Stakes Day

Seppelt Stakes Day at Flemington Racecourse is a fun family day.  What this screams for us is matching family outfits!  Unfortunately, Mum and Dad were not able to join us like last year.  Luckily (or unluckily for her) Sophia was able to join us and helped design her own dress for the day. 

We purchased the navy and white gingham from Spotlight.  We wanted to ensure that there would be a contrast in the scale of the pattern to add some textural interest to the outfits.  

The great gingham scale debate of 2019 captured by James Christie

Sophia’s Outfit

Pattern: Bodice Simplicity 6408 and skirt Vogue 9349
Fabric: Navy and white gingham from Spotlight
Lexington Headpiece: Lauren J Ritchie

Bodice pattern Simplicity 6408
Skirt Vogue 9349

Lauren’s Outfit

Pattern: Flint Pants by Megan Nielsen with Drop Sleeve Top by The Avid Seamstress
Fabric: Navy and white gingham from Spotlight
Starlight Headband by: Lauren J Ritchie
Shoes: Wittner

Stitches and Sutures

Our dear friend Dr Kate, also known as Stitches and Sutures comes over for Sewing Sundays. The champion helped us with the sewing for this week. Taking on challenges such a large amounts of hand sewing, advanced Vogue Pants and welt zippers. Her dedication can be best demonstrated by her commitment to Lauren’s straight hems on her pants. Thank you Dr Kate!

Erin’s Outfit 

The Myer Millinery Award is a prestigious competition that is open to Milliners across the globe. A selection of 60 of the best applications are invited to present a piece on Kennedy Oaks Day. This year Lauren created this stunning red tulle piece titled Mayfair. Erin modelled the piece and wore the red tulle dress that was created for an event earlier in the year.


Design: Bodice pattern Vogue 9355 with circle skirt with quarter circle godet
Fabric: Navy and white gingham from Spotlight
Abby Bow Headpiece: Lauren J Ritchie
Shoes: Wittner

Bodice pattern Vogue 9355
Cheers to a wonderful cup week! We hope you enjoyed seeing our outfits and we look forward to near year’s racing season.

It was a wonderful week to create outfits for Stakes Day.  Check out our Melbourne Cup Day and Derby Day looks to see what else we made for the week. 

Derby Day 2019

The Melbourne Cup is here, get ready for a big week of hats and fashion!

Derby Day kicks off the week, with Melbourne putting on a very cold and wet day. Traditionally the dress code for the day is black and white with all race goers wear the mono chrome palette.

The Two Sewing Sisters both opted for fun, yet classic fabrics paired with matching millinery which stayed firmly within the Derby Day monchrome dress code. 

Lauren’s Outfit

Pattern: Project Runway Simplicity 1610
Fabric: purchased at Komolka while visiting Vienna, Austria 
Beret Hat: Lauren J Ritchie
Shoes: Wittner Shoes
Earrings: Tigalf

Erin’s Outfit 

This dress started with a moment of Erin say, “Loz, I’ve had a vision”. Which usually results in a great feat of sewing marvel and a hopefully incredible outcome. The vision this time was a patchwork dress in which we make hexagons that are then fused to fabric with vlisafix then stitched to the fabric then constructed into a dress. This process started over a year ago with a stack of black and white fabric.

Hexagon construction started but with a few days to go until Derby Day last year we realised it wasn’t going to be possible to finish the dress in time. So in came our black a white version of Vogue 1566, which you can read more about in our post here. This year with a little more planning the dress returned and with a lot of determination and hexagon sewing on trams we made it!

Pattern: Vogue 8494 (bodice) and Vogue 8849 (skirt)
Fabric: various fabrics from Darn Cheap Fabrics, Spotlight 
Brimmed Hat: Lauren J Ritchie
Shoes: Wittner Shoes
Gloves: Millinery Online
Earrings: Pigeonhole