Nearly an Easter look: this year's first florals

I wore this look yesterday but as that was nearly Easter I will call it an Easter look.
I decided it was time for the first florals of this year. I am very fond of floral print dresses and own quite a few of them.

The dress I wore yesterday was in a poor state when I got it. It had some tears an holes but I fell in love with the print so much I spend a lot of time fixing it up.
In many cases I prefer to put a piece of fabric underneath a damaged area and attach it with only a few stitches instead of extensive darning. With this dress however I chose darning because the fabric is so thin and the pattern made it easy to darn almost invisible.

My tip with darning: do not pull to hard (that is often how they teach you to darn socks, it does not look nice on normal fabric, and might make it tear again more easily afterwards).

I used different colors of embroidery yarn that matched the colors of the print. When worn the dammage is not noticeable.

Easter calls for a new(ly made up) hat. I bought this mais colored hat from a man who told me it had belonged to his mother. It is made of rayon crêpe (the kind used for dresses) that is stitched together with a more stiff material.

It was very much deformed so it took some work to bring back the original shape (with help of a damp piece of cloth and an iron).

This is what the hat looks like the hat without flowers (and tried on with another floral dress). Below are some vintage pictures with similar hats:

The last picture inspired me: I recently bought some velvet flowers and put some on the hat to make it more festive. They can be removed easily to give the hat a more casual look.

Another prominent feature of my outfit is a 'new' pair of vintage glasses I recently had reglazed.

I spend the day with my friend Myrtle who actually rocked a brown 1940's dress she borrowed from me. So great to have friends you can swap clothes with!

 She had also polished my nails in a wonderful  (historically accurate) shape.

After a morning of outfit planning and dressing up we hit the town (being Amsterdam).
As the weather was still quite cold I wore a winter coat.

 The nice thing about this coat is that it has a belted waist at the front but a loose back.

 

 

And does Amsterdam not look pretty?