Oktoberfest Dress and a JOURNAL PAPER!

You guys my paper made the journal!!!! Stoked doesn't begin to cover it! I worked really hard over the summer and finally it was pulished today! I put a wee html link on the sidebar for anyone who is remotely interested - it gives you the abstract for the paper.

Oktoberfest dress - excuse teh awful angle I only had literally 2 mins to take these pics!

So because the paper was originally submitted to a conference and was subsequently accepted for journal, that means I get to present it...and it just so happens that I get to present it in the good ol' US of A!!!! woop! And I leave on Saturday and am headed to Cincinnati (with the rest of my team at work) - and judging by weather.com its still relatively warm in those parts.

So if youre still reading here comes the sewing part of this post! When looking for things that are going down in Cincinnati this weekend we stumbled accross Oktoberfest! Now I don't know about anyone else, but I feel that calls for a dress. So as is almost tradition now I named this dress The Oktoberfest Dress.

The fabric was the main reason I made a dress for the occasion - when I was in London earlier in the summer I picked this up on goldhawk road for about £5.99/m. It is a quilting cotton - made apparent by the weight of the fabric and is covered in loads of different beer bottles adn barrels and all things beer related - the selvage names the fabric 'Beer is best'

The heavyweight nature of the fabric is apparent when hanging coz it jutts out all over the shop!

This closeup of the fabric shows that i managed a very invisible zip which I was so proud of however the picture below shows how much that was necessary as the only zip I had to hand was BABY BLUE - theres barely any blue in the dress oops!

Also I really just wanted to add this picture because you get a really good close up of the print :-)

So the details: as probably guessed, this is the Christine Haynes Emery - I know I just shared this twice recently hwoever I think its a great pattern for showcasing a print and also in my limited time I had to put it together (Sunday and Monday evening) it was a pattern that I was confident that I would complete in time.

I love how the heavier fabric makes the skirt stick out :-)

 Unfortunately I don't think the colour really works with my skintone but thats not really the point to this dress...

If i had any idea on how to use photoshop believe me that barbequeue would be gone!!

So I think I have cracked the pattern for my measurements now - I added another fraction of a cm to each of the upper back darts and the back neckline now lies absolutely flush - the only other thing I might change is to topsttch the neckline (because I forgot to understitch).

Finally one last comment before I sign off for a couple of weeks - The Referendum. I don't really want to drag politics into my blog but its a huge deal and one that cannot be ignored. I'm voting yes. (and in no way force that opinion on anyone else) and I hope we get the result that me and so many others are so passionate about. I really hope we can as a country move forward in a positive manner. I don't dislike England - nor the people, (in fact I have family there) I just feel that it is our opportunity to safeguard our country from Westminster and a government that doesn't work for us. I'm happy to discuss my opinion too in a positive an non slanderous manner.

Take care guys  JCS xx