Chocolate Swirl Dress

It's 11:30 p.m. and it's still a balmy 85 degrees outside. Inside, it's about 95, at least in the rooms without AC. Which explains the name of the dress, somewhat.

I gave in today and turned the AC on in the workroom, which made at least 3 kitties even happier than I was. Who knew they could sleep that long - and get along so well - all for the sake of a few cooling breezes?

As you can see, I did manage to get the linen dress finished, and if the overall linen-y wrinkledness is any indication, it should look a treat when exposed to outdoor humidity! But that's what linen does, and I'll accept that. At least it doesn't have a waistband to get all baggy.

The final version of the dress ended up being slightly different than my original sketch - there are five panels on each side, not 3, because 3 just seemed to be too wide and I thought I'd end up feeling like a barrel. Five - 6 in the back, with an invisible zip in the center - seemed like a more reasonable width.

Despite getting good advice to line the bodice with cotton batiste, it turned out I didn't have any. Since the linen wasn't too heavy, I used it for the bodice lining. Admission: I also already had an extra bodice cut out, because I cut the first one without a seam allowance at the bottom. So when I realized I had no batiste, I took it as a sign to get rid of the evidence of my mistake.

The skirt lining is made from a poly blend voile I got from a PR member for cheaps. I wouldn't have used it if the dress was more snug, because I'm not sure how much it breathes, but since there's some air in the skirt, I decided it would be okay.

The hardest part was figuring out the eventual length of the dress, and the width of the hem band. I cut about 3" off the dress as it was last seen here, and cut a 4.5" wide band the length of the hem. I pressed 1/4" on one side, and used a 1/4" seam allowance when attaching it to the dress. I could have maybe gone a tiny bit wider, but I think a 2" band works well.

One of the things I like about the dress is the way the stripes are tapered. I started in the center and used straight lines, but I wasn't sure what to do about the outside edges, where the pattern pieces curved. I decided not to change the width of all the stripes to reflect the outer curve, which in the end gives the effect of me having more shape than I do.

Yay for optical illusions!

I got the June Burda yesterday, and I'm considering what to make next. There are, as I thought, a few pieces that interest me, but I think the next project up is another variation on my all time favorite knit dress, New Look 6429. I bought some inexpensive knits recently from an Ebay vendor and one of them is clamoring to be that dress. We'll see if it gets its way.

Progress

Not as much done as I would have hoped, but considering that when I came home from work today I had to spend an hour or so in the back yard clearing up the wreckage from this afternoon's storm (50+ mph winds, hail, way too much rain, all occurring in near 100 degree heat), and then there's this pesky thing called eating dinner, and then we decided to make raspberry sorbet, I didn't get into the workroom until after 9:00 p.m.

On the plus side, the AC is on in there, I didn't have to sew in my underwear, and I didn't stick to my dress as I worked on it.

Last night I put the strips together to form the skirt pieces. Tonight I sewed the bust darts, sewed the tops to the bottoms, inserted the invisible zipper after a long search to find where I'd put my new zipper stash, and then I spent a painful hour hopping in and out of my pinned-together dress.

Somehow - again - this dress has gone from shift-shaped to sheath-shaped. Interesting how in my quest for a specific shape, I always choose the same one, even when I don't intend to.

Tomorrow, the lining, and figuring out the width of the hem band.

Stay cool, everyone.

Inspiration

It comes from the strangest places sometimes.

A week or two ago, I stopped in Dress Barn, a store I generally don't frequent. I needed a necklace to go with something and I knew they'd have racks of useful costume stuff. (I'd already been to H&M, but you know you're having a bad day when even the beads look too young for you).

Surprisingly, not only did Dress Barn have what I wanted jewelry-wise, they had a crapload of really cute clothes.

I checked, and the quality still isn't there, but whoever is doing their designing these days is doing some really fun stuff. And it's the kind of clothes that I can visualize on most ages and sizes, with some variation, as opposed to the clothes for really skinny 20 year olds that they then grade up to size 20 and age 40.

Obviously, a lunchtime camera safari needs to take place soon, but one dress stuck in my head and I drew it out quickly on a post-it when I got back to the office. I even knew what pattern I wanted to use as the base.

The original dress is black and white, and it's a knit. My dress is going to be linen, and brown and ivory. Or milk and white chocolate, as I see it. The color change wasn't planned; when I went fabric shopping the other weekend with Andrea, tops on my list were black and white linen. But I didn't like Joann's linen, and Jomar didn't have white. The ivory caught my eye, but next to black, it looked dingy. Then I saw the brown - which, in my wardrobe, acts as my chief neutral anyway. Brown is my black.

A new idea was born. Who says a knockoff has to be exact - especially if it inspires something better than the original idea?

I decided to use Burdastyle's Fatina dress as the base. I've made the dress twice before, and it's a good basic shift that can be played with - obviously, from the photo. That's Lily, by the way, giving her feline seal of approval to my pattern dismantling. And above is a piece of Katie, curled around the post-it sketch.

They're such helpful girls.

