There will be tables and chairs, pony rides and dancing bears

The project I'm talking about is quite different from my usual posts, but I thought it was too cool not to share! My boyfriend and have been living in our second (and awesome) appartment for a while now, and we're slowly transforming it into our ideal cozy nest. This basically means surrounding ourselves with prints, books, toys and beautiful things we love. Recently, my boyfriend's cousin told us we could have the matching armchair for our two-seat couch (which used to be hers as well and makes an appearance here). We are planning a little reading nook in one corner of the living room, and wanted a little table to keep books and cups of tea. Enter this one!

The cat wasn't included, but he has confiscated the cardboard...

This is a super basic little table from a surprisingly cheap Swedish designer. It's pretty dull in itself but I picked it because the basic shape was nice and it was untreated wood. This meant it would be easy to paint!

I traced the shapes of the two tabletops (it has a smaller, lower level) onto a big sheet of paper and started sketching. I wanted something floral, in two colours and with a bit of flair. I found a lot of inspiration in a book about haute couture details, especially from the embroidery! A cat's critical eye is essential during this step. (just a disclaimer: I don't intend this as a tutorial, since I'm probably doing loads of things wrong. I just thought it would be nice to show the process instead of just the finished product!)

These were the finished sketches. I wanted it to look complicated, but still doable to paint. After all, I hadn't painted in ages!

I then used yellow tracing paper to copy the drawings onto the wood surface. Yellow was a good choice: it's light enough so it doesn't show through the paint, but it's more visible than white.

Time to get painting! I started with the lighter colour, a metallic gold acrylic paint. This way I could easily fix mistakes later by covering them with the darker colour. These steps took quite some time because I had to use tiny brushes and needed two coats to get enough coverage.

After the gold I spent two days painting all the rest a dark teal. It was really fiddly sometimes and I was unsure about how it would look for a bit (in hindsight I should have sanded the wood down a bit first but shhh...). It's really hard to make acrylic paints look even and opaque when you're doing all these small details! Thankfully my boyfriend said he likes it more when it's a bit blotchy. D'awww!

And here's the finished table! I love how it turned out, and I can't wait to give it a proper place in our reading corner!

Ps: if you are curious about the post title...

The Confetti Factory Dress (and my first tutorial!)

This is going to be a long post! I took these pictures on an incredibly tiring day. It was quite hot, I went for a pretty intense swim, and then my boyfriend picked me up for a long bike ride, some cooking and a photo shoot. Phew!

Our first stop was this strange place:

It's a light sculpture currently open for visitors in front of Antwerp central station. The whole thing was really cool, but I loved finding this dragon! It sort of feels like walking inside a very strange bouncy castle, and the shapes make for a surreal atmosphere.

I started to get very hungry (and cranky) after this, so we quickly got food at the store and proceeded to stuff our faces:

Home-assembled veggie burgers and chips. Ow yeah.

After this feast we decided to find a nice spot to photograph my latest make. The Chantilly dress by Colette Patterns was on my list for a very long time, but when I made a muslin it turned out I didn't like the bodice on me. Boo! It looks lovely on so many others, but I just don't like having so many gathers all over. So after pouting for a bit I decided to skip the top gathers and draft a simpler bodice. Here is the result:

I kept the skirt and the midriff piece exactly as-is, but drafted an overlapping bodice to replace the gathered pieces. Sewing this up required a bit of extra thinking since I wanted to line the bodice and I had no instructions whatsoever! Making it up as I went turned out to work pretty well.

I gave the back a low scoop, a feature I love in summer dresses. And if it gets colder I can still cover up. Yay! And how great is this location? It's right underneath a highway just outside of Antwerp. I love how the environment contrasts with the sugary sweetness of the dress.

Speaking of sweetness, this is probably the girliest garment I've made in a while. The fabric is a double gauze by Nani Iro, and it's just perfect for summer. It looks and feels pretty luxurious, but makes you feel like you're wearing pyjamas. Love love love.

The dots are scattered over the fabric, and sort of fade out near the borders. I cut the entire dress on the cross grain to play with this, and love the effect it has on the hem. The Chantilly skirt is proving to be one of my favourite ones: it has the poufiness of a dirndl skirt, but drapes a bit nicer and twirls a lot better because of the curved hem.

See that face? That's a happy face. I like this dress. A LOT.

It's even suitable for awful modelling. (My boyfriend insisted on using at least one of the shots of me horsing around)

Now! I though some of you might be interested in how exactly I made this variation, so I made a really quick tutorial. It's not very difficult, but having someone else do the thinking for you is nice, no?

COLETTE CHANTILLY VARIATION

SUPPLIES
- a basic bodice pattern without seam allowances, preferably with just one dart at the waist. If your pattern has a bust dart, rotate it to the waist as well.
- pattern piece C (the midriff front), also without seam allowances
- tracing paper, weights, pens, a ruler, scissors, tape,...

 STEP 1

Mirror your pattern pieces so they are a full piece (as if you would cut them out of a single layer of fabric). Make sure to indicate the center front.

Fold and tape the darts on the bodice front as they would be sewn, and place the midriff front on top. Adjust the width of the pattern pieces to fit your waist, and trace the curved line of the midriff front on the bodice front pattern piece. Cut away the bottom part and discard this.

Open the darts again. You can now draw a new neckline. I simply marked the point where I wanted my neckline to be at the center front, sketched until it looked ok and drew the final neckline with the help of a french curve. Make sure the overlap isn't too big, to avoid pulling!

Now turn the darts into gathers. I used this method, and found it worked pretty well. Measure 1,5 cm alongside each dart leg and make two new notches. That's all! The fabric is going to be gathered between these two notches.

The final step is to make corresponding notches on the midriff front piece. Make a notch at the center front, and measure the distance from the center front to the first dart leg (which is where the dart would be if it still existed. Now measure 1,5 alongside this mark again, and make notches there. This is where the extra fabric will get gathered into. Make a notch indicating the center front on your bodice pattern piece, check if the shoulders and sides of the back bodice still match up, add seam allowances everywhere and you're done!

I'm not that good at explaining things, so if there are any questions, feel free to ask!