My dear friend Yoshimi sent to me a beautiful birthday present last year; some really beautiful, deep indigo blue linen gauze… The colour is quite glorious, not a solid colour but mottled and variegated with plenty of depth and character; and the texture is ultra light and sheer, quite breezy and with a slight stiffness very similar to organza. It’s utterly lovely.
It’s taken me quite a while to decide what to make with this precious stuff… I would take it out and pet it, thinking of a million options. I layed out several different patterns onto it, only to pack them all up again… obviously it had to be perfect, also I really wanted to make the absolute MOST of every little bit using a pattern resulting in as little waste as possible! I finally settled upon this Burda pattern, Shirt Dress 03/2016; 112B, The pattern pieces fitted on my piece of precious fabric PERFECTLY!!
However.. modifications happened along the way. Of course they did. My dress has the same bones, but the original is actually a very boxy design, with quite a pronounced dropped shoulder. I’m sure it’s a lovely design for the right fabric; as in, something with plenty of natural “flop” that allows those shoulder seams to drop gracefully down over your upper arm.
My fabric doesn’t want to flop in the slightest; while super-breezy it stil has quite a bit of oomph and structure. It works beautifully in the tailored details of a shirtdress, but really the shoulders did not drape in the desired manner at all… So I ended up taking quite a bit of width off from each shoulder and side, and slimming down the sides of the dress bodice too, so my final dress is more like a gentle A-line shape. I couldn’t say I “self-drafted” the armholes, that just sounds terribly pompous when it was basically just tonnes of super careful pinning and multiple tryings-on. I’m so so happy with the final result though. I think the more fitted, yet still loosely relaxed shoulders, the slimmer bodice and A-line shape is perfect for the fabric.
Other alterations: I inverted the pleat the other way in the centre back, also left off the placket to hide the buttonhole band. Fun fact; my pattern is the German version, and while I plugged the instructions into Google translate I actually couldn’t make head nor tail of them, haha!! I think I’ve made enough shirts that I managed to put it together ok though 🙂
I LOVE the sleeves which are unchanged from the pattern, they’re only very slightly gathered at the top, and blouse-y at the elbow, with deep pleats taming that blousiness into the bands. I also love the petite little collar. The collar stand is the tiniest I’ve ever made, so skinny and narrow, only about 1.5cm deep. I was slightly terrified how this would go, fortunately, the linen gauze was an absolute delight to sew and eased beautifully everywhere I asked it to. Like sheer heaven.
I found these awesomely cool yet delicate brass buttons at Fabulous Fabrics. I’ve previously used these very same buttons before, on my khaki linen “army” shirt; five and a half years ago!! I’m so glad they still are stocking these; they’re quite old-fashioned-y, a bit dinged-up and antique-y looking, so very much to my taste!
I also made a little matching belt, which is basically an interfaced waistband with just one button and two buttonholes.
With the fabric being the divine will o’ the wisp that it is, my new dress needed a slip; so I hemmed it so as to work well with my ivory crepe Ruby slip. You can see the slip when I’m wearing it, but hey; you were going to see any slip I wear with this ultra-sheer dress! so it may as well be a nice one! I really love the way the ivory underneath lightens and brightens and highlights the variegated blues and really brings them to life.
I absolutely adore my new dress; thank you so much, Yoshimi!!
Details:
Dress; Burda Shirt Dress 03-2016;112B slimmed down a bit, Japanese indigo linen gauze
Slip; pattern scissors cloth Ruby Slip, a free pattern available here; ivory crepe, details of mine here
Shoes; made by me and my own design, details here
Location, the Crawley boatshed, Crawley, Western Australia
yes; it was blowing a freaking gale, not really ideal but I had the photo opportunity so *shrug*…
Funny story; this is a very popular spot for wedding parties and also for tourists to stop and take pictures. I rocked up and there was a Chinese man taking pictures, so I waited at a little distance for him to finish… once he had I went over and put my camera on the steps. However he hung around for a bit, then came back and started gesturing to his camera and at me; at first I thought he was asking if I wanted assistance with my pictures and I assured him that I was fine, gesturing that I had my remote, etc. However, no! what he wanted was for me to be in his pictures!! eeeek! he demonstrated where he wanted me to stand and how he wanted me to pose, gazing up into the sun and beaming like a stereotypical sun-worshipping Aussie. He took quite a lot of pictures, so if you ever see me popping up in some Chinese guy’s holiday photos, that’s why!!!
