The Wanda dress

That's me back from holiday in Scotland.  I had such a lovely time and it was great to be away for so long (10 days in total).  We fitted a lot in to those 10 days  - a lovely wedding in Fife; visits to both our families and some friends in Glasgow, Fife and East Kilbride; a lovely three night mini-break in Cullen in Moray; and finished off with another wedding in the beautiful surroundings of Mar Lodge in the Cairngorms National Park.  I have to admit though, that on the last few nights I was dreaming of getting started on some sewing.  However after a 5am start on Monday morning (a 1 hour 30 minute drive through the Cairngorms to Aberdeen airport) and a big meeting at work today I haven't felt up to doing much yet - tomorrow night though!

In my last post I mentioned a dress-fix I had to do before going away and the dress in question (pictured above) was a gorgeous cream/peachy dress I got in Snooper's Paradise in Brighton.  The reason I was immediately drawn to this dress was its resemblance to a dress worn by Barbara Loden in the film she directed and starred in Wanda (I wrote a post about going to see the restored film here). 

close-up showing the lovely flower design of the broderie anglaise with the peachy/yellow lining

There are lots of other reasons I love this dress - the shape, the fit, the colour and the fabric.  However the more I looked at it when I was fixing it the more I realised that it was the fact it was home-made by someone else that really made it stand out for me.  The neck was slightly too tight and I felt the length was a bit too short but it pleased me to think that whoever had made it had done so to fit them. I didn't do anything about the neckline but I did lower the hem as my mother-in-law helpfully noticed that it had been taken up quite a bit.  She thought this might mean someone else had bought/been given the dress and had made that adjustment so maybe I'm the third person to enjoy wearing this dress!  There were also a few gapes in the side seams which were the result of the stitches coming loose in the empty spaces of the broderie anglaise so I fixed these up with some hand-stitching.

Barbara Loden wearing the dress inspiration in Wanda left image: source right image: source