jumbo checks

Oh hey! I made a new dress! And I have writer’s block!

Obviously the second thing is not the least bit interesting to anyone who just wants to read – or in my case; write! about sewing… however the silliest thing about it is that it is not only hindering my efforts to document the things I’m making; the very purpose of this blog in the first place! but even sillier, it is preventing me from wearing it! Since I have this crazy self-imposed rule that when I wear something I really should have blogged it first.

So I bit the bull by the horns, or whatever I even mean by that accidental mangling of metaphors which I just decided to leave there after tapping it out without thinking… oh man… and decided the only thing to do was to wear it.. TODAY. Thus forcing myself to sit down and attempt a blog post, and hopefully loosening up that pesky little brain block… and letting it soften and dissolve and become ethereal enough so it floats up and away and out of my head, like a puffy little cloud. Bye bye writer’s block!!

What am I even writing about?? OH! My dress! Of course!

yes, it’s a bit windy today…

So, a few months ago, I was contacted by Sarah, of Super Cheap Fabrics, who offered me a length of fabric.. I chose this lovely, light-coffee coloured, jumbo plaid-ed linen. It’s absolutely divine, really. I’d been inspired by a dress I’d seen irl on a lady; a very chic friend of a friend. It was too long, too wide, the check too large; and I became completely inspired by the overall oversized-ness of the scale of this dress! Like a child wearing her sister’s hand-me-downs with the thought she was going to grow into it, eventually. I subsequently found out she’d had her dress custom-made up on a holiday in south-east Asia.

I used Vogue 1312; a Lynn Mizono pattern that I’d bought years ago… it has a “tablecloth” skirt, very similar to the one Shams posted on her blog, many moons ago.

could not resist the inevitable twirl!!!

I went to some effort to incorporate a few things – well, ONE thing – I really really wanted for my dress; namely, pockets. I know, I know, we seamsters are so weird about pockets… the difficulty about pockets with this particular design was the invisible zip in the left side seam. While of course it’s easy to put an inseam pocket into a regular side seam, it’s actually extraordinarly difficult to finagle a pocket in a side seam that has a zip in it…

in the end I settled upon the aforementioned in-seam pocket in the right side seam, and on the left side, I put in a single welt pocket, about an inch away from the seam with the invisible zip. Sounds simple, yes? NO!!! Because the pocket is only on one side not both, and I’m a pattern-matching lunatic, I wanted both the pocket and the invisible zip insertion to be as seamless and invisible as possible. I know. I don’t know why I do these things to myself…. anyway, careful pinning and even more careful and slow sewing, and I think I did it…

Here is the front, all zipped and pocket closed and (hopefully) reeeeasonably, sorta, invisible.

and now, the unzipped, showing-the-pocket shot.

I think I’ve shown this next feature before, but I often find the bottom inside end of an invisible zip has a slightly scratchy area, pretty much invisible to the naked eye but it makes itself felt after you’ve been happily wearing your garment for a few hours. You can feel it if you rub your finger over it a few times. So I generally wrap the lower end of the zip in a bit of fabric, like so; and stitch it down to the seam allowances.

So, as soon as I finished the dress, I was so happy I immediately flung it on and took a few pictures, shoeless. I love how it feels! the oversized ness is exactly what I wanted. Large, flooffy dresses feel so incredibly feminine to me; which is kind of funny when you consider the well-established “modern” feminine perception tends to be for tight fitting and short.

I rushed out for a location shots too, but when I got back home I felt a little cool – it’s 24C today, but funny thing, 24C feels, dare I say it? cold? compared to over a week of 35C++ !! haha… so I put on a T-shirt underneath; and I think I REALLY love it with the little sleeves underneath. I love it like this so much I might even just add little sleeves to it permanently? Hmmm, food for thought!!

Sophie very often comes up for little cuddle while I’m taking pictures in this spot… it’s near “her spot” in the house. Hehe, this picture of her little head sneaking into the shot above as she crept over to me gave me a laugh. hello, my darling little snooky snookums!!