Frocks & Frou Frou

It’s hot in Australia at the moment. WAY too hot for a wooly cardigan, but I did the trek out to my favourite cashmere shop Eugenie anyway, knowing that this is when they have ridiculously good savings on their beautiful cashmere basics.

I had my eye on the cropped crew-neck cardigan, which I’d seen on sale for $99 down from $199, because I had a special remix in mind.

Elbow patches.

I’d needle felted a set of heart appliques onto the elbows of cardigan previously, but I had in mind something a little more glamorous for the cashmere cardigan.

SEQUIN elbow patches.

I bought the cardigan in the cream, thinking it would be versatile, and would be perfect over florally frocks as the weather turned colder (it’s officially autumn…. it’ll happen eventually).

Pretty boring, huh? I didn’t love the grey buttons, so they were the first things to go. I dropped into Clegs and bought sparkly diamante buttons with which to replace them:

Next up to choose my preferred appliqué fabric. I was tossing up between matte gold sequins and plain red fabric, so I put the choice out to Twitter. You guys came back with gold sequins, but when I went into the Clegs they had RED SEQUINS. Just like Dorothy’s ruby slippers. So I bought 20 cms of both. (Just covering my bases)

Making the hearts is easy.

Fold a piece of paper in half, then cut half a heart shape on the fold:

Voila! Heart template

Lay your template down on the non-sequinned side of your fabric and pin it in place. Using sharp scissors (though probably not your best fabric scissors, the sequins will destroy the blades) cut around the heart, then repeat for the second heart.

The sequinned fabric won’t fray, so you don’t need to finish the edges, but if you’re persnickety like me you can remove any half-sequins that you may have cut through by easing them out with tweezers, just so you don’t have any sharp edges.

At this point I put down both gold and red hearts to help me reach a decision. I thought the red looked AMAZING, but the gold was more understated and would be more versatile. So I played it safe and went the gold. It’s a cashmere cardigan…. I want to be able to wear it ALL the time!

Put the cardigan on, then pin the hearts into place on the elbows.

Take the cardigan off and compare the two sleeves to make sure the hearts are properly lined up, and straight against the seams

OK! Now you’re ready to sew!

I did mine by hand, partly because I wasn’t quite sure how machine sewing sequinned fabric would work, partly because machine sewing long sleeves is annoying and fraught with danger, and partly because I thought hand-stitching would be easier to unpick should I decide again sequinned elbow patches some time in the future (as if!).

I used a basic fell stitch to attach the heart, and always fed my needle through the centre of a sequin, so it’s pretty sturdily attached.

The finished product is a bit gorgeous, if I do say so myself.

….. and I didn’t let those red hearts go to waste, either

Top: Bonds

Skirt: Asos

Shoes: I Love Billy

This outfit really needed something else to make it sing – a belt maybe? Or a necklace? – But I was so delighted at finally, FINALLY managing to find a mustard-coloured t-shirt, that I wanted to show it off straight away.

I’d more or less given up hope of finding one, after scouring all my usual “basics” haunts both online and in the shops.

I spent an entire day trying everywhere in Melbourne’s CBD that I could think of, and I found a few mustard tops, but they all had writing on them, or buttons, or pockets, and I just wanted something really, really simple.

I’d decided to just throw in the towel, admit defeat, and maybe have a stab at dying a plain white one when I stumbled across this super-soft t-shirt in the Bonds department at my local Myer. Huzzah!

I went just as splendidly with my new Asos mod-check midi skirt as I’d hoped.

The skirt’s not perfect – I was wrong when I said it was the same shape as the fit-and-flare skirts, it’s much more of an a-line shape and isn’t nearly as full at the bottom. The fabric’s a heavy fabric, halfway between a jersey and a woven knit, and a bit bobbly. It looks suspiciously like it might pill in time, but so far so good.

The print’s not as clean-cut as the pictures make it seem, and there’s an odd little hiccup in the print just around my hips where the fabric looks like it’s skipped a bit, so the squares are squished flat, and the lines are a little out of joint. It annoyed the crap out of me when I first noticed it, but it’s not a deal breaker. It’s also not lined, whatever the description says.

Anyway, I bitch and moan, but I could have sent it back and I didn’t, so I obviously quite like it.

Frocks & Frou Frou

Remix: Heart of Gold

Mod Mustard