The green dress in all its glory (?!) and more polyester

Hello everyone, hope you are all having a great weekend.  Another glorious day in Dunedin today, so I made the most of the warm sun and the light breeze and did a stack of washing.  Polyester dries in a matter of minutes under the right circumstances so now a new dress and shirt are both ready to wear.   Last weekend me and my family went on a road tip to Balclutha which is a small rural town about an hour and a half drive south of Dunedin.  We went on a secret mission that I can't tell you about just yet. Here I am at the park by the river wearing the green Trademe dress which I practically re-made.  It was a bit too breezy to wear by itself so I teamed it up with a tee shirt which I got in the $1 a supermarket bag of clothes I bought from the Presbyterian Yellow Shop a while back.

Green Cotton dress ~ Trademe
Green cotton tee shirt ~ Presbyterian Yellow Shop, St Andrew St less than 50 cents
Brown fake suede boots ~ St Vincent de Paul, George St $8
Awesome "cow bag" ~ Hospice Butterflies shop, Hanover St $10
Green and white zigzag bangles ~ Trademe $2 each
White beads used to below to my mother

Readers, I feel really, really stupid.  I have been cursing the internet in the most hideous and unnecessary fashion.  I have been blaming the internet for the painfully long time it takes me to upload photos to my blog.  I have made a big mistake.

While trying to upload photos of bikes and rollerblades to Trademe I have made a life changing discovery.  I think I have discovered the source of my problems with uploading my photos - its the resolution.  Oh my goodness I have had a revelation.  I am so silly.  I have been cursing the internet when in fact it was my own fault.  After changing the resolution of the images, I uploaded these two photos below in a matter of seconds!!!!!!

House of Raymond jacket/shirt from Gypsy Fair $2

This is the utterly divine House of Raymond top/jacket which I bought from the gypsy fair for $2.  It is a terrible shame it does not fit me as I would definitely wear it.  The shaping is fantastic and I love the  long sleeves with the big cuffs.  The contrasting colour at the bottom part is just gorgeous and the buttons are square.  I have listed it on Trademe and hope that someone falls in love who is a size 12.

Below is one of the "free" dresses I found at the Charity Barn in Kaikorai Valley.  I have sold the other one for a nominal amount of money which I will reinvest in other charities!  This one did not sell and I am thinking that I could just move all the buttons and give myself a little more breathing space....and then not move my arms or breath when I am wearing it.

One of the ongoing problems I have with clothes is that I do have wide shoulders and I have a tendency to think about how a garment will fit around the bust or waist without fulling appreciating that it is the shoulder area which is trickiest.  This however was not a problem when I bought the two maxi dresses from Toffs a few weeks back.  Firstly the dresses had zips, secondly more shaping through torso, but thirdly and most importantly, in the case of the red maxi the fabric was slightly stretchy and therefore more forgiving.

"Free" polyester dress from Charity Barn

I have to say that overall I have more successes that failures with not trying on clothes.  I think I love polyester so much because of the slight stretch to it, doesn't fade, wears well and washes easily.

So, do you have a favourite fabric?  Do you swoon at velvet, or crave the touch of silk?  Do you covet vintage cottons?