably not the best way to do it but it works!) attached at the bottom of the waist darts on the front and back, to make sure they were evenly spaced.  Next time I decide that I want to attach belt loops onto a dress with a full skirt, remind me how INCREDIBLY NOT FUN it is!

I had a lot of fun making this dress, and learned a lot!  It was the first time I've done anything with a collar, which came together a lot more easily than I was expecting.  I had a play with more flat-felled seams, and used them on the shoulder seams, the seams closing the bottom of the sleeves (not sure what these are called), and then decided that I wanted to put them on the arm-hole seams as well!  So that was incredibly fiddly, but I think it worked out well - and now it looks so beautiful on the inside!

In other news, I found out that the machine I have been using has a blind hemming foot, so I used that to do them hem of the skirt and the sleeve hems, and it looks lovely - except for where the machine decided that it would be a good idea to take a navy blue stitch straight through the centre of a red strawberry.  But I think I am the only one that will be looking that closely at the hemming, so it doesn't particularly matter, not that there's much I can do about it aside from hemming all 3m of the skirt by hand.

In regards to the skirt, I took 3 inches off before cutting the material, and then an extra half inch again (in addition to the 2 inch hem that the pattern called for) to take this skirt to a mid-knee level.  I think if I was to make this  again, I might take a further half inch or inch off, just so it's a tiny bit shorter.

I also rearranged the buttonholes slightly to accommodate 3 buttons, the same as Debi did in her versions (view A with full skirt, view B with straight skirt), rather than the two that the pattern called for - I get a bit paranoid about the gaps between buttons gaping unflatteringly, which has happened to me with a couple of my work blouses!

(I painted my nails navy blue for this week, and when I messed up one of my ring finger nails, I decided to try to use my feeble art skills to paint a strawberry - do you think it was a success?  Also, my sister the photographer says it's very hard to take close up photos with some sort of light in summer - the sun's either overhead or set!)

I didn't make any other adjustments to the fit of this one.  Because of the era that this pattern is from, the bust darts do give a bit of a 'pointy-boob' look, designed to be worn with a bullet bra.  However I didn't feel confident enough to mess around with the darts, so I just left it.  The slight looseness of the bodice combined with the busy print means that the slightly odd fit around the bust isn't particularly noticeable.

Overall, this was a lovely lovely pattern to work with, and I'm so glad I got to make this dress!  My sister is currently working on a version of her own, so hopefully that'll appear on here at some point in the future.  Debi, thank you so much for sending me this!  I'll try to find it a lovely new home when the time comes - maybe next Sew Grateful week! :)

Fun photos to finish - this dress is very good for spinning in!  Also, the dogs like to 'help' with photos, mostly by putting white hair all over my dress and bringing my spitty, muddy tennis balls to throw.

Thanks x 1000 go to my sister, for taking photos of me in the exotic location of the back veranda, on the first sunny day all week!