Dress for the heat, our Style Not Age challenge for June

Hello once again, and welcome to our monthly style challenge! Hilda has chosen well this month opting for the timely theme of Dressing for the Heat. Much as I'd like to report that the islands are basking in the UK heatwave, we are in fact sitting under a heavy cloud cover which is making for very muggy weather. My outfit is a preloved offering, but first let's see how the other ladies of the collective have fared...

Emma is basking under sunny skies on holiday abroad and is wearing a leopard print cover-up and gold sandals along with the essentail sunhat by Oliver Bonas. Catch up on her holiday news on Style Splash here. 

Jacqui is wearing her cover-up as an open shirt (by Salamander Shirts) with white top and shorts and white Lotus sandals. Catch up on all her news on Mummabstylish blog. 

Hilda is sharing her sizzling Sicily style from her recent holiday. The long, cool maxi dress is from Primark and her sandals are by Clarks. See more from her on Over the Hilda blog. 

No dazzling sunshine nor holiday backdrop from me, but Steve did land us on a brilliant white sandbar for my photoshoot of this white sundress by ME + EM, a lucky find in a charity shop in Penzance last month where I paid the grand sum of £5 for it! I found a similar one on their website here and it's retailing for £150! And let's not forget to mention that It's Got Pockets!

My green and white swimsuit was a Vinted purchase and works well with the chunky necklace from the bottom of my jewellery box. My sunglasses are old, by Quay Australia.

The beach dress is pretty but also pretty much transparent which might limit the opportunities to wear it, but I did in fact wear it to work last week...

I've added an orange vest top along with my hand made pink and orange petticoat underneath using the transparency to allow the colours to show through. I love the look as it's flamboyant and a bit different to the simple beach cover-up. 

I've continued with orange as my accessory colour - nothing new here apart from my Emily Nixon birthday ring (18 carat gold with sapphires and diamond).

I finished off the look with my favourite this season sandals (from Vinted) to tie in with the pink and orange theme. I did actually wear an orange jeans jacket over the top when I popped out at lunchtime, but forgot to capture that version for you...

And one final flash of petticoat reveals the orange trim and pink netting. I'm delighted to find another reason to bring out my fabulous underskirt again.

Many thanks for joining us for this month's Style Not Age challenge. As ever, I do hope you've found some inspiration amongst our offerings!

                                                                            Anna x

Another linen dress and petticoat

Hello and welcome to a sunny evening on Appletree Bay, the perfect backdrop for my newly finished linen dress and petticoat. I've been labouring over this version for some time now and at last it's finished. One of my followers and fellow sewers, Pat, said a very wise thing to me when she was on Tresco recently, "It'll be beautiful when it's finished, and if it's not beautiful then it's not finished." Many tiny adjustments and tweaks later and I'm happy to say that it is indeed beautiful.

So, this is me on the way to the beach, the dress having its very first outing. I wanted to show you this before the rest, as after doing lots of sitting down and moving around on the beach the petticoat ended up hanging down much lower, but the fit ideally looks like this.

There's no point in have a frou-frou petticoat if you don't show it off, is there!

And this is the finished petticoat. I want to make one more version of this in orange to wear under a green dress that I've had for ages. Every time I make this I learn a little bit more, so hopefully the orange one will be equally successful.

Someone had made this big shell shape, a fish maybe, on the beach which was perfect for my photo shoot. I took my little tripod and used my timer to capture these shots. Appletree Bay is great for evening shots as it faces the setting sun.

This is my beach of choice for swimming at the moment. We have a predominantly east wind blowing meaning that Appletree is tucked in out of the wind. I swim the length of the bay and back most days. Sometimes I have the beach to myself (early mornings) and other times I have to weave around the small boats and dinghys that are anchored up along the shoreline.

 

When I bought this aqua linen fabric I imagined this setting for wearing a summer dress - the shade is exactly the colour of the sea when you swim across this bay on a sunny day.

I opted for neutral shades and various tones of turquoise to complement today's outfit. The stretch woven belt was from Primark last summer, sunglasses are by Radley London, rings are both old and preloved, the short cowrie necklace and long dancing girl pendant were both bought from Gallery Tresco. Natural coloured suede platform sandals were from TK Maxx many moons ago.

Reluctantly, it was time to go home. I'm so aware of how lucky I am to be able to wander off to the beach after work; a ten minute stroll and I'm on a golden stretch of sand, a haven all to myself to relax and unwind. Summer is here and life is good. See more about my beautiful island home of Tresco here.

                                                                                         Anna x

The orange linen dress at last!

At last, here's my homemade linen dress and petticoat! After many alterations the dress finally fits, but as you progress through the photos you'll see that the petticoat is a tad too long. This has come about due to the fact that I had to take almost 2 inches off the bodice, hence the length of the dress is shorter than when I took my measurements at the start of this venture. But this too can be altered and will be in due course.

In celebration of the showcase event I decided to add my floral headband - well of course you'd expect nothing less from me eh?

As I'd mentioned previously the neckline of the dress wasn't sitting properly so I took it off to my sewing teacher and she did a fitting on me which revealed that the length of the bodice was causing the problem. After much tweaking and resewing I finally made the adjustments and now it fits like a glove. Dress number two, in aqua linen, is now undergoing the same amendments and hopefully will be ready to wear soon.

I bought these pink suede sandals from Vinted to wear with the outfit - that was £5 well spent! They're very comfy and are a great colour match. 

The only problem with wearing a frothy petticoat is that I want to do lots of swishing it about!

I did a search online for an orange and pink necklace finding this one on the Zara website. I'm having a real thing about pink and orange together at the moment so this will be popping up on the blog often I'm sure! My rings are both old but perfect for today's look. The pink stretch belt is rather ancient too, but does the trick.

I'm so very pleased to have turned this little lot into this - 

Many thanks to those of you who have taken an interest in my first foray into the world of dressmaking. During lockdown I took it upon myself to make new covers for my sofa and chairs which seemed to be an impossible task, but I somehow achieved it. After a lapse of three years I'm back in the sewing groove, living and breathing old reruns of The Great British Sewing Bee and loving the new challenge of dressmaking. 

                                                                                        Anna x