… aka; the design on page 18. I’m sorry I don’t know the correct English translation of its name; but it is the design I picked as my favourite from the very first flick through of this marvellous book. I apologise for the photo overload, like seriously! Sooo many photos sorry, and particularly after my oft-repeated rant about the vanity of zillions of photos of the same blinking outfit, in one post…. yikes. But this dress has several unusual little features, creating lots of different views that all needed picturing to appreciate them. I tried to keep the numbers down, honestly. The thing is; innovative fashion sometimes needs to be seen from lots of angles in order to appreciate all the little extras. So that makes it all OK now, yah? Still friends…?
And now guess what… this is the same dress….!
It is very easy to draft and make up, and I used a medium-weight cotton jersey. I fiddled about a bit with the shaping to get a more shapely middle section, because the dress as it is is rather sacklike. Oh, OK then, it is still pretty sacklike. My husband commented I looked “choir-y”. Thanks, sweetie. Actually, I’m very happy to add another costume-y thing into my wardrobe. Terri commented on my Futuristic Nun dress that she like the idea of me as a nun, and I have to secretly admit that I like the idea of myself as a nun too.. and a choirboy sounds like a pretty good sartorial aspiration too, methinks.
I also added length, which eventually got shaved off again, piecemeal. It was a toss-up between having an extremely loooong dress when worn one way, and a pretty short dress when worn the other way. I strived for the best compromise I could… and I think I can still wear this decently the short way, sans tights.
So, it has three openings at the top, which could be either sleeves or a neck-hole, whichever you prefer. These are funnel shaped.. and I decided to leave the edges raw here. Partially because my fabric was a little thicker than ideal, and to hem would have added some bulk and made the edges more defined. I decided this was not what I wanted here. When these sleeves/neckholes are acting as a scarf, you really want the whole area to be quite floppy and soft, and if I had hemmed or faced these areas they would have lost this quality… The lower edge is similarly left raw.
There are two additional holes at mid hip height. When you are wearing the dress at full length, they appear as sort of pocketholes, but without the actual pockets. So, you will need to wear either tights underneath the dress, as I have here, or a long camisole. That is unless you like for your undies to be on display… but hey, nobody’s judging … much.
When you use these holes as armholes, this is when the whole top bit becomes a kind of scarf. Pretty cool, huh? These lower holes needed proper edging, so I finished them with a narrow band overlocked in a ring, folded right sides together along the long midline, and then simply overlocked in place.
more side views…
And kbenco requested a view of the heel of Mum’s socks; so here it is. The stripes join in a kind of star design; yup, they are pretty clever, yes?
Details:
Dress; the design on p18, drafted from the Japanese pattern book Pattern Magic 3, by Tomoko Nakamichi; ivory cotton jersey
Tights; my own design; red cotton jersey here, my tutorial for drafting your own custom fit tights here
Socks; handknit by my mother, here
