Author Archives: Kathleen Brewster

Coffee bag Couture

by . Posted on
14 Dec

The theme for Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 2019 was based around recycling. This dress was made from the foil lined bags coffee beans come in (Thanks Oaklands for collecting them for me)

I cut the flat parts of the bags apart and then cut them into small squares. I punched holes around each piece and then added crochet stitches in silver thread. Sewing the crochet together made the dress flexible. Where I needed to shape around the body I cut a custom piece to fill the space.

To go with the dress I made a cape of fringe. This was made from Mormors coffee bags as their supplier had a nice black outside and silver inside.

Op shop Wedding Dress

by . Posted on
21 Jun

For Breakfast at Tiffany’s I challenged myself to make a “Wedding dress” out of only what I could get at the local op shops. I had seen dresses made of doilies and found them to be mostly horrendous so I had set myself a difficult task.

I used a mix of tablecloths, doilies, White business shirts, lace trim from tissue box covers, bed linen and lace from the sewing supply section. These came from Op shops from Pambula to Bega and every town in between.

Scrap Hexagon dress

by . Posted on
13 Mar

Scraps of fabric take up a lot of space and I have never been sentimental enough to waste any of mine on a basket of scraps. I have however cut hexagons out of most of them and kept them for quilting.

For Breakfast at Tiffany’s this past year the theme was inspired by using recycled materials and I was inspired to see if could make them into a dress.

Hexagons like this always need to be sewn together by hand. Very time consuming but has the advantage of being portable so I can work on the couch.

I pieced the hexies together over my dress form set to the measurements of the model for the bodice. She came over for a fitting to refine the shape around the neck and arms. The skirt was one large rectangle draped into pleats at the front and joined at an angle at the back allowing the skirt to flare out more and create a little train.

Corset competition 2019

by . Posted on
03 Feb

I hadn’t really planned on the Foundations Revealed corset competition entering this year. I spent a little too much money and time last year… I didn’t think of it again until mid year when I came across a little sketch on a scrap of paper.

The idea was a corset made of crochet. It was only a seed of an idea, unlikely to be simple and less likely to work. It did seem like it could easily fit into the Architecture theme so perhaps I could give it a go and see how it ended up. The completion offered a nice excuse and I decided to challenge myself in that however it turned out I would submit it.

I have always worked in crochet and have a lot of history making complex shapes I understand a fair bit about its capabilities. The chain stitches are actually quite rigid but the double crochet stitch making the channels has a bit of stretch. If the stretchy part of the crochet was put under tension by the boning then the resulting corset should be able to give a good shape.

The pattern was one taken from an image in the Symington collection, 1890s ish. Drafted up to my measurements and then made into a toile of c