Wedding Outfit: the Petticoat

I'm not sure you would actually call this a petticoat, more of an underskirt to help give the actual skirt the volume I wanted.  I did think of making a proper petticoat, but I wasn't sure if I would actually have the time.  Maybe some other time.  For this quick project I decided to use tulle as it's a very light weight fabric and an easy way to make volume.  I got 4m of it and actually ended up with much more than I had intended as it was actually folded up more times in the shop than I realised.  I didn't use a pattern for this, but just put it together based on the shape I wanted.  

The plan was to make two layers that was made up of two tiers of the tulle, with each tier being about 55cm wide.  The length of each tier was based on my hip measurements, with the top tier being twice my hip circumference and the bottom tier being four times my hip circumference.  Both of these were gathered to give the volume I wanted.  Construction was pretty simple.

First I put in a long stitch along one of the longer edges of the bottom tiers and pulled on the thread to gather it until it became the same length of the top tier.  I then sewed the two tiers together.

I then put a long stitch along the top tier and gathered that in until it fitted the size of my waist.  I had originally planned to then sew this into its own waist band, but I realised that this would just add an extra layer to my waist and would be something else I would need to manhandle on the day.

When I first attached it to the waist band of the skirt and tried it on I realised that it was far too bulky around the waist.  So I detached it from the skirt and undid the gathers.  I then put in darts instead to draw in the waist width and reattached it to the skirt's waistband.  This worked much better and still produced the extra volume I was wanting.

I then sewed up the sides of the two layers, stopping just below the opening of the skirt.  The last step was to ensure that the hem of the petticoat was just above the hem of the skirt.  I hung up the skirt inside out so that the petticoat was on the outside to my dressmaker's mannequin and left it for a little bit of time to allow any stretching to happen.  Then I cut the hem by the needed amount.

This petticoat actually turned out a lot better than I was expecting and, even though you won't actually see it on the day, I'm a little proud of it.  It has made my skirt sit exactly how I want it without adding any unnecessary bulk or weight and I might actually leave it on the skirt after the wedding.  I have to admit that this type of 'winging it' sewing of probably my favourite way to sew as it's easier to fit the garment to my shape.  So that's one more wedding crafting done and that now leaves the top and outer skirt to sew, and my shawl to knit.

Decluttering and Tidying 2022

I try to do a declutter and tidy on a regular basis so that nothing ever gets too out of hand.  This has been especially important recently as most of the places I've lived in haven't exactly had a lot of space to them.  I had planned on doing this after all the wedding preparations were finished, but I have been finding the clutter very distracting.  So I've decided to do a mini declutter over a week and then I'll do a larger one later, along with a deep clean.

Wedding Fabric Corner

This little corner contains all the fabric that I had collected to make our wedding garments.  Some of the fabric I didn't need any more and I have to admit that I probably did over buy just a little bit.  Thankfully all the fabric was brought second hand so I don't feel too bad about it.  I'll be sending some of the fabric to the charity shop (the bedding) and I've put away the extra dyed blue fabric I now longer need for wedding sewing for a future project I hope to do later on this year.  All that's left there now is the fabric I need to complete my outfit and the accessories.

Stationary Draw

This draw is meant to just contain all the stationary/ electronics I use at the moment.  However, it has really just become a catch all draw now and I can't really find anything in it.  First thing was to pull everything out to see what I actually had.  A couple of items could be moved back to where they actually belonged, mostly outdoor stuff I'd thrown into there, and others found their way to the charity shop bag - for some reason I had quite a lot of bookmarks.  Paperwork went into a pile to be sorted later and I really need to remember to deal with it as soon as it comes in rather than just shoving it into the draw.  I then put everything else back into the draw in a way that meant I could actually see everything.

Wardrobe

There isn't too much for me to do here as I tend to get rid of any item of clothing I'm not wearing anymore pretty much straight away.  I did double check to make sure there wasn't any items hiding somewhere, but my main focus was on the towels and bedding that we also store there.  We've changed our duvet size so now we have some duvets and duvet covers that we no longer need, so they'll be finding a new home.  There's also a towel that I've had since I was about 7 and is completely falling apart.  It's finally time to say goodbye to it and I'll probably cut it up into cleaning cloths.  Obviously I didn't touch any of my partner's things, however tempted I might have been.

Kitchen

This was a pretty quick one as it's only the cupboard which has our reusable containers and Tupperware that needed a look through.  I got rid off some food containers we aren't using anymore, a water bottle we don't use, and a whole lot of takeaway boxes which I'm going to use to sort out our outdoor gear (once wedding stuff is done) and then recycle what I don't use.

Paperwork

I normally do this at the end of the financial year, but as I need to put a whole lot of paperwork into the folder I decided I might as well do the decluttering at the same time.  It turns out there was quite a lot of paperwork I should have gotten rid of a while ago, so this turned out to be a good decision.  A whole lot of shredding will be needed.

This was quite a quick declutter this time as I don't really have a lot of time to go through everything properly, but I already feel a lot calmer and happier about our living space.  Once I have a little more time I'll definitely go through everything properly, but this has been enough for now.  A big spring clean will be happening though, as soon as I can make it.

