Tag Archives: Lace top

Style Crush: Melissa McCarthy

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So I’m probably the last person in the world to start watching Gilmore Girls! But start watching it I have. And I love it (no spoilers please, I’m on season 3!). I’ve loved Melissa McCarthy since seeing Bridesmaids – unbelievably I’d not really seen her in much before that – and it’s fun seeing her earlier in her career. Like most other people, I think, I thought she stole the show in Bridesmaids and I’m glad to see her career has gone from strength to strength. I’ve just looked it up and she was nominated for an Oscar and a Bafta for Bridesmaids!

I also love Melissa McCarthy’s style. She can totally rock a leather dress. And I really want the leopard print shoes! (not sure about her hair here though….)

I reckon this outfit would be fairly easy to replicate and would be a great choice for holiday parties this year. Sequins are always a good choice for Christmas! There are loads of tunic tops and leggings patterns so you could totally use your go-tos to copy this.

I really, really love this outfit – the pleating on the skirt is great and it makes it a lovely shape. I’m digging cocoon-y shaped things at the moment. I love the simplicty of the blouse with the lux fabric. This could totally work for a work outfit, if you work in a fairly smart office.

I definitely think pink is her colour, so I love this photo.

This dress is quite simple, apart from the embellishment around the neck, but it looks great because it fits her so well. Again, I think this would be easy to replicate, maybe with the Colette Dahlia.

I like this dress too, expecially styled with bright blue shoes! It’s pretty much all about the fabric, this one.

I’m a huge fan of blue (as you’ll probably know if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, or know me in real life!) so I love this. She does seem to stick to fairly simple silhouettes and showcases great fabrics and embellishments, which is probably why I’m drawn to her style – I love a shift dress.

Having just said that, though, check out these sleeves! I think I may seriously have to copy this dress. I love the pleat on the skirt and the fabric – I’m loving pink at the moment. I think I could use one of the tutorials from Rosie Martin’s book to copy these sleeves, probably adding them to a dress pattern……though I don’t know which one! Any ideas?

Speaking of pink……I love, love, love this jumpsuit! I’m glad they are still kind of in fashion as I’ve been meaning to make one or two for aaaages so fingers crossed I’m not too late!

And speaking of jumpsuits. How amazeballs is this!? I love it all – the pleats, the leather and it has POCKETS!

I do love yellow – mostly mustard on me, but all shades on those that suit them. I think I chose this photo because of the combo of her happy face and the happy dress. I like the nude underlayer too.

I like the fabric and the style of this dress. I like the reddish-corally colour in the pattern and the cut of the dress looks great on her.

I really love this lace top – again it has excellent sleeves. I think this might be the same skirt from the outit higher up with the silver blouse. I’ve still got some of my navy lace left over after making my dress for a wedding, so maybe I’ll copy this top!?

I picked this photo because I love the colour blocking. I think it could be easily achieved with any shift dress pattern – I have the Colette Laurel and I think it could also work with Tilly’s Coco, and she even has a tutorial on her website on how to draft a contrast yoke.

She can also totally rock a gown on the red carpet – though I like that most of the outfits I found and liked are a bit more edgy and rock and roll. Also weirdly both gowns I picked out are the same very pale pink colour!

I like the textured fabric on this one particularly. And it’s pretty similar to the By Hand London Alix dress so I think I could rip it off!

One of the other reasons I love Melissa McCarthy is because she lanched her own fashion line. She is certainly not alone in doing this in Hollywood but she did it from a standpoint of body positivity and trying to make clothes for women of all shapes and sizes. I read a quote where she said some days she wants to dress really girly and other days like a rock star and she had stopped being able to dress how she wanted on the high street. So she launched a label called Seven7. (Side note, this is why sewing is awesome, you can make any clothes you want to wear :D)

I really love this spangley skirt.

She actually studied textiles at university and was going to go into fashion as a career….before having an amazingly successful acting career!

I particularly like the top Melissa is wearing in this photo. And I like the spotty sweatshirt-y top on the left.

I really like the fabric she used in this top. And how happy she looks 😀 I think I would look that happy if I had adorable dimples and a fashion line and a Hollywood film career!

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Fabric Inspiration – Lace

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So just before Christmas I was in my favourite fabric shop, Rolls and Rems at Holloway Road (are you sick of hearing about this shop yet!?) and I was looking for some fabric to give as a Christmas present. Obviously I had a look through their remnants bin, and was tempted by a couple of things which I ended up putting back – be impressed! But there was one thing I didn’t put back – a huge length of navy blue lace fabric. I decided a month or so ago that I wanted to start sewing with other kinds of fabric and lace was on my list (as well as velvet, sequins, and leather), so this felt like fate!

It’s quite a lovely shade of blue, as you can see here. I experimented with holding different colours underneath it to see what might work as a background in my eventual make. Weirdly it seems to really change colour depending on what other colour it’s paired with!

I thought it would look brighter on brighter colours, but it has the opposite effect. So I think out of these, cream is the best option. And I’m going to look for some navy fabric in the same colour as the lace as I definitely think I can get 2 garments out of it – there must be 3 metres. It was £15.99, so if I can make 2 things and use mostly stuff I’ve already got in my stash, then these will be rather thrifty makes!

But then the question is what to make? I decided to do some research on Pinterest, one of my favourite pastimes! I think the options, unsuprisingly, are a top, a skirt or a dress – or a combination of these.

First skirts. It seems to be popular to have the lining shorter than the lace part, which I think looks sort of sexy and demure at the same time.

I like the look with a fuller skirt, too.

And this one only has a little ‘overhang’ but it still adds something I think.

Lace Skirt 5 (image source)

The other main kind of lace skirt I could find was office-y pencil skirts, where the lining and lace are the same length. I like both of these, with the paler linings.

Now onto tops. I love this trio of white/ cream tops – I like how they use the scalloped edge of the lace as the hem on the top and sleeves.

Lace Top 4 (image source)

(from Anthropologie via pinterest)

I like this more casual use of lace, too, from So Zo’s blog,

Here’s another one that just uses just a bit of lace, but it looks more special than a basic t shirt.

This might be my very favourite top I found – from the front it looks quite plain, just with a scalloped edge. But from the back it’s got this lovely bit of lace peaking out from between 2 more scalloped edges. I may have to copy this one!

I think I’ll definitely make a dress, then it will be a case of deciding skirt or top. And what kind of dress! I’ve got a wedding to go to in May so I’m thinking of making something a bit more special that I would normally make to wear to that. I haven’t made any party-type dresses in ages!

I could make something kind of like this, using the lace over different parts of the dress. With white/ cream underneath it could look quite chic.

I like this with the flash of colour showing through from the lining – though as I mentioned above, I’d have to be careful about which colour I put underneath my lace.

This shift-type dress is really up my street, though if I made a version of it it wouldn’t look quite like this, as my lace doesn’t have such a large pattern.

I love this, but it might be too dramatic for a daytime day wedding!

This one might be too risque for a wedding – I think it’s kind of see-through in places, though it’s difficult to tell from seeing it on a mannequin.

Have you ever sewn with lace? Do you have any tips I should know before I embark on it?