I’m now desperately trying to blog everything I’ve made this year, within this year… so fair warning: brace yourself for an onslaught of making-spam…
First of all; this little dress!
I actually made this back in September! but cold weather and general lack of… shall we say? love? for the dress prevented me from wearing it for a while, or obviously blogging about it before. However all is now well, because the dress has easily reached its 30 wears, and is probably going to go on to at least 300 wears before I say sayonara to it… how is this so? you may ask… since devoted followers (ha!) of my daily ootd blog will have no doubt noticed it has made not one single appearance over there. I shall now explain… yes, I had not much love for it once I’d finished making it, which is strange because it actually ticked a number of very good boxes; it feels very nice to wear, very comfortable, and it is well made if I say so myself. I think it was the colour; yellow should suit my Autumnal self; but I decided this particular yellow was too close to my skin tone to really look good on me. I thought I might dye it, sometime. But before that happened, the weather warmed up a bit, I took out my old summer nightie to wear to bed and was saddened to see that a hole, that I had fixed up twice before, quickly reappeared in such a ghastly, final manner I had no choice but to ditch it. Yes, very sad, and I was too busy to make another nightie straight away … what to wear? then I noticed this dress perched on top of a pile of summer dresses, waiting to be noticed. I was like, well that will do for now, as a stop-gap. But you know what? I’m really enjoying wearing it!
Fabric; a pale yellow quilting cotton from Minerva, printed with gold snowflakes. I think it’s part of their Christmas range. My previous nightie was made of quilting cotton too, and so I’m accustomed to the feel of it. It’s very comfortable! soft and lovely against the skin. I’ve discovered that quilting cotton makes GREAT nighties! Since I’d intended it to be a proper dress, I have to admit it did turn out a leetle bit over-engineered for a nightie; it’s got facings, pockets, inset strips to define the seams. A bias bound hemline, for heaven’s sake.
Some deets:
Pattern; I used the Collins top pattern by In The Folds; I’ve previously made this once before, to make this palm leaf lace top here. This time, I lengthened the appropriate pieces to make it dress-length. In doing so, I extended the front and back diagonal lines right down to meet at the hemline in a nice neat V. I decided to highlight this feature, by insering an inset strip into the seamlines, just like I did with this dress. The bias cut contrast strip is mustard silk crepe; same stuff I used for my Fibre Mood Faye dress.
I’m rather thrilled with the sharpness of that point!
Cutting my “outer” pieces had used basically every last scrap of the snowflake fabric, so I unearthed a short length of soft yellow silk dupion from my stash; a remnant in merited from my grandmother.
From this; I cut my neckline/armscye facings, the voluminous pockets, and the bias cut strip I used to hem the dress,
For the button at the back of the neck; well I didn’t even really need to make an opening, since I’ve always found I can slip this dress on and off without un-doing the button! but I’d made provision for it, so needed to finish it off…
I took out one of the leftover buttons I’d covered in ivory crepe for Kelly’s wedding dress (self-covering button kit purchased here) and painted it with some gold paint. This itself is leftover from when I made my Queen Rutela costume; I used it to paint my “jewellery” and my “hair”
So that’s it! I have a wonderful nightie and have enjoyed wearing it a lot, since it’s basically like a proper dress. Actually, it’s kinda half nightie, half dress… I think of it as loungewear. I can take out the bin without worrying what the neighbours might think, haha. Maybe I’ll even eventually dye it like I originally planned, and wear it out one day!
Details:
Dress/nightie; the Collins top by In The Folds, in printed quilting cotton
Lilac shoes; made by me at a Shoe Camraderie workshop, details here
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