October brought me to towards the purple cotton that I had in my stash, lovely against the Autumn colours of red, yellow and brown. I love Autumn, when the leaves turn and the mornings get frosty and you can smell winter is coming.

I managed to make myself a dress that Prince would be quite partial to (if he was into wearing 60s day dresses) or at least a dress that I could dance about it while humming Raspberry Beret and whilst simultaneously channeling my inner Joan.

The pattern I picked was Simplicity 4679, I was feeling quite up the challenge of a new style of collar and the cross over button front looked interesting enough.

I feel for the first time since I started this blog that I can say I actually found this quite straight forward, an obvious sign that my sewing skills (or at least confidence in my own ability) has grown.

The collar wasn’t too tricky to figure out. The sleeves weren’t sewn in, rather they’re cut into the pattern, which is something I haven’t come across before.

The main problem was the choice of the buttons. I narrowed it down to four and they were all chosen from my Great Nana Wilde’s button box which I inherited along the way.

My Nana Wilde was an amazing lady, she lived to just before her 101st birthday in 2001. She wanted to be a seamstress and she was very good at sewing but being the first girl born in a family of 9 (and all the boys miners) she of course left School at 14 and ended up staying at home to help her Mam out with looking after the boys and the household so she never got to sew for a living.

So these are the buttons that I narrowed it down to.

In the end I went for the last ones shown, they do look a little scratched in this photo but I think it’s the light. They look rather lovely on the dress and the others didn’t really suit it when I pinned them on.

So here we go, my lovely purple day dress, Joanie eat your heart out! What do you think? Can’t wait to prance (like Prince) about the office in this little beauty!