Strike! The Spoolettes Hit the Lanes

You may have spotted in a few other posts around the internet that a rather special group has started here in London - the Spoolettes! (Read about it here, or look at the Facebook page here) No real agenda, other than having fun and finding reasons to get together and wear special outfits we've made. 

And for our first big night out, we hit Bloomsbury Lanes for bowling, pizza, burgers, karaoke, and fabulous home made outfits!

Here's some highlights:

Kathryn of Yes, I like that in her shirt from outer space!

Emmie, Janene, and Jo in more gorgeous creations

Katrhyn, Clare (who organised the whole shebang), and me

Sally, the best bowler of the night, and just look at that embroidery

Rehanon, bringing extra sass!

Fiona, looking extra cute!

Who's the best dressed person in this picture? The Spoolette, of course!

Alison's perfect bowling stance!

And as usual, I was having too much of a good time to actually take any photos of my own outfit. I decided to go for a bowling-style dress, based on this pattern:

I used some red cotton drill from Dalston Mill, combined with some scraps of black poly and a few adjustments to the pattern to make this:

The main change I made was to the back, where I added a yoke and some pleat inserts, as well as some little tabs and gathers to pull in the waist a bit:

As well as this, I added black flaps to the pockets:

The most time consuming part was the back embroidery:

I drew the logo freehand onto my trusty roll of baking parchment (it took many attempts to get just right), then pinned that to the back of dress and embroidered through it:

Not being an expert on embroidery, I just made it up as I went along, I think the stitch I used is called a split stitch. Whatever it is, it worked! Here's some details:

That's meant to be a bobbin...

... and that's a needle

I also put my name on the front:

I'll leave you with a photo of Clare's vegetarian burger and her alcoholic shake, which was a delicious revelation:

See you soon!