I actually united this fabric with this pattern in my head a long time ago. It's nothing special, just a cotton lawn from Spotlight. Not special except it is covered in *parrots* I am a bird person, which you might not have known, and when Spotlight had a huge number of parrot prints I had to struggle and limit myself to 2 lest I end up with 37 bird prints in my wardrobe (the other smaller cut was made into my stunning success of a short Summer fling dress, here).
I knew it
wouldn't have any extra amazing drape etc but it seemed like a fun
fabric to try out Axis with and because I love it there was a greater
chance of my wearing it no matter what. Frocktails was coming, I was
about to travel and sewing-time poor, and this was likely to be my Frocktails dress because of
timing limits on the other ideas I wanted to explore.
Rarely these days, this pattern has lots of blog reviews! Hurray! I read Fiona's blog and based on that I did a bunch of pattern adjustments (possibly too many, arg.)
Cut size 2 at the top and tapering out to size 3 for the skirt, A line skirt (I'm no pencil skirt girl) On this: really I could just have done size 3. The armscye is a bit small. Also the A line skirt is a joke, it's really practically a pencil skirt.
Remove 1" from the waist of the top, and taper a little chunk out of the back strap to fix my sloping shoulders (that taper was a perfect fix, the shoulder fit is stupendous).
I reckoned I would skip the little hole for the tie to go through. It looked too airy and I'm happy to overlap.
So I made this for Frocktails. I found the instructions surprisingly useless. I found this to be far less fun than all those reviews suggest. I had a lot of weird intersections that didn't line up. I put together the top, fine, put together the skirt, ok, except it doesn't really tell you how you will finish it, so due to possibly a lack of foresight regarding the seam allowance, as I was folding over the waistband to hide my zip, it became uneven, and weirdly the folded over waistband had to totally diverge from a nice fold in order to meet the side seam. This means no easy stitching in the ditch to get the inside held down. On one side I hand sewed it. On the other I left it flapping because there was nothing to attach it to.
It wasn't really clear either exactly what goes on top: the skirt or the top? One overlaps the other, but how? I overlapped the top over the skirt. When I put this on, either because of shortening the bodice, or because of the skirt actually being too snug, or for other mystery reasons, the skirt comes up to the small of my back. I mean, fully. So, unlike with everyone else, if I just tie the ties in the back, they cover my bra because they are so high up. This therefore feels like a very enclosed dress. In a good way, like wearing a snuggly outfit that is protecting you. But strange, considering what everyone else says about it.
Also I added pockets
Which then immediately bagged out because - hips. So I had to sew them down, and they are mostly invisible, but initially I panicked a little. Then, after all that drama, I forgot to take any proper photos, despite having identified the very sweetest spot in my house to take beautiful well, lit pictures...so I only have the ones I took with my phone.
After making this dress, including the emergency trip to The Fabric Store for contrasting fabric as I ran out, and all the thinking that had to go along with it, I was severely unenthused. I did think it would do for frocktails (and it did). I wore it to work to get some reviews, and people like it, but I feel strange in it, like I'm trying to hard. A friend of mine who is very picky messaged me that she wanted it, so I decided to wear it to frocktails then send it on to its new home. This has all happened and everyone is happy.
However I had expected to really like the Axis dress, and in the end I would not make it again.
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