Tag Archives: Sienna

I’ve made a summery little dress for myself.
This is dress F from the Japanese pattern book Stylish Dress Book, by Yoshiko Tsukiori.   I’ve made this pattern up once before here, and that polka dot dress is still in my wardrobe and remains one of my perennial favourites.  I don’t know if this new one is going to topple its big sister from my favourites list, but anyway, it’ll still be a goodie and bound to get worn a lot in this long, loooong, very hot summer we’re having!
I made a couple of teeny changes, adding inseam side pockets and also leaving off the sleeve ties.  Instead the sleeve opening has a button sewn on to close.  Still looks quite cute and meant I didn’t have to try to sew and turn out those skinny-binny sleeve ties in this lovely but rather challenging fabric.
I know… it doesn’t look particularly challenging in my pictures; it appears from a distance to be a quite ordinary duck-egg blue, handkerchief linen.  Only closer inspection reveals random dots of what appears to be clear plastic, splattered all over it.  This has the happy side effect that in the sunlight it appears to sparkle like diamonds, *squeals, oooh pretty!* and the less than happy side effect that it was quite difficult to actually sew the splatters and they don’t fold well at all; also it, how shall I say this? presents an Ironing Challenge, to say the very least.

 See, obviously linen requires the hottest setting on your iron but the plastic splatters turn into soft and sticky, glue-y spots that stick to your iron and everything else when they’re subjected to heat.  I’ve pondered it for four years; four! since I bought this lovely stuff from the Fabric Store in Melbourne! wondering what I could make with it that would do it justice, finally hit upon this.  Also, reflected all over again upon how super silly it is to leave lovely fabric languishing in le stash when I bought it for the fun of making it up and wearing it, what the heck.
Happily, I think it did work out!  🙂

During construction I pressed either using my ironing cloth or on the wrong side of the fabric, and had to peel it off the cloth or the ironing board each time! and wondered if the splatter dot situation, while a cool concept and I visually I loved it! was in practice going to be a massive pain to iron.
Well I’ve washed and ironed it once now and fortunately I don’t think the dots are going to be a problem.  I ironed the dress inside out and even though it does stick together it’s no biggie to just peel the layers apart while turning it right side out again.  And the plastic does cool and dry hard again pretty quickly. Thank goodness.

The hem line has a tuck around the bottom.  This is actually a crafty fix of a cutting booboo.  You see, when I made my first dress F I had screenprinted my own fabric and I forgot to note that I had actually lengthened the pattern pieces to fit my print.  Actually I find it good practice to add by default like, at least 10cm in length to any dress from a Japanese pattern book.  Anyway, this time I carefreely cut out the pattern as is… result; scandalously short dress.  Darnit.
Fortunately I had enough fabric to cut extra lengthening bits and sewed them on to the bottom, hiding the joining seam up inside this tuck.  You can’t see the join on the inside because I turned up the hem long enough to enclose everything.  The hem is hand-stitched using invisible fell-stitching, and I caught the upper fold of the tuck in the same stitching to secure all the layers together.
Problem solved!
In fact, I have to say that this is a very simple dress which belies its unexpected difficulty-factors! but I am so pleased that it all came together quite happily and satisfactorily in the end.  🙂

Details:
Dress; dress F from the Stylish Dress book, by Yoshiko Tsukiori, plastic splattered linen
Hat; Vogue 8844, ivory corduroy, details and my review of this pattern here

… new dress!
I feel like I’ve been wearing the same little summer dresses over and over and over.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that! because I like them all   🙂  but a few of my standbys are getting on their last legs and the wardrobe needed new blood.  And there’s still a lot of summer to go.
I’ve been eyeing off dress E from the Stylish Dress book by Yoshiko Tsukiori ever since I got the book, in fact it was my Sew Bossy dress of choice for Reana Louise!  I loved hers and alway wanted to make one for myself too… one day.  The book is chokka with patterns for cute and practical little summer dresses that are absolutely perfect for our hot Australian summers, and this pattern is yet another goodie although I ended up making quite a few little changes.  Some due to my fabric;  a red/cream cotton gingham with a very slightly crinkly, seersucker-y texture, from Spotlight.
The front of dress F has five box pleats in the bodice and I was determined for the gingham pattern to match perfectly on the front.
Please excuse and/or feel free to skip the following; where I boast obnoxiously about my perfect pattern matching.  Yes, there are five box pleats up there *insert smug self back-patting*

There’s only one way to pattern match to that degree, and that’s to pin the flippin’ heck out of it.  I pinned at each and every check intersection, basted each pleat and inspected for flaws obsessively before the final sew.  I’m pretty pleased, even to my eyes I can’t see the joins at all.  And I’m pretty fussy  😛

Matching the pleats into the gingham weave like that necessitated cutting the front piece to a different width from the pattern piece.
It’s not hard to work out how to do this, the only criteria is that the front fits onto the front facing piece once pleated.  A little quality time with the tape measure and some mental calculations to exercise the ol’ brain cells a bit.  Each box pleat is 6 checks wide, with 4 checks in between each one and it turned out that the overall width of my front piece is slightly narrower than the pattern piece.

Other changes:  gathering looked terrible in this bouncily textured fabric, so I cut the back skirt straight, eliminating gathering into the bodice.  The sides were slimmed down considerably, tapering out to 10cm off each side at the hem, I added in-seam side pockets instead of patch pockets.  I did put the little cap sleeves in to start with but they just felt a bit too “busy” in gingham, so I unpicked them off and finished the armholes with a bias-cut strip inside instead.  The pattern is quite short so I lengthened my dress by 10cm, with a little tuck at the original hemline, just for fun  🙂

So yeah, I have nothing much more to say!
I’ve made a cool and breezy, simple and uncomplicated little summer dress.  I love it already  🙂

Oh, and Gabrielle and I are twinsies today!  I had nearly finished this dress and was amazed when Gabrielle posted a picture of her red gingham dress on instagram!  great minds thinking alike, of course  🙂  check out Gabrielle’s gorgeous gingham dress here

Dress; dress E from the Stylish Dress book by Yoshiki Tsukiori, red cotton gingham
Thongs; Havaianas