Finally! my Alabama Chanin outfit! It’s finished, and now done and dusted! Yay! I may look all cool, calm and collected on the outside here but on the inside I’m cheering like a madman.
Phew. This project has been quite an undertaking… quite an undertaking, to say the least. I had received a length of beautiful Alabama Chanin cotton jersey in colour Dusk from the lovely Lisa, of Lisa’s Carolina, and I really wanted to do the fabric justice, to honour its Alabama origins and make something worthy and not to do things by halves. I decided I just had to go the whole nine yards and make another full-on ensemble. The Full Monty Alabama Chanin. Obviously!
There was enough of the blue to make one skirt and a few bindings, so I needed to make some more colours…. I bought some plain white cotton jersey from Spotlight, cut some scraps and played about with dyeing; experimenting with greys, greens, greeny-blues, blue-y greens, blue-y greys and greeny-greys, plus I’d also had some pink cotton that I dyed blue, to get some purple-y blue into the mix too.
candidates!
Ultimately I rejected my purple- and grey-toned experiments and settled upon greens; shades of teal and sea green, which I thought subtly highlighted and championed the dusky blue the absolute best, toning it without drowning it amongst other shades of blue. I think; if you’re trying to showcase a colour in an ensemble/design, then it’s best for that colour to be the only one of its shade, and for the contrasting colours to be all a different shade and variations of each other, not of the showcase colour. As clear as mud? Yep, I thought so! Sorry, maybe that’s not making much sense, but at least I know what I’m talking about.
Pattern; all patterns are from the book Alabama Studio Sewing + Design, by Natalie Chanin. I made a full-length skirt, a fully-embroidered mid-length skirt and a fitted tank. Every single component is sewn by hand, in the Alabama Chanin way 🙂
So: the mid-length skirt! Which is the biggie in my ensemble, taking a few months to embroider the pieces! The skirt itself is my precious Dusk Alabama Chanin cotton jersey, and the motifs I’d dyed some white cotton jersey from Spotlight to be a teal/sea-green and to purposely be a little variegated with strong tones paling to lighter tones appearing shaded in an ombre kind of a way across the piece. All the details of the stencilling and early preparations pre-embroidery, are fully described in this post here. This part actually took aaaaages, or it felt like it at the time. Obviously, once I got embroidering then that was the bit that REALLY took ages! I had decided upon blanket stitch embroidery to attach the motifs, using light tan Gutermann’s upholstery thread. I liked the colour and the look of the embroidery, but this particular stitch was probably not the ideal choice. It is an enormously time-consuming stitch and I found myself questioning my own sanity/stupidity in choosing it, many a time. I’m glad I did persevere now though, since I really do love how it looks. Although it did take a lot of time, it wasn’t too bad, since our trip to Japan involved several plane, train and bus rides with hours and hours and hours of enforced sitting, so I got plenty of embroidery done during those times… I had completed two whole skirt panels by the time we got home! YAY! I then would have finished pretty quickly if I had then not dropped the ball for the next few weeks… oops. But once I put my mind to it and got going again I finished the embroidery pretty soon; and with the embroidery done the whole ensemble felt practically home and hosed!
I joined the pieces, hand-felling the seams using the same light tan upholstery thread as the embroidery;and I found a light yellow/beige fold-over elastic at Spotlight that looked quite nice for the waistband binding.. not that you’re ever likely to see that bit! It’s actually button elastic, for waistbands, and has buttonholes in it along the fold, but that’s ok. The colour is great, and since fold over elastic is a rare beast in Perth, in any colour, I counted myself pretty lucky to have found it!
The full length underskirt: originally white cotton jersey from Spotlight, and I dyed it to be just slightly variegated, strong teal-y/sea-green. I wanted it to be a little bit uneven in its shade, so as to fit in with the whole handmade, rustic aesthetic of Alabama Chanin. The underskirt is entirely handsewn with emerald green upholstery thread, with felled seams, and a single strip of randomly hand-ruched/ruffled cotton jersey around the lower edge. I’d originally stitched on three evenly spaced strips of ruffled cotton, but removed the upper two, because three rows didn’t look as nice as I’d hoped. The upper edge of the petticoat is finished with teal elastic, handstitched on with herringbone embroidery stitch. This was the first piece to be finished in this ensemble, believe it or not!
btw, I’ve had some feedback already that some think the underskirt is too long… opinions?
