Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Inspiration from a little white lace dress


As the mum in this household, the task of grocery shopping falls to me (most weeks). Mark does it when I'm feeling lazy, or sick, or I'm busy with more exciting things like sewing bears :)

Last week it was just me, shopping on my lonesome. Doing the modern hunter-gatherer thing, when all of a sudden I stumbled across a display of girls 'party dresses'. This caught my eye because Chelsea's 4th birthday is coming up next month, and we're in the process of negotiating what she wants for her party. I thought she might appreciate a new party dress too.

Rummaging through the available sizes I found a size 4 in the gorgeous off-white lace, and also a size 0 (baby-size). I immediately had visions of a gorgeous, vintage looking bear in a short-pile mohair wearing the dress.





I got home (put away the groceries) and choose a piece of mohair to make the bear out of (I decided 'Red Brick' looked best). The dress was still too white though, so I pulled the very outer skins from some brown onions and threw a few tea bags into a pot of hot water, let it steep for a while, then soaked the dress.

It literally only took about 10min for the colour to stain the dress. A quick rinse and half-a-day on the clothes line, and the dress was ready for the bear...



... meet 'Florence' (named by some very creative facebook likers!). She comes complete with her 'aged' new lace dress, a stunning white flower headband, and a string of white beads. She's also a BIG girl, standing at 23" tall - and nearly 2kg in weight.




Florence is currently available for adoption.




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