Summer dress 2022 ideas

This dress has it's moments, but I'm not making it again

It would be nicer in a knit

back 8813 tilton

front 8813 tilton

This Marci Tilton.8813

https://sewing.patternreview.com/Patterns/54078 The reviews consistently state: 
"does it look like the photo/drawing on the pattern envelope? No, but..." and they give four or five stars routinely. 

https://erniekdesigns.blogspot.com/2018/08/plant-flag-and-declare-victory-over.html

 I love the one dress I made from this, but it was a panic to assemble, I had to edit it pretty severely, and it took a lot of fabric. This plaid is a lightweight shirting plaid, from District Fabric  https://districtfabric.com/espresso-plaid-shirting/

Pao has made it a staple of her wardrobe, https://projectminima.blogspot.com/2018/05/wearing-that-french-housedress.html

but it needs..... a drapy fabric to really shine. Like a knit

The dress staple of my wardrobe has been the self proclaimed Cutie

Four pattern pieces, five if you count the neck facing, and the skirt is just whatever yardage you have leftover.

There are many more of them, most of them are twenty pounds ago. I'm wearing the Modern Sewing Woes model while I'm taking this photo

Check out the gapping in the front. The middle one popped a couple times 

Oh man. I am 63. I am not feeling cute. I have this pattern down, but something different is calling.

New ideas have issues, too.

This could work, but  it needs the bodice fabric to be cut on the bias to get the cut on sleeve to do that sweet drop, and a lot of novelty cotton doesn't read well on the bias (frankly a lot is based on a straight grid repeat, vs a half step down or to the right).

I'm also still team Shirt Dress, even though every one of them I have sewn in the last ten years has gone right into the thrift store bag.

So pretty much what I'm doing is mending and making some more short sleeve shirts

Between the Rue tshirt and my pop culture tshirt interests, I'm team ringer shirt lately

Which..... could be an idea.

But this was what I ended up making

"Which we will get to in a bit"

 

Yes, I made a corduroy dress. Fight me.

Pleased to say that I saw this 1991 pattern online, and remembered I HAD one in the stash already (from Value Village (stifles sniffles))

I even knew where it was.

The sleeveless version looks a lot like the Sewing Workshop Veranda dress

Or vestments

This is a table runner. You don't fool me one bit.

This is for vestments.

Okay, so this dress probably isn't built for corduroy. In fact, I know it's not. All of the suggested fabrics have the word "lightweight" before them.

But when have I ever let that sort of nagging detail stop me?

Should I?

Probably

I did not take a lot of process photos, as it blew by. It has few parts, drafted precisely and goes together quickly.
Remember when pattern pieces always went together?

Because the cut on sleeves and the style made everything too big (if you make this, read those finished measurements: there's about 11 inches of ease in the bustline between the size and the finished garment), I unpicked the seams (seams I had prematurely top stitched, as I tend to do) and took them in about 5/8", which makes it wide enough but not as ginormous as above.

My tum is getting all the glamour shots this week (similar exposure on Turner dress, another post shortly)

  

Unpick

Re-sew

Corduroy stands up mostly on its own (attaching the bodice to the skirt)

Snap rehearsal. I'm not crazy about any of them, but buttonholes in the corduroy Ophelias sorta broke my buttonhole will, so we are snap snap snappy (or pop pop poppers)

Yellow and greenblue....or greenblue and yellow? Decisions. This is its real color. I overdyed a camel corduroy to warm it up, and it's nice and caramel in person.

I pondered a bias trim in the seams. I mean, I was taking them apart....and I still have bits of the reversible polka dot shirting from District Fabrics. I can milk yardage until it cries, baby!

But I went rick rack. Which is brown, but refuses to color correct from purple (which is its brother color). Also vintage rick rack, preshrunk just in case.

