Friends | The Sew Convert

It’s so difficult to keep a secret! Especially one that I’ve been so excited about!

Fellow Sew Weekly contributor Veronica Darling and I met up two weeks ago during her stopover in Singapore! After a few exchanges via email, we decided to sew outfits for the Halloween theme and have photos taken for Veronica’s Sew Weekly post. We wanted to keep this top secret and a surprise for all so I decided sew another outfit for my own TSW post. I stumbled upon Spanish designer Agatha Ruiz De La Prada’s quirky 2009 runway creations while researching the Spanish Harlem theme and shared the inspiration with Veronica. Here are the quirky, ‘alice in wonderland-ish’ inspirations behind both my Halloween outfits.

We decided to sew tablecloth dresses. Veronica’s dress was made from a real vintage tablecloth and came in vivid green, blue and read. You can read more about it from her TSW post here. My dress was made from Simplicity 4288, a pattern which was not dated but I am guessing it was either 1940s or 50s. I chose this pattern as it was labelled simple to make and I had only a few hours to sew before Veronica’s stopover. I found the most tablecloth looking wavy blue and red gingham print from my stash and started sewing. Turned out it was a breeze to sew and what took the most time were the button holes at the back of the dress. I used some pink heart-shaped buttons from my stash to add Alice in wonderland cuteness to the dress.

The sunny side up splashed on my sleeve was made from an old onesie and some yellow felt at the last-minute. It was hand stitched onto the dress and has since been removed as the egg or what my mum thought was a huge flower, was drawing too much attention. I have worn the dress twice since our meet up sans sunny side up off course 🙂

We managed to spend four hours together taking photos, enjoyed a local seafood lunch and visited my favorite notions and fabric stores in Chinatown. She is truly a darling girl, absolutely sweet and adorable and I totally enjoyed our time together. Hubby was skeptical at first since we were ‘strangers’ (the exact word he used!). But, having read each other’s blog posts for almost a year, I felt like we knew each other and couldn’t stop chatting 🙂 I certainly hope Veronica will visit Singapore again soon with her hubby!

The second Halloween dress I sewed was totally different, it’s meant to be more costume than dress. And it’s the one eye thick lip monster dress. The LBD is made from a modern-day knit pattern, McCall’s 6243 and the lips section was self drafted.

The good thing about this dress, I can also unpick the lips which was hand stitched onto the LBD to ‘reclaim’ the dress for normal wear 😛 You can read more about the dress on my TSW post this week.

Happy Deepavali and halloween to everyone celebrating!