hello!
I’ve been making a few more things lately…
first up; a dress! I bought this screen printed linen a few years ago from the Injalak Arts Centre, the design is Mandem (Water Lily) by the indigenous artist Eva Nganjmirra. The pattern I used is an old favourite by now, Vogue 2900.
Something charming about this screenprint, I discovered; was the designer’s “signature” of sorts…of course, I had to carefully cut around this and place it some where semi-prominent.
I decided the pieces had to be highlighted in some way more than just mere seamlines, and utilised a method I have written about previously here… namely this is a bias cut strip that is inlaid over the pieces before joining together. I had a small length of mustard linen, leftover from this dress, that I used for this purpose.
Unfortunately there wasn’t enough to do every single seam and edge like I have done in previous examples of this method but I just did as many of the more prominent bodice seams before I ran out of it.
I know I’ve used this pattern quite frequently but it really is such a beautiful dress design that I don’t see myself every tiring of it any time soon. Of course I really should branch out more and I’m resolving to try more new patterns this year and not fall back so often on the old favourites. In the meantime though, some of my recent as yet unblogged projects have failed this resolution already whoops.
I think my only, somewhat trivial criticism of this design is its lack of shape in the waist area. I have a pretty high waist to hip ratio that isn’t really suited to this drop-waist design however I still stubbornly persist in wearing it. Sometimes I think I should try to modify it to look less “boxy” but the bodice pieces are so beautifully proportioned in themselves I’m not really game to fiddle about with it.
I wore this along with my me-made mustard clogs out to a meeting with friends recently and managed to grab a quick street shot. I’ve always liked to get a real world photo the things I’ve made if possible, but it’s sometimes difficult. If the coast is clear, like this time, I can quickly prop my phone up against my bag on the footpath and take a sneaky timed photo!
My little grandson G randomly ran up to join my while I was taking my more staged photos, which was happily fortuitous since he happened to be wearing a little T-shirt I made for him recently using leftovers from another, s yet unblogged, project to appear here soon. Once I get my act together!
I used Butterick 5510, a great little pattern that I should probably buy in a bigger size now! The blue and white striped jersey was tossed out by my friend N during her fabric purge recently. It’s quite nice stuff, if you don’t mind the suffering that comes with matching stripes in cutting and piecing. Fortunately I don’t mind this toooooo much. Maybe just a little, but only if it’s just every now and then.
I lenthened the T-shirt considerably because it’s really way too short otherwise. I don’t know if all my kiddies are just super tall or not but I’ve always found commercial patterns to be ridiculously short and wide.
Please note careful stripe matching. Oh, another problem with this pattern was the rather small neckline. After cutting it and subsequently realising it was actually pretty tiny, I recut the neckline, cut some extra neckline edging and pieced it. One join is pretty good, the other less so… I’m pointing the two out here. Hopefully they’re not too terrible! I’m pretty sure G doesn’t mind though, and at least it fits over his head!
I also some leftover raincoat fabric from when I made my sister in law Sandi’s Mundering raincoat, back here; so I drafted and ran up a new raincoat for T. He’s grown out of his yellow one, blogged here, which will be passed on to G this year. I lined it with the breathable sporting fabric, a length of which I bought for raincoat vents years ago. The zip, cord and eyelets happened to be in my stash already too, hurrah.
The pockets are just patch pockets. All seams are sealed on the underside using seam sealing wax that I bought for this purpose years ago from the camping and outdoor outfitter store, BCF.
I think he likes it! He looks pretty cute in it anyway, and I think it turned out a pretty good fit considering I drafted it just using one of his T-shirts. Phew!
The post water lily dress, a raincoat, and a stripey shirt appeared first on Handmade by Carolyn.
