I think a lot of makers have the same habit of buying supplies before they know what they will do with them. It might be because it's on sale or it's a supply that's hard to come by, but for me, it's usually because I'm so taken by the beauty of the item that I know I'll regret not getting it. I think, "I'll find something to use this for, for sure." And then, it sits in my stash until one day, it comes tumbling out of the closet to remind me of its existence.
I fell in love with this fabric when I saw it on Etsy last year. It's like an impressionist painting... so vibrant and colourful and rich. I bookmarked it and looked at it for a long time until I finally decided to bite the bullet and buy it. This after I had had some success with making a couple of dresses, and so I was feeling ambitious. When it arrived, I realized that it was much more slippery of a fabric than I'd ever worked with before: a rayon challis. And that put the brakes on for me pretty hard, because I was too afraid I was going to wreck it:
I spent some time trying to figure out what to do with it, because I'd spent enough money on it to be a real shame if it never got used for anything. I figured something with such lovely drape should be used for something made on the bias. Making something "on the bias" means that, instead of the weave of the fabric hanging straight up and down, you cut the pieces diagonally at a 45 degree angle. This allows the fabric to drape and skim your body without having to make too many darts and seams to fit it to your shape. I searched around for a pattern and eventually settled on
Grace, a pattern from Seamwork.
So, great... I saved the pattern sometime last October, and then ruminated upon it all winter. Then I took out the fabric last spring... and chickened out. But then, I ordered an organic cotton mattress pad cover by mistake (I thought I was buying the actual mattress pad... no wonder it was so cheap). It was soft and drapey and cool, so I figured I may as well use the fabric to make a muslin version of this dress.
A muslin is a practice version of a garment that you make out of something inexpensive so that you can figure out any issues with the pattern or with the fit before actually cutting into your intended fabric. Having never made anything on the bias before, I really wanted to understand what made it so different... and boy, did I ever learn a lot.
Firstly, you can't save time by cutting the pieces on folded fabric. You have to cut every single piece separately. And you have to change the direction of each front and back piece so that they aren't all cut in the same direction, otherwise the garment will corkscrew around you. I spent a lot of time
reading articles and watching videos to understand this. I finally got the courage up and cut out my pieces...
... except I skipped the step where you're supposed to cut out duplicates of your pattern pieces and lay them all out all at once. I figured I could just wing it and turn the pattern pieces and cut them as I went. And it kind of worked... except that I ended up with some wonky pieces for the lining that didn't quite match up, and the back seams don't all match up either, and I had to do a lot of fixing to get it to sit properly on me. But I mean... I got a dress. And it was pretty cute:
The thing was I didn't really want a white dress for anything. It's a recipe for disaster: think spaghetti dinners and spilled wine. So, I decided that I may as well try to dye it a different colour. I pulled out a kit that I bought from Maiwa a few years ago (another supply I thought I'd use one day) and read up on how to scour, mordant, and dye cotton fabric.
I pulled out another thing I bought "just in case" a few years ago: a big hot plate and stock pot that I thought would work well for dyeing fabric and yarn:
I spent the next few days doing my best impression of a witch at her cauldron:
And played around with Boyle's formula for pressure to get three gallons of liquid to boil as quickly as possible:
I rinsed and spun and dried and mixed and soaked and simmered and drained and rinsed some more:
And ended up with a purple dress. I was actually aiming for red, but I guess I overdid it somehow. Still, it's lovely and rich and I'm super happy with it. And I also dyed my leftover cotton, so at least I can play around with that some time as well.
The colour isn't even, but I think that's what comes of not turning it more often. Still, I think it's not bad, and I kind of like the texture it gives:
Meanwhile, in between all of the mixing and simmering and bubbling, and having learned my lesson from skipping steps, I went out and got some brown paper and duplicated my pattern pieces (like I was supposed to) and laid them all out at once (like I was supposed to) and cut out my pieces one by one on the "good fabric." That went ok, but I didn't love crawling around on the floor to pin and cut them out, but these are the sacrifices you make, I guess:
Other things I learned include:
- not handling the pieces too much so that they won't lose shape
- staystitching ALL of the edges, also to preserve their shape
- how much I hate finishing seams, so I learned how to sew French seams, and now that I know how to do that, I'm not sure I want to ever go back to doing it any other way!
- figuring out the right tension to sew at so that my light, airy fabric didn't turn into a rippled mess (I actually had to stick a piece of masking tape over the buttons on my machine to remind me to reset it every time I turned it on).
And after all of that: I made a beautiful dress:
I am super duper proud of myself and I absolutely love both of these finished garments. Look at me! I can sew!
Except man: that was a lot of work. I think I'll go do something else for a while. Have a great week!
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