Welcome all to our photoshoot (Clare. & Vincent.) !!

Join us as we enjoy our land in our new clothing!

We've had a lot of fun documenting my recent creations: @vincentnijman 's funky workwear and my sweet new autumn dress. Both are made, as ever, by hand and without previous design, improvised out of old garments made new. Unique clothing that is perfect for our new #sovereignhomestead lifestyle - whether we're clearing out a stable, or sipping herbal tea on our patio 🤗

As you may read about in last Monday's post, Vincent is sporting a vivacious loose-fitting funky pair of dungarees, which were inspired by my - previously blogged about - dungarees.

We were picking walnuts from that very tree that Vincent is swinging from, above!

Things are still pretty-darn chaotic in our house and around it, these days; having more special clothes than usual - both the making of them and the wearing of them - helps us make light of some of the heavier challenges!

Plus, it's very pleasant to have another handsome and attractive human to gaze at, in this lovely corner of Molise!

And now for my new dress: our photoshoot day was much cooler than usual, but nevertheless we had plenty of time in the midday warm sun to get the following snaps:

The weekend I finished the dress, there was a bit of handsewing; the buttons down the back of the pink part of the dress, and the triangular scrap to cover a wee hole - both from a frumpy old cotton shirt;

The buttons are from a whacky pair of jeans found on the 50c stall a year ago: they had literally hundreds of natural buttons sewn all over the legs, almost all of which have only one hole in, so which require a particular way of holding them onto the fabric (rather than the usual 2 or 4 holes, through which a simple stitch can be made). You can see them up the middle of the pink section, if you zoom in on the photo below;

The waistband on this dress is one of the very final pieces that I have left, of a favourite long puffy skirt made from silk: I love that I've made around 4 different garments from it! It was very full, and so had a lot of material, but very light silk, which here is folded over twice, to give a sturdier waist.

The purple top section is from a strange kind of long blouse, which I didn't like the feel of much... the lower part of the previous garment, I cut off for another project - leaving this really nice bodice and arms, which were the original inspiration for this new dress.

And as you can see from the photoshoot, the dress has big pockets, which I also love: made by simply turning the sleeves of the old pink shirt inside the new skirt form! I machine-sewed the big curved shape of the pockets and then hand-sewed around the edges of them 💝

I hope you love our photoshoot! Much more creative goodies will be pouring out from our beautiful new home and land, so stay connected with me and @vincentnijman !

With All The Love!