Birthday Tea -- dress, drinks, and yums

For HRH K's birthday, riffing off a suggestion by her namesake Auntie Franne, we decided to have people over to tea at Alice's Tea Cup, a pretty, darling little series of tea shops in the city.
Likewise, it was decided that there must be tea dresses, with gloves. She drew it, including the gloves, and specified that there should be a v, and a collar that comes up the neck like Snow White's.
She selected the fabric from my stash, and away I went with the drafting. The overall shape is similar to the father-daughter dance dress, but a bit looser and with darts in concession to the woven vs knit fabric. The bodice is the basic shape of the Fairytale Dress from o+s but cut with a v-neck, and snaps instead of a zipper; the skirt is an easy-peasy 24" long circle skirt, gathered to fit the lower edge of the bodice -- thank God for 60-width fabric. The gloves took some doing, but basically a hand traced onto light jersey and edged with the same embroidered organza as the collar.

Tea noms included chicken fingers, scones (berry, pumpkin and s'more), finger sandwiches, lemon tartlet and cake, all on a tall stand, with two kinds of tea (and apple juice) to slip it all down with. And some of the unlikeliest fairy-dust wielders to ever.

Catch-up uniforms post!

Did I not post about this like a dozen times already? Just adding this for the sake of completeness:

Long-sleeved peter-pan collar blouses for wearing underneath the jumper in cold weather, variations on the old standby Burda pattern. Left is broadcloth with large clear buttons so she can do them herself, and right is a cotton knit (with floats on the underside, I have no idea where I got it or what it's called) with snaps. Not in this pic is another broadcloth one with pearlized shank buttons; the knit one is my favorite but I have no idea where to get more of this fabric.

This is the final iteration of school pants: in wool-like polyester, similar to the fabric of my uniforms long ago. Based on the Burda pattern still, but with fly shield, adjustable elastic waist, back welt pockets, knee reinforcements, hook fly, and belt loops. I think he has enough pants now! Just hope there's enough length in them so I don't have to make more next year. Already let the hem down on the first pair....

"Sunday best" graduation dress

I have had this McCalls M6312 pattern in my stash forever and ever, and planned out the fabric and bias tape from my stash as well. But it never got cut and sewn until now because I kept finding other patterns I wanted to do more... good thing this past few weeks have been a bit crazy so I didn't have much choice but to go with what I had instead of spending hours looking at new patterns and fabric.

My friend Margaret gave me this fabric more than a year ago. It was going to be a dress for me but nah.
As I was cutting it I knew it was going to be wide.... Also the instructions, or more specifically the order of assembly, seems kind of weird. But it came together and looks decent enough for a day when she needed a special occasion dress, and got a few compliments as well. I definitely have some bigger pattern alterations when I make this out of coordinates, though.

On a dime specialty cakes are the best, and worst.

A quickie mortar board cake put together in about 30 minutes... since, y'know, zero time and no notice. The chef of this restaurant comes to us needing cake for that night. Not the first time, but he got us on Page Six last time so it's okay.

He comes at 1 or so, shows me a blurry phone pic, needs it by 4. Sure, but I still have other cakes to finish and I'm leaving at 2:30 to go set up a wedding cake for my boss' brother.
Cake baking not included (Dude, you're paying for what we've already got to give you.), but carved, covered, iced and decorated in between other projects. Whoo!