french navy forsythe dress x2 and some tights

hello! I’ve made a couple of new dresses lately… followers of my ootd blog may have seen these pop up over there already. Remember back in January I made up the free Orla dress pattern designed by Sarah May of French Navy? well Sarah very kindly invited me to be a part of her tester group for her new dress pattern, the Forsythe dress. That little Orla has been an excellent wardrobe mainstay… my little counter tells me I’ve worn it ten times already since I made it in January, which is pretty good for me! so I happily accepted.

The Forsythe is a relaxed fit dress with short, cuffed kimono sleeves, a slightly dropped waistline and a gathered skirt with hip yoke pockets, and a back button closure. However, I have found that that button-back closure is pretty much decorative… the wide neckline and relaxed fit is sufficient enough that I can pull the dress easily over my head without having to undo any buttons. Win!

I’ve actually made two Forsythes… the floral at top is my second and “real” version of the pattern, and that is me dressed to wear it out out to our recent anniversary dinner, at Cape Lodge in Yallingup. We’ve been married 29 years! and little chic little floral rayon number paired with black tights, black booties and my chocolate leather jacket was the perfect thing for a special and romantic dinner out.

But maybe I should talk about this one, my first “muslin” version first… I made this one using three pairs of my husband’s old dress trousers, respectively a charcoal wool, charcoal and white cotton/linen pinstripe, and a chocolate/blue cotton pinstripe… these have been in my refashioning bag so long there was actually an old spider’s nest on one of them! eeeek! I gave them all a quick brush over the garden and then into the washing machine they went… then it was out with the scissors… snip snip!

This dress was really just a quick run-up of the pattern to test for fit and to see that it worked. Of course it did! but the trousers fabric was really too stiff for the gathered skirt as in the pattern, so I instead folded the excess fabric into wide pleats in the front. I quite like this effect because it also suits the formal “dress pants” vibe of the fabric too.

The relaxed fit in crisp fabric gave a rather boxy result for my taste, so I later unpicked and took in the bodice through those handy princess seams in the bodice. I think the more shaped and fitted streamlined look suits the crisp, stiff fabric better.

I also put inset strips of the plain charcoal into the princess seams to highlight the seaming… I LOVE how this looks, and the play of different stripes, blocks, lines and crisp angular intersections

I really like this little “trousers” Forsythe dress, however I felt a bit bad though that I had used cruddy old fabric to make up my dress, and hadn’t even done the recommended gathered skirt either, like I hadn’t done a “proper” job. so I quickly nipped out to Spotlight to get some nicer fabric and make my “real” Forsythe. I thought the gathered skirt was more suited to a very thin and slinky drapey fabric like rayon. Sarah May is from Capetown in South Africa, and so as soon as I saw the selvedge of this lovely rayon floral print I knew it was totally perfect!

Plus it’s sooooo pretty! I actually like this one a lot more than the “trousers” one, hardly surprising really! I took care when laying out the pattern pieces in order to get a really nice and hopefully, a visually pleasing print placement on the dress.

This version is made up exactly to the pattern, with the proper gathered skirt and all, the only exception is that I put seven buttons on the button band at the back instead of the recommended five. The only reason for this is that the little packet of perfect brown tortoiseshell buttons I picked up in Spotlight had seven buttons in it and I didn’t want leftovers.

In other news; some other things I’ve made recently. Four more pairs of black tights, in polyester stretchy stuff from Spotlight.

I made these using my own custom-fit pattern, devised as described here.

I wear black tights a LOT; I wore last years’ well over one hundred times, the heels on some have worn out and so I chopped off the feet and converted them to leggings now. So I reckon making a few new pairs each year is very worthy use of my time. And, for everyday wear, my own handmade tights really are so much better than rtw, for two simple reasons.

FIT! Take a gander at the side-by-side comparison of my own handmade tights to a pair of extra-tall rtw tights on the right. Yes, those are extra-talls!! It’s easy to see why I have to nip into the ladies room several times a day to hoink the tights back up… SO ANNOYING! After wearing my own tights for a year I’d forgotten that that was even a thing… I love the sophistication of beautifully sheer seamless legs that you can only get with rtw, and I don’t mind putting up with the disadvantage of the crotch migrating inexorably southwards for the advantage of that on special occasions, but on an ordinary, everyday, day? Nope.

My custom fit tights have fitted feet, and are shaped all the way up my legs. They might look a little funny, but they were made to fit exclusively ME!

2) and secondly WARMTH. I make my own handmade tights from opaque black polyester stretch, and they are super warm and comfy compared to even the thickest of thick rtw tights. Again, for special occasions, being a bit cold is a small price to pay for the beauty of sleek sheer legs, but not for everyday.

Four pairs of handmade tights can feel like a bit of an unexciting production line to make, but ultimately they are the most hardworking and practical things in my wardrobe.

high-tech method for telling the front from the back in the pre-dawn light that usually illuminates my dressing…