A Little Black Dress to Celebrate!

Hello my lovelies! Welcome to my blog and yes it is finally here. I’ve been wanting to do this for what feels like forever but sometimes fear gets in the way. Even in the days leading up to launching, I decided maybe the design of this blog was too simple, maybe I should write more posts, basically anything to put it off. Honestly there will never be the perfect time but right now. A friend recently told me that: “the perfect time to start is right now! You do not have to have all the equipment necessary right now, but you can slowly build towards that.” So this is my humble blog and I welcome you to share in the love of all things sewing, DIY fashion and see a little bit about life in Joburg.

“And suddenly you know… It’s time to start something new and trust in the magic of new beginnings.”
Anon

My Celebration Dress

So let’s start with the fabric, I got this beautiful black and floral cotton fabric from Chamdor Edenvale. When I was new to sewing I didn’t want to buy expensive fabric in case I made an irreparable mistake, I would always shop at Chamdor’s Odd Bins section where all the fabric is R29.99 per meter, and I wouldn’t have too much stress if things went wrong as the fabric would have cost me less than R100. Even now with a little more experience and confidence in my sewing, I still pop in to check what new fabric they have as you can find a lot of great quality fabrics, just make sure you buy enough because once it’s gone, it’s gone!

The inspiration for this dress was from an H&M dress and I loved the sleeve detail in the dress, though I couldn’t successfully recreate the puff lower sleeve as I only doubled my arm circumference measurements instead of tripling them. I also created some waist ties at the back of the dress in case I wanted to cinch in the waist and of course it has pockets. It’s the little details that can make you fall in love with a dress. I shared the inside of this dress on IG an I got a lot of questions about how I sewed the facing and I did a little video in my stories and saved it in my story highlights, if you would like to know more. I wore this dress at lunch with some some of my girlfriends and they all said they thought I bought this dress, which you know as home sewists is a great compliment 🙂

I am so blessed to have friends and family who have believe in me and encourage me to work on my dreams not only in words but in their actions too. My bestie Kisayne got me a photo shoot for my birthday last year, so all these beautiful photos were taken by the beautiful Lika (@Lik.a.girl.photography) and she did an amazing job and made me feel so comfortable. I wish all my pictures looked this good. Thank you for popping over to my blog, I have so much exciting content coming up and I can’t wait to share. If you wondering why I started a blog, it’s all under Meet Tino.