This is the last thing I made in 2014 — I put the finishing touches on it on December 31st.
I cut the front and back pieces so the pattern on the fabric kinda matched up — I’m a zebra if you look at me sideways from the right. I love the mix of horizontal and vertical irregular stripes.
The pattern is Burda 6901, a very easy dress pattern consisting of only 4 pieces: front, back, sleeve, neckband.
I made some modifications to it; the original pattern has ruching/gathering at the waist, but I found that didn’t work with this fabric, which doesn’t drape that well. It’s a wool-blend with 2-way stretch I found at King Textiles a couple of months ago. (I always found the term 2-way stretch confusing; it implies the fabric stretches in both directions, but that’s 4-way stretch. 2-way stretch only stretches in one direction, from selvedge to selvedge.) So I ripped out the side seams to remove the ruching and instead folded over the extra 4 inches at the waist to make it look a bit like a top and skirt. This isn’t perfect but I preferred this method over just sewing a waist seam.
I had to tighten up the tops of the sleeves as the neckline was gaping, and I did a simple fold-over neckline instead of using a bias-strip collar. I cut away a bit of the neckline at the front so it wasn’t quite so high.
During the photo shoot I bent over to move something and snapped every single one of the hand-sewn tacks I used to keep the fold-over waist in place at the back! Next task is to find some fine elastic thread to redo the tacks with…hopefully that will work.
Frivolous At Last 
I love the print on your dress! It’s beautiful 🙂
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Thanks! I love the print, too!
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Looks great!! That is very fun fabric!
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Thank you! The fabric was one of those lucky finds…you know, the kind that keep you going back to fabric stores for a regular troll even though you already have way more fabric stashed than you are logically going to sew in a lifetime??
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Love the fabric! The dress looks wonderful.
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Thanks, Janet!
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Thanks for the inspiration. Love the fabric. You and your dress look great!!!!
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Thanks very much, Barbara!
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I just received a huge boxful of this fabulous fabric. Had to have it! It’s definitely me in all ways. Now I can make a “collection”. I can’t wait to get started on this. I am SO HAPPY you posted this.
I wonder how this washes? Have you laundered your fabric? Before sewing? After?
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Hi Barbara! Did you order it from King Textiles? Or did you find the same fabric somewhere else? Anyway, I prewashed in the machine in cold water and hung to dry — didn’t appear to be any shrinkage, definitely no colour change, and no pilling. I haven’t yet washed it post-sewing, but I wore it this week and intend to handwash it this weekend. (I’m sure it could stand machine washing but I don’t think the hand-sewing I did to keep the fold-over waistline in place would.) I’ll let you know how it comes out. The only thing I’m worried about is whether it retains odor in the armpits…I presume it has a fair amount of synthetic content so this may be a problem. Full report to come! In the meantime, please share with me what you plan to sew out of it — I’d love to see.
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Yup. I got on the phone with King Textiles last week. They had a big sale. Lucky me. Had to order a huge number of yards to get them to mail it. But when I think about all that I want to make, I’ll probably use it up easily. A big japanesy jacket. Well, more Eskandar-like which I may quilt to a Kasha lining. Pants. A dress almost to the ankles similar to the Lily Linen dress on the Tessuti website. I’m gaga for that dress. A big top to wear under the big jacket. That’s about 11 yards right there. And an infinity scarf with a twist. It’s always great to have some in reserve because I love it so!!! That way I can have my cake and eat it too.
Love your look, your clothes and your writing, in short – your blog.
And for the tip to King Textiles, thanks!
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Wow, such exciting plans! Do you have a blog yourself? Because I sure would love to see all these projects come to fruition. If you don’t have a blog then please at least promise to share some photos with me, or do a guest blog post here…that would be really great.
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I don’t have a blog – I’m too much of a techno nit-wit. I sew in spurts – even if I were not a techno nit-wit, I don’t know that I would have enough material to sustain a blog but I do love reading other people’s blogs
I will certainly send pix.
I’ll launder 1 meter of fabric this weekend to see how it behaves with Vancouver water, the detergent I use and the dryer sheets/fabric softener.
I did a burn test as the man at King Textiles said he did. He said it was mostly wool with some polyester. I think it’s mostly polyester with some wool. I actually hate wearing polyester because it makes me so hot but I’m hoping this has enough wool to ameliorate that effect.
And as the brave women in Italy say to each other: Avanti! Corraggio!
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