the final photoshoot will come soon, I promise!

Dearest Hive Friends & Needleworkers!

Remember these? After I made my own fabulous dungarees for glamourous gardening, and set out to make @vincentnijman a pair too?

Well I finished them, but we've been doing another house moving session this weekend past, and with cat number two poop dramas and escaping the weird vibes of pur last town, we've not had a chance to do a proper photoshoot of the completed garment - so that will come later, and in the meantime, these are some details of the creative process 🥰💝

Above you can see both the beginning stage of the new, manly dungarees, and then the old waistband... I had to first repair a worn-through hole, which I did in this contrasting fabric, which is the second pair of 'bastardised' trousers, like with my own dungarees; I wanted to make sure that every part of the new trews would be suitably sturdy for hard labour on our land!

The old waistband of the big baggiest-ever pantaloons, which I cut the ankles off of for my own dungarees... it wasn't functioning for anyone we know, with its 20cm diameter! So it was carefully reclaimed as a piece of fabric, by unpicking the tight stitching which had been holding in the elastication.

This hole-fixing was a simple but intense reinforcement of the delicate fabric; something often requiring attention with recycling old garments, especially silks, or thin cottons like this...

I love the messiness of a hand-stitched repair!

...even if in the end, the mend was mostly hidden; this is the previously-elasticated waistband, cut in two along the horizontal, and made into straps for the new dungarees 💖

The straps were attached to the main body of the dungaree, by a third contrasting fabric, this blue/ white pinstripe, from an old pair of summer shorts.

And at the last stages, I did some more handsewing on the buckle holes, too.

The final buckles, the metal parts, were found in my sewing box... possible they came from another pair of dungarees from the past 🤗

And the front pocket: this was an amalgamation of elements from two other shorts, cut out and then resewn together and attached to the upper, blue part of the new dungarees. I wanted to have a nice balance of cold and warm colours, patterns, textures, in the final garment.

After sewing the pocket, I got a piece of the leftover pinstripe fabric and attached it to the back of the straps, so that Vincent can also work topless, but not expose the workings on the back of the lower straps; the stripy blue and white makes a fab contrast, I feel!

Only problem now with the front of the dungarees, is that the fabric of the pocket flap is distorted - just bent up from having been stored in a bag with other old clothing: maybe I should consider folding my stored fabrics better... We don't have an iron and so will have to try with a water spray and pinning it in place 'til it dries.

A final detail: the shaping of the hips involved a mysterious spontaneous intervention ...and then some buttons at either side: this dungaree creation involved a lot of specific details!

Ecco!

With this, I'll wish you all the most Blessed of weeks, with much creative success in every sense... and I am off to see what has been growing whilst we were away a couple of days!

Much love!