New dress! And, how gorgeous is this cheerfully splashy fabric?!!! Ohmigosh, but I love it so much! You cannot possibly be sad whilst wearing this stuff. The very instant I saw it I was just like, YES. MUST HAVE.
SO! every year, my lovely friends give to me a Fabulous Fabric voucher for my birthday… and this year I treated myself to this truly lovely, fine, handkerchief linen, printed in a glorious array of golden mustard, tomato red, toxic-waste lime green, moody purple and a splash of tranquil turquoise thrown in too because sure why not? let’s just let alll the autumn-y colours join in the splashy fun! Not only are the colours absolutely luscious together, but the feel and weight of the fabric is quite perfectly and exquisitely summery. LOVE.
I didn’t actually use the actual voucher to buy this fabric, to be honest I used the real-life voucher to buy wedding dress lining, haha, as you do!! but I mentally made a note to myself that as soon as I saw something worthy I would spend the equivalent and that was going to be my birthday fabric. Confusing? Yes I know I know, hehe. Well I know what I mean anyway. Just very recently Fabulous Fabrics got in a fresh shipment, and I saw this, and knew it was The One.
The pattern is the Ariane dress, designed by C’est Moi Le Patron by Coralie Bijasson. The pattern is described as a gypsy style dress with shoulder princess seams, buttoned, with a gathered skirt & long sleeves with elastic in the hem. The instructions also include a note to insert piping in those princess seams, so obviously I did so like the obedient little seamster that I am. Well, I am the hugest of huge detail freaks so yeah. My piping looks black in these pictures, but actually it is a really deep navy, and the fabric is from a pair of Sam’s old work trousers. I’d previously used these same trousers to cut the lining for his and Cassie’s man D’s Christmas hats, blogged here.
Variations; the dress pattern doesn’t include pockets, so I added in some simple inseam pockets (my tutorial for adding inseam pockets here). The skirt is supposed to be gathered into the waist, and while I did initially do this it created some pouffiness that I decided I just did not need! so I unpicked that and instead pleated the extra width of the skirt into five tiny pleats on each side; just outside of the princess line of the bodice. Same for both front and back. I think that pleating/folding is a bit more age-appropriate than gathering… I can’t explain what I even mean by that! but maybe I mean it just feels a bit more “me”? Not that I even know what that means either, Anyway, I really like how this turned out!
The sleeves are long with elastic inserted in a hem. I love the sleeves, and especially pushed up to my elbow length like this.
Oh! the buttons! I almost forgot! SO, I’ve been covering buttons for Kelly’s wedding dress, 100, to be precise! Yes, 100, blinking, covered buttons. This took, HOURS.
But I absolutely adore how they look! and since I was using a particular colour fabric for the piping I thought it would be nice to have the same particular colour buttons for this project too… so I ordered some more of the 11mm buttons. I bought my buttons here. By the way; the “naked” buttons are actually silver, and for Kelly’s buttons, I’d covered a few experimentally and we thought the silver showed through the ivory fabric a little, giving the buttons a slightly grey tinge. SO I painstaking lined up all the bare silver buttons along bamboo skewer tracks and spray-painted them creamy-ivory before covering with our ivory crepe. The spray-paint I already had, leftover from when I made my Queen Rutela costume.
Spray painting the buttons is as fiddly as all get out and I’m not going to lie, actually quite a pain in the neck to do… but it does give some really good advantages. Number one, the silver doesn’t shine through a “porous” or very light coloured fabric, and secondly, and maybe even more importantly, spray paint makes the surface of the buttons a little “sticky” which is definitely a plus when you’re trying to put the buttons together. When I was covering the naked buttons, the fabric slipping and sliding about over the smooth shiny surface was driving me a little mad, and I really noticed a huge improvement with a grippier spray painted surface instead. So, while I didn’t really need to worry about silver showing through in this darker fabric, I did the spray painting gig again for these buttons too, simply for that grip factor.
So that’s it! I’m wearing the dress today.. and while I didn’t get a proper “out and about” picture of the dress, I did snap this… hehe, so silly I know, but I was randomly loving how the lovely floaty linen was rippling in the breeze. I’ll get a proper photo some other day because right now I am getting strrrrrapped for time!! to say the very least. In the meantime… it’s back to the wedding and bridesmaid’s dress for me! Panic stations!!
Details:
Dress; Ariane dress, designed by C’est Moi Le Patron by Coralie Bijasson in a floaty printed linen
Shoes; Zomp, from Zomp boutique
100 covered buttons!!! Wow. This dress is very “you,” I agree, and I think the pleats are much nicer than gathers.
Came out great! Love the pleats… wondering about the poofiness you speak of and will check out other examples online. It looks like a really cute dress pattern!
what a labour of love that wedding dress is. When is the wedding? and what about the MOB dress?
Likey, likey very much. A very cheerful dress indeed. Jo xx
That last photo of you in full stride perfectly represented to me the true joy we feel when we’ve made ourselves something to wear that we adore, whether we’re running our hands over and through its lusciousness to feeling the swish of the fabric against our bodies where it should be…. we know we look fab 🙂 Thank you for all this helpful advice (ie getting those steel buttons painted to make them more manageable later) and inspiration – gorgeous fabric in such adept hands!
that fabric is so so beautiful, love all the colors together.. and dress is pretty fabulous too 🙂
It is a pretty dress.
I love your new colorful, beautiful dress, but what drew me back out of lurking after these several years is this: I just turned on my local NPR station and heard the announcer saying that they were going to talk to someone who had worn only self-made clothes, shoes and all, for a year. Very impressive, I thought, but I doubt she could have done as good a job of it as Carolyn did. And of course, it was you! What a delight.
Wow! Love that dress…the color splash print and folkloric style.
I could wear it every day and be happy.
“Throw and Go” that’s my personal motto. I live in beautiful, casual dresses.
I also find your story very appealing (thanks to NPR for the introduction).
Best wishes, Linny Nick
Stunning fabric I agree and I love all your detailing. The covered buttons sound like intense job you are keeping busy. x
That dress is stunning on you and suits your colouring and style perfectly.