Love Fridays ... and inner booty

It's that time of the week again .... time to Love Fridays. Today I Love Friday because I'm wearing a new dress, and it's totally unlike anything else that I own. I'm absolutely hooked on it. It's a Fashionable Friday post. Brace yourselves.

It. Is Tulip. Shaped.

Yes, you heard correctly. A tulip dress! The kind of dress that accentuates your booty! The kind of booty that I always try to cleverly disguise!

(I am giving you time to pause here, and recover your composure before reading on.)

AND, not only is this dress tulip-shaped, as if that weren't bad enough, the skirt is then actually also deliberately pulled in where it ends at the knee, by a wide cream stretchy jersey band. Which accentuates the already tulip-y tulip shape. Like the hobble skirts of olden days.

I NEVER wear tulip skirts or dresses. Or bubble skirts. Or puff skirts. Or tight jeans (or any jeans at all, for that matter). Or anything else that might draw attention to any part of my body that happens to exist below my waistline. Most of my clothes have straight lines: lines that SKIM the booty but do not enhance - let alone draw attention to - the booty. Minimise, more like.

I bought this dress from Ink as a sample. It's made from burnt orange jersey, with three-quarter sleeves and a close-fitting bodice that's edged in the same cream jersey as the hobble-band.

And there's a cream jersey sash that ties at the back, and the bow rests just at the small of my back, so the ends hang down and dangle tantalisingly around the booty area, which draws even more attention - if it were possible - to that vast tract of land.

I don't quite know what possessed me to buy it. I do love the colour, but normally I would recoil from something as overtly ... not sexy, per se, because it's got a high neckline and therefore satisfies the prim instinct that usually dominates my style; but this is something different. It's overtly ... curvy, is the best description.

So here I am, at work, in a bright orange clingy jersey booty dress.

It's my birthday tomorrow, see, and I am turning one of those ages that make you stop and think about life.

And you know what I think I decided when I saw this dress? I decided that it's time for a change. Time to highlight everything I usually try to hide. Time to own the flair and the flaws that make me who I quintessentially am. To recognise the booty inside of me ... the inner booty.

So I'm here to announce: I have booty, world! And if Beyonce can be proud of her ass-ets, then so can I!

And just to complete the picture, I have matched it with steel grey opaque tights, and terrifically polished grey patent leather t-bar wedges. I figure, if I'm going to draw attention with this outfit, I might as well totally rock it.

Ode to Friday

I love my Fridays, warm and sweet
I love them when I'm in the street
I love them when I'm snug at home
I love them when I'm out to roam


I burst with joy at Friday's dawn
Its rays of sun upon the lawn
Make me shout and sing with glee
Goodbye work-week, soon I'm free!

Just one more day strapped in my seat
And then there will be something neat
The stale and rancid office air
Will be left behind, and I don't care

Fridays make me happy, see
Coz at the end I will be free
To prance and sing and celebrate
So hurry Friday, don't be late!

Love Fridays .... and stripy cushions

As I slowly floated towards consciousness this morning, I think my first fully formed thought was: thank god it's Friday.

I love Fridays - who doesn't? - and so today I'm playing Love Fridays courtesy of Tinniegirl, as well as Hooked On, from Julia in the US. And these cushions fit in with both memes very well.

Why, you might ask?

Well, it's been a long and stressful week at work, with a new boss to adjust to, and no end of associated discoveries and revelations, each one bigger and more astonishing than the last. I'm mulling some of them over, thinking about how they affect me, but I've not made any decisions yet or really considered their impact.

But they've upended the usual sense of peace and calm I like to create around me and operate in. The sands are shifting under my feet.

I take such a sense of pleasure from symmetry in my life, you see. These two cushions here, for example. I've named them Tea In The Afternoon, and they're made from deliciously touchable coffee-coloured velvet, overlaid with individually sewn ribbons in grosgrain, braid, and satin. As you can see, the shades are all milky and chocolatey and coffee-ey. Mmm, yum. And the colour combination is soothing on its own.

Each cushion is trimmed with a different set of ribbons, but the pattern of ribbons on each cushion is symmetrical, fanning out from a single central wide black grosgrain strip. Arranging each design and sewing the ribbons on really gives me a feeling of happiness, because I can see everything in its spot, where it should be. It makes me feel calm, and serene. Like everything' organised, and perfectly placed.

I try to bring a sense of that calm into my general life as well. I have a (reasonably) neat desk at work, though it's piled high with crafty business cards and receipts and materials in amongst the papers and folders and documents. Yes it's true, I even have fabric at my Proper Work. Tragic, I know.

And at home I'd be as neat as a freakishly neat and slightly neurotic pin, if only I could convince My One True Love that he should join me in the quest for order. He is more of the "relaxed" living style, you could say. But me, even when I'm in a hotel for a single night, I unpack and lay things out neatly and hang things up and put everything into lovely, pleasing straight lines.

Life at work isn't straight at the moment. It's full of twisty-turny bends, and dead ends, and blind corners, and metaphorical assassins lurking behind doors, and it feels slightly unbalanced.

So when I get home in the evenings I'm enjoying creating straight lines and perfect symmetry, even if it's just in the tiny space contained by a cushion.

Falling into Love at Home

Love Fridays …. Who doesn’t love Fridays? I mean, really? There are SO many things to love about a Friday.

First and foremost of course, is that it's the last day of the working week. So there's no work after today. In fact, there's *two* days of no work. Which ordinarily would mean two more days of sewing, except tomorrow I have the Northcote Market out the front of the Uniting Church on High Street. Which means lots of chatting to people instead. And hopefully some sales! (if it’s not spitting with rain like it is today, and there are people wandering along the street and feeling inclined to browse).

Today I’m hooked on Love and Home, my two new cushions. I think they’re beautiful – I made them up out of Warwick upholstery fabrics and used patterned cotton prints for the lettering. They're going onto the market stall tomorrow - let's see if other people Love them as well ....

Love has the vibrant colours that make me feel like I’m bursting with life. There’s Alexander Henry and Tina Givens and Heather Bailey cottons in there, plus one random print I picked up somewhere, it's a vintage 50s polished cotton. It's cheerful and happy and optimistic and glowing with warmth. It makes me want to hug it!

Home though has Liberty print cottons. Aren’t Liberty prints gorgeous? They make me feel more refined than I really am. Like I should be drinking an elegant cup of tea and lemon with a perfectly arched pinky finger, and living in a perfect home and being much less loud and obnoxious than usual am, not to mention much more polite and patient. They’re such English prints - my half-Englishness (courtesy of my mother) really rises in my throat when I’m around them.

Each cushion has got a feathery-downy insert, which I much prefer to the polyfil ones that go squashed and flat after a while. There’s something very depressing about a sad old cushion with all the life squashed out of it. Feather ones though, they stay plump and fat and purposeful – all the better to fall gratefully onto at the end of a long day.

I think I’m going to continue this series with Smile, and Laugh, and Joy and Relax. Any other suggestions are welcome!