Spotlight Clothes For Celebrating St Patrick's Day and Any Day

 Spotlight was always one of my favourite stores in Singapore. So I was delighted to see a huge Spotlight sign in Auckland, the North Island of New Zealand. It's a store which has everything for the house and sewing, drawing and DIY crafts

Once inside, I could see it was too big for a trawl along every aisle. Since I was on holiday, not living there, I had no need of cutlery, crockery or cushions. Although my New Zealand friend and host was looking for curtain tie backs.

So she went one way and I went another. 

My purchases included

1 Seasonal St Patrick's Day Socks 

The socks were one size. A great green.

2 A Seasonal St  Patrick's Day Shamrock Tie 

I can use that for meetings on Zoom with a St Patrick's Day theme in March.  Not just on March 17th. Earlier for what are you planning for St Patrick's day. On the Day of course. Then, to answer, what did you do on st Patrick's Day. I wore my green St Patrick's day socks.

I looked to see where they were made. Not in Ireland. So not likely to be cheaper back in Britain. 

In any case, with seasonal items, almost every shop has different stocks. So you have to buy what you want when you want it or it'll be gone with something different next year.

From China? Well, who'd have guessed? I didn't. Silly me.

Spotlight

Spotlaight is a family owned Australian business with stores throught Australia, and in New Zealand and Asia. You will recognize their diverse coloured elongated S below the word spotlight in capitall letters in red which has a filled in letter O like a spotlight. 

They also have online videos about craft products to make and techniques, to instruct adults and entertain children.

Useful Website

https://www.spotlightstores.com/

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Caftans in Covid-19 For travel or stay home

Advantages Of Loose Dresses
Loose dresses are great for warm weather. They expand to fit if you expand. After a meal. After a month of eating. When you are alone at home or in a hotel and nobody sees you.

Large Size Or Loose Dress
When I first came to Singapore, I could not find dresses large enough. All the Chinese owned shops were for local teens and had clothes in English size 8 which was US size 6. I later found that Mohammed Mustapha's giant 24 hour store on the edge of Little India (also in India) had large dresses.

Meanwhile, I had bought a lot of caftans from small market shops as well as big department stores. Why bother to make my own dress?

Why make a dress. Because I was tired of endless shopping. But I still needed clothes. How long can you go on shopping, filling the wardrobe, wasting your day, meeting strangers, shop assistants, when you could be making ongoing friends in a sewing circle? I joined an expat ladies from Australia sewing circle. I joined all Singapore's expat associations, the English speaking ones, Australian, American, Canadian, British and Scottish and South African. I had bridge clubs at the American Club, and magazines from all of them full of activities including the Australian sewing circle..

Sewing Circle
At the sewing circle, the other ladies were not making dresses. They were sewing quilts and dolls and teddy bears and cushions, mainly for a charity event for another organization I was not part of for an event when I would be back in the UK. However, you could bring along whatever you were currently sewing to the sewing circle. And get advice. They all had sewing skills. the leader of the group was a sewing teacher.

What impelled me to try making a dress?
1 Large branches of Spotlight sold tempting areas of bales of cloth of all kinds. I kept buying cloth.
2 I also had a new Brother sewing machine.
3 I kept buying cut-price dress patterns.

Advantages of Caftans
A caftan looked so simple. Two straight seams up the long sides. A symmetrical v-neck. What could be simpler?

If you want to make a caftan, copy one you have, buy a cheap one to copy, buy an expensive one to copy, or find a pattern to copy, or make a pattern based on any dress or night dress you already have.

Useful Websites

About the author
Angela Lansbury is a travel writer and photographer.

How to make a Quick caftan dress with a DIY Newspaper pattern

My DIY dress made from a scarf. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Here's a story of two dresses, the blue caftan with the V shape neck I made years ago, and the even easier red slit-side shift dress above from a scarf which is nearly no cut and nearly no sew.
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I made my first dress years ago when I was a member of an Australian Women's expat sewing circle in Singapore.


Copying a Caftan - With A Paper Pattern - and The Help Of A Sewing Teacher
I took a paper pattern along to the class. I needed help. Each piece had a series of parallel lines for different sizes of dress. Which size should I cut?