I’m continuing on with my tradition of making a new set of bra plus undies for my thing. The last two years I’ve taken the humble frog as my inspiration, 
Self-explanatory, really. #endblogpost 😉
Pattern; Vogue 1384. It’s a vintage pattern, hailing from 1984, sorry. Yeah, it’s annoying when people make things in vintage patterns that you can’t get a hold of anymore. But I’m sure this is not particularly aspirational actually, it’s a little weird in that 80’s way. That high, slightly floppy collar combined with a billowing pirate-y blousiness is giving me serious 
Then I vaguely thought maybe a navy blue skirt would make it a nicely complete set, and she desperately needs skirts for work too … and lo and behold what should be lounging languidly about in the very next aisle but this teal blue suedette, which is a PERFECT colour match for the rooves. BAM! DECISION MADE. Lugged them both to the counter without a second thought, brought them home, tossed into the washing machine.
The suedette “looks” nice and perfectly suede-y, but it frays like billy-o. I finished all the raw edges on the overlocker, and the lower hem with a bias cut binding cut from a scrap of purple/blue micro fibre. 
The Tshirt is made up just like the pattern, except for the neckline… I’m lazy with my Inari necklines and have pretty much finished them all off like this! Just overlocked the raw edge, turned it under and topstitched from the right side. Since it’s quite a wide neckline and doesn’t stretch out when you put the Tshirt on and take it off, the stitches won’t snap and this kind of finish works perfectly well.
The lower hem is finished with my twin needle. Lisa asked about channelling with a twin needle.. all I can say is that I’ve never had channelling and what’s more I have no idea how I’ve avoided it so far either!! Only thing I can think of: I always finish the raw edge on my overlocker, then topstitch with the twin needle, and that’s it! Maybe the overlocked edge stabilises the fabric and that’s what stops a channel forming? That’s the only reason I can think of anyway. 🙂
ly perfect Word that describes my new “thing” to a T springs to mind instantly. Other times I just plump for the obvious. Today, inspiration was like a wispy breathe of smoke in a dark shadow of the night. Barely present, fleeting and rapidly lost amongst the dusty cobwebs in ye olde brain.
Pattern; Vogue 1351; bought aaaaaaaages ago. With the intention of making it up immediately, funnily enough! but more on that later…
Details:
Partly because of the colour. And partly because the designer is also French Navy. Truly!
So, recently I discovered 
The Orla is a super quick and fun little pattern which is exactly what I wanted to cleanse my palate, so to speak, after my mad Christmas making-fest… Featuring a gently fitted bodice, rather pert short sleeves, which I think I would be rather nice in elbow length too; a highish waistline, and with a gathered rectangle skirt. I think the low scooped neckline is really lovely, it’s my favourite thing about the pattern. I added 3cm in length to my skirt… just because I thought the gathered skirt gave it a rather young look and I’m.. well, you know. not. Hehe, to be honest I agonised over the length of this skirt, you don’t want to know for how long.. at least as long as it took to make the whole dress. I pinned and tried on, contemplated; re-pinned, re-tried on, re-contemplated… I finally settled upon keeping some extra length that I’d added while cutting out, but I’m still partially tossing up the idea of re-hemming it shorter again. Man, I am SOOOOOO indecisive sometimes, I drive myself batty… I think I’m going to be ok with this length… FOR NOW, she intones, dramatically. I may or may not change it up on a whim, whenever. But maybe not. Might do, though.
