New dress! And, how gorgeous is this cheerfully splashy fabric?!!! Ohmigosh, but I love it so much! You cannot possibly be sad whilst wearing this stuff. The very instant I saw it I was just like, YES. MUST HAVE.
SO! every year, my lovely friends give to me a Fabulous Fabric voucher for my birthday… and this year I treated myself to this truly lovely, fine, handkerchief linen, printed in a glorious array of golden mustard, tomato red, toxic-waste lime green, moody purple and a splash of tranquil turquoise thrown in too because sure why not? let’s just let alll the autumn-y colours join in the splashy fun! Not only are the colours absolutely luscious together, but the feel and weight of the fabric is quite perfectly and exquisitely summery. LOVE.
I didn’t actually use the actual voucher to buy this fabric, to be honest I used the real-life voucher to buy wedding dress lining, haha, as you do!! but I mentally made a note to myself that as soon as I saw something worthy I would spend the equivalent and that was going to be my birthday fabric. Confusing? Yes I know I know, hehe. Well I know what I mean anyway. Just very recently Fabulous Fabrics got in a fresh shipment, and I saw this, and knew it was The One.
The pattern is the Ariane dress, designed by C’est Moi Le Patron by Coralie Bijasson. The pattern is described as a gypsy style dress with shoulder princess seams, buttoned, with a gathered skirt & long sleeves with elastic in the hem. The instructions also include a note to insert piping in those princess seams, so obviously I did so like the obedient little seamster that I am. Well, I am the hugest of huge detail freaks so yeah. My piping looks black in these pictures, but actually it is a really deep navy, and the fabric is from a pair of Sam’s old work trousers. I’d previously used these same trousers to cut the lining for his and Cassie’s man D’s Christmas hats, blogged here.
Variations; the dress pattern doesn’t include pockets, so I added in some simple inseam pockets (my tutorial for adding inseam pockets here). The skirt is supposed to be gathered into the waist, and while I did initially do this it created some pouffiness that I decided I just did not need! so I unpicked that and instead pleated the extra width of the skirt into five tiny pleats on each side; just outside of the princess line of the bodice. Same for both front and back. I think that pleating/folding is a bit more age-appropriate than gathering… I can’t explain what I even mean by that! but maybe I mean it just feels a bit more “me”? Not that I even know what that means either, Anyway, I really like how this turned out!
The sleeves are long with elastic inserted in a hem. I love the sleeves, and especially pushed up to my elbow length like this.
Oh! the buttons! I almost forgot! SO, I’ve been covering buttons for Kelly’s wedding dress, 100, to be precise! Yes, 100, blinking, covered buttons. This took, HOURS.
But I absolutely adore how they look! and since I was using a particular colour fabric for the piping I thought it would be nice to have the same particular colour buttons for this project too… so I ordered some more of the 11mm buttons. I bought my buttons here. By the way; the “naked” buttons are actually silver, and for Kelly’s buttons, I’d covered a few experimentally and we thought the silver showed through the ivory fabric a little, giving the buttons a slightly grey tinge. SO I painstaking lined up all the bare silver buttons along bamboo skewer tracks and spray-painted them creamy-ivory before covering with our ivory crepe. The spray-paint I already had, leftover from when I made my Queen Rutela costume.
Spray painting the buttons is as fiddly as all get out and I’m not going to lie, actually quite a pain in the neck to do… but it does give some really good advantages. Number one, the silver doesn’t shine through a “porous” or very light coloured fabric, and secondly, and maybe even more importantly, spray paint makes the surface of the buttons a little “sticky” which is definitely a plus when you’re trying to put the buttons together. When I was covering the naked buttons, the fabric slipping and sliding about over the smooth shiny surface was driving me a little mad, and I really noticed a huge improvement with a grippier spray painted surface instead. So, while I didn’t really need to worry about silver showing through in this darker fabric, I did the spray painting gig again for these buttons too, simply for that grip factor.
So that’s it! I’m wearing the dress today.. and while I didn’t get a proper “out and about” picture of the dress, I did snap this… hehe, so silly I know, but I was randomly loving how the lovely floaty linen was rippling in the breeze. I’ll get a proper photo some other day because right now I am getting strrrrrapped for time!! to say the very least. In the meantime… it’s back to the wedding and bridesmaid’s dress for me! Panic stations!!
Details:
Dress; Ariane dress, designed by C’est Moi Le Patron by Coralie Bijasson in a floaty printed linen
Shoes; Zomp, from Zomp boutique
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