The girls gathered around full of advice. What size was I? Er - um. Maybe 3X. When I was a teenager I was British size 8 or 10. Then I went up to 12. I was probably now 14.

Really? big bust. Big bottom. Better check. 'Your body expands in the heat,' the sewing teacher told me, diplomatically.

We made space on the floor for the pattern. Whilst the others, including two sewing teachers, tried to tell each other what to do, I retreated.

Malay Dressmaking
One girl, a Malay, was sitting. alongside, watching with disdainful horror, pursing her lips and shaking her head.

I asked her, "Do you know how to use a sewing pattern?"

She shook her head. "No need. Waste of time and money. It's a western thing. In school we were taught how to make clothes without patterns. Take off your dress."

I obeyed. I took off my dress. A good thing I had taken the precaution of wearing a slip underneath!

She shouted to the hostess, "Hey - Sue - do you have some newspaper? And scissors"

Sue was busy. The scissors were guarded like gold bars.

I pulled out of my tote bag a free newspaper I had already read..

Paper Pattern Problems
How big was the seam allowance? So many pieces, looked like more than would fit onto my dress length - how should I arrange them, big piees around the edge, in the middle, from the top down. Some of the pieces were mirror image, you Had one piece for the upper sleeve and had to cut and then remember to reverse it. And if you had a repeating pattern on the cloth, you needed to decide where to join the seams so they matched, how to have a big orchid in the middle, not lopsided.

Before using the paper patterns, I thought I would start with caftan as practice. Less cutting out. Just fold it over helf way. Run up two seams.

I used a cheap cotton. Not much lost if the experiment went wrong.

The first challenge was how far in to place the vertical sewing lines. That depends on your girth. If you already have a cheap caftan to use as a pattern, that helps. If not, take any dress which fits loosely.

Failing all else, use a tape measure to measure yourself. No tape measure? Use a piece of string, or the edge of a towel.

No pins? Scared of pricking yourself? Use paper clips. Use hair clips. Use bulldog clips from your office or study. Use washing line clips, wooden or plastic clothes pins. (UK clothes pegs.)

My Malay Newspaper Pattern
My new friend drew around my caftan with a pen. She folded the newspaper along the edge of a table, pressed the creases, and carefully tore the newspaper along the lines. Hey presto, a sewing pattern. You have to use the fabric inside out in case the newspaper makes black print on a pale fabric.

The first set of girls had cut out two large oblongs for my caftan, with a v neck. The dress was too long. The piece cut from the hem could be a belt or scarf to match. The piece of fabric cut out to make the v neck could be used as a pocket in the side seam, a patch pocket on the front, or twisted in a spiral to make a mock flower.

My Recent DIY Dress From A Scarf
I made a dress by folding a long piece to make an oblong shift dress shape. I cut down the top of the long side to make an armhole.

For the shoulders, I seamed from the two short side corners, from the top left and top right outsides of the short top section. I left a space in the middle large enough to go over my head.

 Yes, it must allow your whole head, not just your neck, unless you cut out a v shape notch at the front and edge it with fancy ribbon, or make a short seam at the centre back to fasten with ribbons, a hook an eye, or press stud or zip.

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
I and my family have lived in the UK, Spain, the USA and Singapore. I am a travel writer and photographer and teacher of English A level and English as a foreign language.

Please come to a Toastmasters International Club where the English clubs have a language evaluator or grammarian.  We also have French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Tamil and other language clubs based in Singapore and many more online around the world which because of Covid-19 are now meeting online.

I am President of Braddell Heights Advanced, meeting every Wednesday, on zoom the first Wednesday of the month but the other Wednesdays are workshops on app learncool.sg
Or quicker to type and easier to remember:  tinyurl.com/BHACOOL

useful Websites
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogs
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-to-say-thank-you-in-several.html
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/05/introducing-yourself-in-english-spanish.html
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8384769/Major-breakthrough-hunt-Madeleine-McCann-police-identify-German-suspect.html
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_de_patrim%C3%B3nio_edificado_no_distrito_de_Faro
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