Tiki drinks and vintage trinkets

I've been horribly ill for the last week, so haven't been up to much. I managed to drag myself out on Tuesday though, my friend Honor was in Manchester, I hadn't seen her for two years so we went out for lunch, a little shopping and a couple of drinks together. We ate at Dough Pizza Kitchen, I can recommend it very highly. Prices aren't cheap but aren't too bad (£30 for a bottle of wine, two pizzas and one item from the nibbles menu) and they do dairy free, vegan, and gluten free options alongside an inventive choice of pizzas, pastas and salads, plus vegan options on their desserts menu!


Here we are at Hula in Manchester, I'm drinking a Sweet Leilani - possibly the most delicious drink ever to pass my lips, it is a symphony of coconut, lychee, rose petal and elderflower. Mmmmmm. I brought home the decorative carnation, here it is on my sideboard.


We had a mooch round Manchester institution Affleck's Palace and I picked up these lovely yellow polka dot gloves and a rather large rhinestone brooch.


These are my other recent acquisitions, a load more vintage glassware for my uranium glass collection. I've got nowhere left to put it all!

Tiki Dress - Progress

Well, almost progress, especially considering this was supposed to be my Summer dress project and Summer is almost over.

I decided I didn't really want to draft my own pattern for this, as it contains techniques such as shirring and boning which I've not used before. Finally I had the funds and have bought this gorgeous sarong dress pattern from Scissorhappy after seeing it mentioned in a post on Gertie's Blog for Better Sewing. Hopefully it will arrive soon from the US and I can get on with making my dresses!


The first one will be in this tiki fabric, and I'll probably just use the pattern as is for it. I'll make a wearable muslin first I think, probably in plain black as I don't actually own a black dress! (Apart from a fully sequinned one I made for halloween a few years back, which cuts my underarms to shreds.) This way I can use cheap fabric and it won't show up badly if I have to rip and redo seams or tweak the pattern as I go.


The second one I want to make is in this retro cocktail fabric, and I think I'm going to make it full skirted rather than a sarong. I could even make it a sarong with a full overskirt so I can change the look by adding the overskirt and a petticoat, I think I have enough of the fabric.


I'd like to make one of the dresses with a winged bust like this beauty from WhirlingTurban, but that's definitely something to try only after I've made the pattern up in the version without alterations and gotten used to working with it.