I made this crazy outfit! I know; it doesn’t “look” too crazy.. but it is, because it was a super-fiddly process and took aaaaaages. Not content with just using what was actually very nice fabric as is; I, of course, made life more difficult for myself by instead cutting it up to make new fabric. Crazy.. Yep.
But I’m getting ahead of myself…. this is actually my entrant into the Tessuti Sewing competition… the idea is that you get some of the nominated competition fabric and make something with it… pretty simple huh? but the kicker is that nothing else other than the competition fabric can be visible and you cannot dye it either. Tessuti nominated a family of six fabrics, which was pretty awesome! three colour ways of two related eyelet fabrics; one is Knots, the other is, naturellement, Crosses. I bought the Natural colour way of both fabrics and got to work!
My thought was to cut the fabrics up “creatively” to make a multi-layered, multi-textured sort of a thing, like a layered lace kind of a look…
For the top; I cut the fabric into 3 types of fabric strips; the knots fabric on the bias, snipping out the backing fabric to make the pretty embroidery design into an edging. The crosses fabric I cut strips on both the bias and the straight; in each case snipping out the backing fabric carefully to leave the embroidery forming a pretty border. I arranged these strips over a pale pink lining bodice and stitched them in place with double rows of stitching…
the sleeves are in the knots fabric, and I cut the edging “lace” like so; just the very edge of the crosses fabric cut on the straight made the outer, lace-like edging. The neckline edge is made from two different cuts of the same Knots fabric, one on both the bias and one on the straight. The eyelet with the “ribbon” thread through is one diagonal arm of the knots fabric, and the lace edging was the same fabric cut on the straight; the two were stitched together to make the neckline edging. The blue “ribbon” threaded through the neckline edge; well you might be thinking, ah, but that’s not the competition fabric? Fail! But it IS the competition fabric! The selvedge had these pretty blue striped borders printed along the edge… I carefully stitched very very close to the blue with tiny, 1mm stitches to stabilise and help prevent it from fraying, and cut off the excess to make a ribbon to thread through my created eyelet.
The skirt is relatively simple, sort of… I dug out a favourite old skirt pattern Vogue 7880, which has multiple, asymmetric layers. It’s such a lovely pattern, I haven’t made it for ages but I think about it every now and then. Now, as before; I lengthened the skirt stay pieces to make a full lining for the skirt, otherwise just made it up as normal. The lining is the same pale pink lining fabric I used for the top. I used a “natural”-coloured invisible zip in the left side seam.
It’s looking very pressed and neat in these pictures, but what I’m really looking forward to is washing it and letting it crease and rumple naturally, which I think will look really charming. And better, I think… I really should have done this before taking my pictures here but I literally forgot about the competition until the last minute and had to take my pictures here on the very last day. Which is today. Gah! I hate being incompetent!!
So. I actually do really like this outfit…
however!! I purposely did not look at the tessuti pinterest board with everyone else’s entries in the lead-up to the competition, because I did not want to be influenced by anyone else’s design decisions. I just wanted to come up with my own ideas purely unaided and unabetted – is that even a word? Never mind… stream of consciousness blogging!! Well, as I was saying, I finished my outfit, quite oblivious; took a bunch of pictures and sent in my entry, THEN I went over and had a look at the pinterest board of entries. And immediately saw that I had not the proverbial snowflake’s chance in hell. There were SO MANY beautiful and fantastic entries! It was wonderful to see so much creativity! even though mine is kinda ordinary, but I can live with that. I think the top’s kinda pretty and as a whole it’s ok!
Details:
Top; kinda based upon New Look 6483, except completely different and with nothing of the original remaining.
Skirt; Vogue 7880
Shoes; ye olde favourite dress shoes from Zomp shoes
The post knots and crosses appeared first on Handmade by Carolyn.