It's a bit nicer in person

It is a wide load of a dress though; more like a jacket as shown on the envelope. The original has ties to take in the excess width (oh man, I still need to deal with the Ophelia flappy side ties). I honestly don't think it needs any more snaps for functional wear (although it may get some more purely for decor) as it is a pullover, not a step in.

It will need a little more revision before I wear it for photos.

And if it doesn't behave, it will turn into a jumper.

Or what others call a pinafore.

Just like Lyra. 

Stealing from Mrs Mole: bias sash for waistband

As ever, if you aren't reading Mrs Mole, at Fit for A Queen, you really aren't reading sewing blogs. She is inspirational to me. Many upsidethehead ideas have been sprung from reading her posts.

Like this one.

https://fitforaqueen.wordpress.com/2019/05/21/simple-sample/

photo Mrs Mole "Fit for a Queen" 

Isn't that a pretty thing? 

She added it to the dress; its the lining fabric with shiny bits.

(the epic story starts here: https://fitforaqueen.wordpress.com/2019/04/24/adding-and-adding/)

but I don't do bridal, you says.

Well...... 

Let's say you had a bodice where the print was matched across it, and a skirt where that print was never ever ever going to match up to the bodice, and that this was kinda hard to look at where the two parts meet up.

So let's add a bias sash "belt" to break that up / unite those parts.

You can even piece this sucker together out of the leftover bits from the build 

And you can put that motif object over the join.

A nicer transition, and I didn't have to find a belt that goes with it.

You could use a lot of techniques to gather that fabric - because you won't see the pattern, just the colors.

Or you had two fabrics that were complimentary but maybe not that complimentary to each other, and they met at the waist.

You could make a similar sash with pieces of both fabrics.

And we may see that sooner than we'd hoped....

(tbc as This is why I hate color blocking)

Summer Sundress, finale 2017

Sometimes, an idea just floats around and everyone takes a bite of it. I've done it. A few years ago, I made this sundress.

The Honeycomb Hideout Tardis Effect

this is the rough pattern piece layout plus photo. I was going to be short on yardage, so I traced off the top and cut it on the bias so I could fit it on what I had.. 

Mine does not overlap the pieces at the top like 'Given A Chance', but it does bear a 'classic housedress' resemblance that is more than passing to me.  I'm sure we're all pulling from some ur-dress that birthed them all.

I know there is a far far older version of this kind of dress, but I can't seem to find a pattern for it right now. I will come back to this and fix it when I find it.

 And it doesn't have the nifty neck feature from 'Cat's Cradle'

So as this summer's sundress finale, I decided I should kluge the three and create the "Given a Cat's Cradle's Chance it's Lucha Libre" dress.

Professor F's blog is entirely responsible for the purchase of this fabric, the Alexander Henry Lucha Libre print. It's a huge repeat with a lot of pop. And shirtless wrestlers.

They are large shirtless men on pockets.

Big prints are fun, but you lose any pattern details right away. So  I bought some vaguely color coordinating fabrics to pick them out a bit. 

Our key word is vaguely.

There's the split bodice, with tasteful appliques from the larger print, on a fat quarter of True Colors Lazy Stripe/Tula Pink and a half yard of Philip Jacobs Spiral Shells/Rowan, both from Pacific Fabrics.

I did not use ribbon for the fancy framing. I made quarterfold binding ongrain (cutting the facing on the bias) so I could continue the overly busy color combo.

I needed to unpick and resew the binding. Head grew unexpectedly.

The front applique and binding. 

and the back.

 I fused and cut out and fused again for the lettering, and then went around them with a medium density zig zag stitch.

It's....busy. This room needs cleaning.

My kitchen needs cleaning too.

No full size fashion shots. Family does not want to take photos of me in this dress,  something about 'too busy to be looked at with naked eye'

At the end of the summer, I just wanted to go out with a bang. Work wraps up this week, and then we go back to the girl choir hems.

Ya know, grey chiffon.

Also the Refashioners 2017 Suits You challenge. 

Pondering.

See ya sooner.