You are probably thinking horses or the Melbourne Cup (given the date) and you’d be correct! For those followers not from Australia, the Melbourne Cup is a horse race that “stops a nation” on the first Tuesday of November. Yes, we all stop working, dress up, put on silly hats (not me), eat lunch and generally make merry whilst we watch the race. I am having to fit it in around several meetings – and in fact I had a meeting that got moved because it clashed with the Cup – so we have our priorities right!

I made this dress/tunic/top a goodly while ago from a silk scarf (yes a scarf!) square bought at Potter’s – does that qualify as a refashion? I’m claiming it!   It’s huge and all I needed to do was to cut a hole for the neck and finish it off and stitch up the sides. It’s deliberately asymmetrical. I think that there’s a bit too much fabric, however, I’m not prepared to cut up the sides because then I’d have to hem it and it was sooo much easier to use the finished hems that were already there!   oops, just spotted that weed in the paving. I can see what my next job is!

Of course I decided to wear this when the weather was hot, but it’s cooled down again for the Cup, so I’ll probably freeze at work. It’s also not the sort of thing I would normally wear to work, so I bet I feel a bit weird all day.

Because of the diaphanous nature of the fabric, I have teamed it with a tube dress from Sab Five Five. I have three different tube dresses that all go with this dress so it’s easy to change the look depending on which shoes I wish to wear. The dresses live in little bags so they are all creased when they come out. These drop out pretty quickly,  and I promise that by the time I got to work all was well. Here is photographic evidence, taken when I got home.

I also look a tad untidy – I was in a hurry to get to work. In such a hurry in fact that I have this dress on inside out and in this shot I am holding the scarf label so that it doesn’t show!

The details

Fabric started life as a silk scarf from Potter’s

No pattern – stitched up the sides and cut a hole in the neck which I bound with silk bias binding. I need to acknowledge Tracey who helped me pin the sides and position the neckline.

Blue tube dress is from Sab Five Five

Shoes are xsa from Dimatina shoes, Subiaco

Necklace is green glass from the 1950s

The belt is reclaimed leather bought in an “eco” shop in Philadelphia.

[Later edit: I am now wondering why I didn’t replace all the photographs with wrinkle free ones, but I hate taking them after work, I always feel like such a wreck – my excuse anyway. That wrinkled dress does look terrible, I might sneak back and retake the whole lot!]