Wedding Outfit: the Skirt

This is the first bit of my wedding outfit that I've made so far.  I did knit a shawl before, but realised that the colours didn't actually fit the rest of what the outfit will be.  I'll need to redone that.  I'm using the pattern 'The Fantail Skirt: historical' by the Dreamstress.  I wanted to make this pattern for a while and my wedding seemed like the perfect excuse.  A Fantail is also a New Zealand bird, which is where my partner is from so it seemed a nice connection.

I've decided to keep with the historical version of this pattern, though I have added some facing to the waistband to give it a little extra strength as there will be some additional weight on it.  I'm also using 100% cotton fabric, which happens to be second hand hotel bedding I brought online.  Some of this fabric is going to go towards making my top in white, but I wanted the skirt to be blue and so dyed it using Dylon fabric dye in Vintage Blue. 

One addition I have made to this pattern was to add a pocket to one of the seems, using a make your own pattern I made after watching a tutorial by Bernadette (though the Dreamstress also have a good tutorial on how to add a pockets).  I'll keep the draft for future use and I can see me adding pockets to quite a lot of things now I have it.  

I wasn't able to add the pocket to the usual place you would find pockets as there aren't any seams in that area side, so I placed it onto one of the back seams.  It'll work for holding what I need it to - hankie, engagement ring, possibly lipstick.

I wasn't sure, at the start, if I was going to make this a high - low skirt as I liked the look of it in on a wedding dress I liked the look of and my partner quite like the idea of it.  I decided I'd make it in its original form to begin with and then make a decision on the length of the front. In the end we both agreed that it looked better full length all around, especially with the folds in the back.

Not going to lie, I did have to redo the waistband a couple of times.  The first time I did all the measurements but somehow managed to make it 1 inch too small.  As I have no intention of starving myself to get into it, I redid it.  However, I then managed to make it 1.5 inch too big.  So I had to unpick it all again and start again.  At least it actually fits now.

I did have to wait until I had made the underskirt / petticoat before I could see how long I wanted the hem to be.  I originally hemmed it exactly as the pattern suggested, but it didn't have the length that I needed so I shortened the second turn over.  

As part of my wedding day will involve going on a walk I wanted to be able to have the front of the skirt lifted up a bit.  To get that I've attached ribbon into the hem and two front seams so that I can pull them up and tie them to lift the hem.  I did try hand finish the seams edges, but I noticed that the stitching was too obvious from the front side no matter how small they were.  So I chose to finish them using hemming tape.

For the fastenings, I decided to not put myself through doing buttonholes again and, instead, went for the hook and bar with snaps recommended in the pattern.

And it's done.  I have to say I'm quite proud of this and I really love how this turned out, despite how much work it was.  I especially like the back section with all the folds in it and the advantage to having a big bum is you don't have to make a bustle to get the authentic look.  Now all I need to make is the overskirt, the top, matching face masks, and re-knit the shawl.  All in about 2 months. That's doable isn't it.

January 2022 Budget

The first month of the year is over and, theoretically, we should have been on top of all the finances.  However, I have to admit that wedding plans have taken over pretty much everything and I haven't been putting as much effort into budgeting as I should be.

Thankfully, when it comes to the wedding we have money put aside for it so we're not having to take money out of our general budget to pay for it.  Every time we've pulled money out of this wedding budget I've added it to our income.  Having that has definitely given us piece of mind. However, we are having to keep to that budget the best we can as anything over then does have to come out of our monthly budget.  It's not a big budget and that has meant that we've had to do a lot of things ourselves.  It's the usual equation of time against money really.

Our income has been pretty standard these last few weeks, and it's looking like that will be the case for the rest of the year.  This means that it's our outgoings that we really need to work on to help us reach our goals this year.  Our general expenses are also going to pretty much be the same throughout the year it's really things like groceries and personal spending where we can save.

There were some additional expenses I wasn't really expecting to pay out this month, such as getting new bras (always ridiculously expensive for me) and I decided to get the wedding present for my partner now so that I wouldn't have to stress about getting it later.

I had decided, at the beginning of the year, to put our groceries budget up to £100 a week to fit with the price of food and to give us a little opportunity to get some treats etc which would hopefully reduce the amount of takeaways we had.  We've done pretty good on that front, but not so good on the takeaway front.  We were keeping to our one takeaway a week at the start of the year, but then we had two weekends of trying to get everything fixed with the wedding and then I got ill.  That's definitely one area we can get sorted again in February.

There shouldn't be anything we need to spend money on in the next couple of months (other than more wedding stuff) which should make putting money into savings a lot easier.  We haven't actually put any money into our savings at all this month, which isn't great really and means we have a lot of saving to do over the next two months.  Especially as I've set some pretty ambitious goals for this quarter on the savings front.  This is partly because of time off during the Christmas period where, as a self-employed person, I didn't get to earn anything and we've needed to build back up the money in our account.

I did pay off some of my credit card, about £300, and put some money into my pension - but not as much as I should have done and I'll need to put extra in over the next couple of months to get it to the amount it should be.  I still have about £450 on my credit card to pay and that's my main aim for this quarter.  

So what are my overly ambitious goals for us this quarter.  That would be for me to have paid off my credit card, have put £600 into my pension, have paid the car repair sinking fund off fully (about £100), half of the Christmas sinking fund paid (about £300 which is pretty unlikely I think but you never know), and have paid a quarter of what's left of our emergency fund paid (£700). I'm going to say that last one isn't going to happen, but a girl can dream.