I would have started this sooner, but the house ate my pattern. Really. One of my few bits of organization is that all my traced patterns (or the printed-and-cut variety) are folded up into big brown envelopes and stored in magazine organizers, by category: skirt, knit top, dress, etc.

Except Fatina wasn't in with the dresses, knit, woven or formal. I know I didn't lend it to anyone - I would have just sent them the PDF. So I had to wait out the weekend and print another one when I got to work Monday. This is what I get for not having a printer at home!

I pretty much know what I'm giong to do here. I cut the pattern apart at the "lengthen here" line, right under the bust dart. I did the same thing for one of my other versions, and that was good . I measured the width of the skirt and divided it into even sections, and sliced the pattern into thirds, front and back. (My bad paint sketch is backward - the center panel will be white, with brown on either side, so that in back I can run the invisible zip down the brown center panel - I have brown invisible zips but don't think I have a white one handy).

The only part I haven't decided on at this point is the width of the hem band. I think that will come later, after I've got the dress pieced together. I can always whack a chunk off the bottom and add the band then, when I know what width will look best on me.

Too late in the evening to do more now than put the pattern pieces away for safekeeping - sorry, Lily! - and get started tomorrow. Here's hoping I have some white lining fabric in the stash.

The house dress, updated

This weekend's project, once I got done wrestling with the cherry dress, was to try to knock off an old favorite. The original dress was from April Cornell, and I've had it for probably 15 years. Really.

I wore it to death when it was new, and then it sat in the closet for a few years, and now I'm back with it, but the wear it's getting these days is more around the house, across the street to the coffee shop in the morning, whenever I don't feel like putting on "real" clothes.

I realized last week that what it's turned into is more or less a house dress. Which made me flinch, because my aunts and my grandmom lived in house dresses and I think of them as shlumpy cotton dresses with cutesy buttons and too much rickrack, but serving basically the same purpose as my dress.

My new Liberty yardage has been sitting on the stash shelf, whispering that it wants to be used. When I decided to try to duplicate the April Cornell dress, I picked my least favorite of the 5 pieces. Which is not to say I don't like it, and I wouldn't have been mad as hell if I'd messed up, but of the 5 it's the one I would cry the least over.

I took the original dress, ironed it and put it on my work table. Then I used way too much tracing paper to trace the shapes of the pattern pieces. The bodice was actually pretty easy - other than the interesting seam shape, the upper bodice is plain. The skirt front is in 3 panels, and the pockets are basted to the side panels and then the pieces are attached. The original pockets were as long as the skirt and had much more gathering, but I was working with the limitations of my fabric and I'm pretty pleased with them.

For the back of the dress, I altered the original because (a) I didn't really want the buttons as I have never in 15 years unbuttoned the original; and (b) I didn't feel like making 12 buttonholes anyway and having to hunt for Liberty-worthy buttons. Besides, it's not the most comfortable dress to sit in or lean back, so I went for ease of duplicatino instead of complete accuracy.

The bodice back was cut on the fold. There's a dart at the waist. The skirt is 2 pieces, with 3 darts on each side to gather in some of the fullness. (Also because I cut the piece way wider than it should have been, but whatever).

The original dress had a neck facing and the armholes were just turned under and stitched. I always hated the facing because it crept, so instead I used the shape of the neckline to make a facing that was about 1" wide and used it as a binding instead. With my leftover fabric I made bias strips and bound the back neckline and the armholes.

All in all, I think it's a pretty good copy of the original. Most of the changes are changes I made deliberately - I wanted it shorter, I did actually want a little less fullness in the skirt, though I would have perferred the pockets to be more like the original

Mario's comment when he saw it (and this is coming from the movie junkie that he is) was that it looked like something Sally Field would have worn in Places in the Heart, which I think means I succeeded on the vintage house dress vibe. Anything else that may have been intended by that comment will be ignored, because I like it and I don't want to run him through the coverstitch.

Hope everyone had a fun and fabric-filled holiday weekend. Back to the real world tomorrow!

A knockoff project

I got this top at my local thrift store's last half-price sale. Generally I tend to shop there for fabric - clothes that I can take apart and turn into other things - but this little top caught my eye. I loved the fabric, and I thought the style would be nice for work.

It is, but it could use some improvement in that it's a smidge too short for me (for a short woman I tend to like my tops longer) and also the facing has a tendency to creep out the front opening, even when the ties are knotted at the throat. So that needs to be dealt with as well.

Structurally it's not that complicated. I'll use my TNT tshirt pattern - the back and sleeves won't need any alteration at all - and then add about 1 - 1 1/2" in length. Using the higher-necked version of the TNT, I can mark and cut the opening, and the collar/band is actually just one piece, folded and sewn, so how easy is that? I don't know yet if I'll fully line the front (since I have some new black stretch tricot lining that I'm itching to use) or just turn the fabric under and stitch it down without bothering with a facing since they never work well in knits. I've made enough BWOF to have been thoroughly disillusioned with knit facings.

Once I remake this top, I may cannibalize the original and make myself yet another Ottobre tank top. I really do love the fabric.