A fine yarn: April 2016

This is the story of how this dress, design and construction came to be.

A summer dress with an uneven hem

Starting the story

I had this Broderie Anglais cotton in white that I had eco-dyed, with leaves and flowers etc. However, cotton does not eco-dye very well- animal fibres such as wool and silk do much better. So, I added some chemical paint to add some bright splashes, as you can see in this photo.

The eco-dyed broderie anglais fabric

Then, the quandary was what to make of it – first I thought I would make a tunic top – I love making those. Then I saw this uneven dress on an in-flight magazine and that set up brain ticking! I decided to take an existing pattern, an old one, McCall’s 7412 and hacked that to come up with my own uneven dress.

I like this slim fitting patter - and the extended shoulder

The dress was shorter on one side and longer on the other. But instead of having a very long seam (which would become a bias seam), I decided to add a godet to the longer side – this gave a nice long drop, which really floats around in the breeze, but does not cause any dress malfunctions, thankfully.

The only downside with the fabric was I did not have enough to cut the godet on the bias, instead having a central seam in the godet. The ‘floatiness’ is slightly less due to this. Anyway, here are some photos of the dress.

The cotton summer dress

A front view

This was the toile – well, sort of! I do love wearing it.

Once you have made one, you have to make more!

But I wanted to make another dress, with some wool fabric in my stash – a more winter-ready concoction with sleeve – dropped shoulder does not really work in winter, does it?

While discussing linings for such a wool dress, one of my sewing mates suggested I use silk for lining. Apparently, it gives a luxurious feel to the garment.

See a write-up about linings here.

So, off I went looking for places I could buy silk without paying an arm and a leg. And that’s when I saw the Tessuti competition,

And boy, was I hooked – so here are the details of my entry:

A silk uneven dress

I started with hand-washing the fabric, as I planned to do that to the dress, and it washed and dried beautifully.

Here it is all laid out on the cutting table, with the hacked pattern. Yes, you can see all the taped on bits – at some point I need to make a clean copy. But I am not sure I am going to make one – really who has the time, when I can make more garments instead.

The pattern laid out on the fabric

The fabric was slippery, and you do need a pair of sharp scissors to cut it out.

And here is one of the sewing in progress.

Using my new Pfaff to sew - the machine is a dream to use

The best way to finish seams

I am very fussy about the inside of the garment, so I did the shoulder seams with a French seam, but that was not really possible for the side seams. I considered a Hong Kong seam, but felt that would add bulk to the really soft and drapey fabric. Hence I went with the “turned and stitched” seam which Threads says “is used in designer clothing”. Here are a couple of photos of what the seams look like – the back seams and where the godet is attached.

A closeup of the seams

And the godet seams

I decided to have a button and loop back neck closer – though the neck-line is big enough to go over my head – did not want to inadvertently stretch the neckline.