Tank top; white cotton jersey from Spotlight, dyed in the lightest shade of eau-de-nil green, and with armhole and neckline binding in the Dusk blue Alabama Chanin cotton jersey. The tank top is handsewn with light tan upholstery cotton, the same as the skirt embroidery, with felled seams and herringbone embroidery to attach the neckline and armhole binding.
All the details, summed up succinctly in just one pic:
So that’s it re the outfit…
And now for a little story about that weird and bizarre, modern-day phenomenon, the blog photo shoot…
I’d delayed posting this because I wanted to take some really nice pictures with a pretty background, something better than just these ones taken in our boring old garage… so I pick an absolutely beautiful location at my parents’ house … and a hopefully beautiful time of day … dusk would be an appropriately poetic time of day, yes? because the colour of my Alabama Chanin fabric is named “dusk” Ok, perfect! However turns out dusk is actually a terrible time to take pictures, … all my first batch of pictures were a giant fail… everything very dark and you can hardly see a thing, ha! So I disconsolately packed up to go back to the house; to try again the next day.
And did I mention my chosen photo shoot location is a paddock quite a long walk from the house? Honestly, the things we do… I walked down in jeans, disrobed, re-robed, in the paddock, as you do…. TWICE, on two consecutive days… all under the bemused and intensely interested gaze of a mob of kangaroos. Well obviously, they must have been admiring my Alabama Chanin finery? hmmm?
hey guys!
The second day I timed my arrival to be just before sunset, with that lovely pre-dusk golden glow … and wasn’t til I’d got all set up and going with my pictures I realised I’d left my sunnies back at the house and so I’m squinting in Every Single Picture… (groan)
And in the end I felt like the “boring” garage photos weren’t really all that bad and actually the details show up pretty well against that quiet blank background, so I’m posting a few of those too. Sorry for the picture overload.
Moral of the story; blog photo shoots can verge on the ludicrous
Anyway!! it’s done… Thank you so much to my friend Lisa, of Lisa’s Carolina, for the gift of the Alabama Chanin cotton. It’s such a gorgeous colour and I hope I managed to make something that is worthy of the fabric 🙂
Details:
Tank top, skirt, underskirt; all patterns from the Alabama Studio Sewing + Design by Natalie Chanin. Blue cotton jersey is from Alabama Chanin, other fabrics from hand-dyed by me. Embroidery design, half of the Magdalena design by Alabama Chain, embroidered in blanket stitch.
Pride of place of course goes to Mum’s skirt… 
a fully hand-embroidered and hand stitched Alabama Chanin skirt; with embroidery in the reverse appliqué method, and using the four panelled, mid length skirt pattern from the book Alabama Studio Sewing + Design by Natalie Chanin. The cotton jersey fabrics were originally white and Mum dyed them herself in two different shades of grey and blue. Mum traced and cut the stencil design June’s Spring from p116 in the book herself, enlarging by 300% as recommended, (also available as a pre cut stencil on the Alabama Chanin website here) She printed the design in creamy-coloured textile paint, and hand-embroidered with a running stitch in double strand of cream Gutermann’s upholstery thread.
When snipping out the motifs she carefully left a very narrow border of the cream stencil round each one.
A month or so ago Mum mentioned how she specifically wanted an unobtrusive, very plain white top to wear with this skirt so I offered to run one up for her… I chose the Esme top pattern from Lotta Jansdotter’s book Everyday Style and a slubby plain white cotton from Fabulous Fabrics. I measured Mum all over, secretly storing the measurements away for future use, mwahahaha… no one gets away from the handmade in my family!! and drew the pattern so as to custom fit it or Mum’s measurements. Instead of the neckline facings I finished the neckline with a bias cut strip, because I think it’s a much nicer and neater finish for a neckline edge. Mum wants to know how to do this herself so I’ve promised to write a tutorial sometime.
