scribble-y sundress

I’ve made a new dress, and how gorgeous is this splashy, scribbly, fireworks-y print! And the way this divine rayon challis ripples breezily against my legs was actually quite quite delicious… it was extremely hot when I took these pictures, like 39C, so soft whisper-y cool, featherlight stuff felt like exactly the right thing to wear.

While we were in San Francisco, Shams took us to Britex. According to basically everyone who knows; Britex is a “must-visit” for the fabric enthusiast… like, every single, San Francisco shopping recommendation to me included in some form or another ” …and Britex, of course”

And I most heartily concur. This place is insanely fabulous and I could’ve happily spent all day there.. The walls are stacked floor to ceiling with, well it felt like thousands of bolts of strong solid colours, arranged by colour to make a rainbow mural of fabric itself. What a sight to behold! I was crossing the rainbow bridge! Is this heaven?!!!

I die…

can you even…?? #sigh And this was only ONE floor, there was another one too!

Shams introduced us to the lovely owner, Sharman Spector; who was so kind and welcoming to us foreigners. I learned that Britex is a Legacy Business, which means it is one of a “longstanding community-serving business that is recognised as valuable cultural asset to San Francisco by the Office of Small Business. Preserving Legacy Businesses is critical to maintaining what makes San Francisco a unique and special place.” … and thank you, Professor Google for that succinct explanation…

Obviously, this is a wonderful idea, one that I wish we would adopt over here. Imagine a world populated by lots of small businesses offering unique and special services?! This, and many other utopian customs are just part of the enormous appeal of San Francisco, and I should add, New York City too. I think they are very innovative and future-thinking over there, while still keeping firmly in mind what is important to the happiness of human beings.

Anyway… my dress!

Sharman kindly gave me a length of this lovely “scribbled flowers” rayon challis; it’s delightfully whisper thin and feels coolly divine against the skin. So I envisioned a floaty, nothing-y little wisp of a dress. The print is quite oversized, so I could’ve got away with a longer dress, I think, but I’m very happy with this length; I think it’s both cute and chic, and the higher neckline balances nicely with the higher hemline.

Pattern; is my own design. It’s very simple because I really wanted this lovely eye-catching print to shine… so I’d made a similar dress for my friend L at the beginning of the year, a clone of a favourite dress of hers, and I couldn’t get the design out of my head. Mine has a few key differences which I wanted to implement; namely it’s quite a lot more A-line… MORE float!! … and has pockets. I altered the width of the top bits too, and the armscye. Actually, the armscye turned out to be a bit of a boo-boo… once it was hemmed it was just a leeetle bit low-cut.

You could definitely see bra-action… and I decided that if the bra was going to be seen, at least it could be a bra designed to be seen, and that went beautifully with the dress, complementing it. I toyed briefly with the idea of a hot pink thing, – sawww tempting!! – but in the end decided the perfect bra to match this was in fact a plain black, strapless bra. Strapless, well obviously, and plain black in order to not fight with the amaaaaaazing print, and to offset the black fabric I used for the tie.

For the bra; I used my old faithful McCalls 2772 swimsuit pattern pieces for a strapless bandeau bra; the only mods I made were to make boning channels using the side seam allowances, and inserting a short strip of boning. This keeps the bra structured and upright and not fold in on itself while I’m wearing it.

I also gathered the centre front onto a 7cm length of black elastic, just because I think it looks nice! and I also shortened the back straps by several inches, to make it nice and tight. Strapless bras have a tendency to migrate south, if they are not quite tight! I like my underwear to be in sets, so I also whipped up a matching pair of undies, using the bikini bottom pieces from the same pattern.

Oh, the dress neck-tie, I cut from a black satin remnant, leftovers I think from this black Forsythe dress I made for Cassie, three years ago.

The front and back of the dress are actually different from each other, even if they LOOK identical! so in order to identify the back I used this little Kylie and the Machine label I got in the Perth Frocktails goodie bag. It’s pretty cute, isn’t it? even if I kinda had a fleeting wish it was one of the “the is the back” labels; well I can swap that out if I ever buy a set.