Verity Hope's Wardrobe: Mary Beth Afternoon Tea Dress

This is an afternoon tea dress I made. I named it the

'MARY BETH AFTERNOON TEA DRESS'

It was inspired by the styles of the 1930s.

Here's what I did... I had some linen fabric lying around but had never really liked the colour of it, I love pink but there was something about this particular tone that just didn't inspire me so I took the plunge and dyed the whole remnant green!

I absolutely love colour dying it's so rewarding, trouble is once I start I can't stop and end up adding half my wardrobe into the dye bucket each time. But it is fun and I love to throw lots of different colours into the same bucket of dye and see how each shade transforms. Some work, some don't, but hey ho that's all part of the fun of the unknown!

For the pockets I used tea. I love the effect tea staining has, it brings such character to trimmings and embellishments and is so easy to do.

My sister had just returned from a trip to Sri Lanka and had brought mountains of loose tea back. Perfect! I couldn't resist, and of course it meant we had lots of cups of tea that week too. I left the fabric to soak in the jug for only a couple of minutes, it's such an easy and rewarding small pleasure. Easily pleased me!

The apron dress wraps around the back and does up with a button at the neck. You can see the button hole on the left and the button on the right is just for decoration to balance it out.

I decided to use satin bias binding for the edges to add a bit of glamour. The ties thread through slits at the sides and front and are made from a silky lining material.

For the pockets, I cut up an old embroidered linen napkin purchased from the charity sale I always go to. The colours of the flowers were the inspiration for the whole colour scheme and I still have the other half of napkin to make something else with.

The sleeves simply tie up which means the whole apron dress can open out almost flat for hanging.

I wanted to soften the neckline up a bit so decided to do a simple embroidery design embellished with flowers. It had the effect of widening the neckline.

I really enjoyed making this outfit. I used a lot of hand sewing as well as machine sewing (using my beloved hand-operated machine of course!) and it was worth the effort.