sewing...

I've been asked to sew a dress for my friend's daughter. She's five years old and she'll be dancing a little ballet on Saturday. I was happy to find the right material at the Utrechtse Stoffenmarkt (cloth market) particularly as there was this stall that sold lovely lengths of decorated cloth that I thought would do perfectly for the bodice of the dress.

I based the skirt of the dress on this pattern but I changed the bodice to a fitted one using the lovely heavily embroidered cloth that I found in the market. We had our first and final fitting this afternoon, and I'm quite pleased to say the dress is almost all done except for some hemming and attachment of the straps.

I'm rather proud of myself seeing as this is the most ambitious sewing project I've taken on to date. When the dress is done, I'll take some pics and post on here.

It's been a while since I've been to the cloth market and I realized that with fashion focusing on the skirt and the dress, it might not be such a bad idea to visit this market more regularly. The Utrecht Cloth Market offers quite a good variety at very reasonable prices. Not bad when you compare how a lace dress easily costs close to (and even over) a hundred euros...sewing it yourself might save you half the price and it certainly will be more fun than settling for your regular consumer-type dress.

I did a bit of searching on youtube while preparing for this dress (my friend didn't want your regular tutu, she wanted something special), and I stumbled across some footage of Katherine Healy.

I've been sitting here, thinking of how when someone dances like this, it's like watching poetry in motion. . .