Hits and misses

So as I mentioned in my last post, during last weeks Kids Clothes Week I found myself frantically sewing a frock for myself to wear to a Hens day. In fact, I managed to sew two frocks! One was a great hit, the other, a terrible failure.

I think I'll start with the hit, and it's a hit on so, so many levels!!

To begin with, I used a lovely, small piece of fabric already in my stash (yay!!!), I found some matching bias tape (which I'd inadvertantly purchased some time ago thinking it was black) and I managed to work with an existing pattern and style I'm comfortable with, to make this:

Pretty cool huh? The fabric is so, so awesome - I can't believe I hadn't used it earlier. It's a silk cotton blend from a cheap fabric shop, My Hung. I think it was only $8 per meter and I only purchased 1 meter - what was I thinking!!

Here's a close up of the fabric, it's dark navy with a teal, crayon-like leaf swirl and sillouettes of animals and leaves in beige. Can you see all the animals? fox, squirrel, bird, rabbit?? So cool!

I loosely based the dress on Simplicity 2586, the Cynthia Rowley tunic with no sleeves, but as I only had a meter of fabric, I didn't have enough to make bias trim for the neck and arms. I only just had enough for a front and back panel, and the pockets, though one is cut sideways but it's inside, so you can't see it.

Because I didn't have enough fabric to make the bias trim, I used commercial bias tape and undersewed it, like in this tutorial. I also pleated the front neckline as I knew this would come up a bit better when sewn down by the bias tape.

The red sash was made just as my friend was collecting me - eek! It's just a couple of strips of red fabric that just happen to perfectly match my red, strappy wedges! As you can probably tell I'm pretty happy with this dresss just a little more length in the hem to make it a little longer for teaching. The planets just seemed to align making it all work, which was really important given I finished the dress late the night before and the sash just as I was running out the door.

Unfortuanely this success didn't come without some cost. You see, I strayed quite considerably from my fabric comfort zone while trying to make Simplicity 2360. I've been dying to make this frock for a while, and even have fabric set aside, but when I saw a discounted, satiny border print at Spotlight on sale for $6 a meter I snapped it up thinking I might be able to get it to work. Boy was I wrong!

The dress actually photographs better than it looks in real life!! The red ribbon is just there so that it doesn't look like so much like a big sack. The fabric was TERRIBLE!!! Really tricky to work with and had a really unusual stretch (up/down, rather than side/side). I also only purchased 1.5 meters, meaning there was only just enough to cut the pattern pieces, not including the pockets, and meaning I wasn't able to add the flounces.
So while the fabric is terrible and the waist is too high for me, I think this pattern could still work and I will be trying it again, with the fabric that I've had set aside for a while now.