I decided to make one more plain colour blocked garment, something I’ve been wanting to make for a long time. I chose the Nina Lee London Southbank sweater as I’ve had the pattern for at least two years and I thought the simple lines would make it easy.

There are three versions, the longest version is a dress with pockets and hem band. Then there is a hip length version and a cropped version. At some point I shall make them all!

I chose the long version but skipped the in seam pockets as I don’t really like them and they would add bulk. I was a bit anxious about the slightly dropped shoulder line and it does give me a wrinkle if I don’t do some tugging.

I had found the perfect fabric in my scraps stash – black which is left over from Mark’s Fibremood Sean jacket (fabric bought at the Dongara op shop), and which I’ve never blogged, so can’t link to it, and orange, left over from my tracksuit and a Fox suit for my grandson. This fabric came from the St Luke’s op shop and I have mere shreds left!

I had quite a lot of black and very little orange. My first instinct was to stripe the dress, with wider black stripes, but then I thought I might look like a bumble bee, and besides, the last colour blocked top I made had stripes. So I cut squares and joined them together, mostly quite well.

I cut out the front and back and then thought about sleeves, which I knew would be problematic. I finished up piecing the last of the big pieces of orange for both sleeves. They finished up looking like this. I don’t even notice it now.

All that remained was to wear it! I did wonder if I looked like a flag – an avalanche flag? (no, that’s yellow and black) or an F1 flag, but I don’t think it’s checkered. Anyway, I feel vaguely flag like.

I’m pretty pleased with it. I’m wearing a black jumper underneath as it’s cold, but it still fits quite well. The dropped shoulders cause a bit of bunching under the arms but I can just about live with it.

I didn’t have heavy enough black rib for the bands so I used black ponte. It worked really well. I must remember this for future makes.

When I posted my last colour blocked top for the Instagram Sew Over 50 challenge, Sandy, one of the hosts, sent me a DM to tell me that I was a good egg. How could I resist this Kyle and the Machine label for this make?!

The black ponte tones in much better in real life. And I can’t sew a label on straight to save my life!

Here is a flatlay to show where the label is, but also to show my invisible pocket. I did want a pocket but didn’t want to break up the checks so this seemed a good solution. As always I used Liz Haywoods excellent book “The Dressmaker’s Companion” for the instructions on the pocket.

And how it looks when worn.

I wore the dress to Miss G’s first birthday party, but it was cold so I wore a wool cardigan over it. This is the cardigan where I covered up the moth damage with a bee badge. Seems appropriate somehow!

A shown seated photo; although the dress is quite tight it doesn’t really ride up too much, it’s very comfortable to sit in.

And finally a photo of Miss G enjoying her very first birthday. Where has the year gone? How good are her silver shoes?