Roberts Wood Flower Patchwork dress, a Frocktails adventure

 I have been wildly in love with this pattern since it came out. 

But in love like unrequited love.

There was the first big hump: what fabric could cope with so many unfinished edges?  I spent a year mulling this over.  I reckoned it had to be silk, maybe organza.  Something with body, so the flower petals would stick out.  The pattern consists of 3 separate sets of flowers, so you can use 3 different fabrics and you won't end up with the same fabric next to itself - or of course you can just use one fabric, or two. 

I got too curious and bought the pattern and had to recover from that for another year.  Both the financial hit, and the 5 tightly rolled up A0 pages with nothing on them but...flowers.  Hundreds of flowers.  The size is built into the pattern- and I was confident with the smallest size as it coincides neatly with my measurements.  The dress is a bit oversized, but I wouldn't have wanted it smaller, the neck hole fits just right.  It feels quite substantial around me I think that's because of the three-dimensional-ness of it. 

I bought three colours of silk organza and stuck it at the bottom of my stash.  I moved house a few times (always a good reason to procrastinate.)  I changed jobs and didn't get to sew enough...

And then moved to Auckland, a city with a Frocktails!  I put this dress on my Make 12 list for the year, deadline: Frocktails in early September.  I also reorganised my stash and thought actually the cranberry red dupioni silk, previously purchased for something else, might be a perfect fit for this.  The organza idea just didn't feel right.  Months passed and trips came and went and suddenly I actually only had two weeks until Frocktails.  

I spent two days cutting out paper flowers while my partner watched.  This improved when I realised I had an audiobook to attend to.  I thought I would stick the flowers onto the silk, cut roughly around them and then cut more precisely one by one.  To make this possible I bought the sharpest little embroidery scissors in Spotlight, a new micro-olfa cutter, and a small pink cutting mat, plus three spools of matching thread, and I hijacked the kitchen table.  

This phase took another 2 days.  And catastrophe then struck: a pile of flowers were neglected on the sewing room table...a RANDOM cross section of flowers from the three different colour ways.  And I had run out of fabric.  An emergency trip to The Fabric Store - a very lucky grab at a bolt of red dupioni silk - the last of the dupioni in stock - and an early morning trip to the laundromat later whew, all the flowers are accounted for, and hopefully the different shade of red will add texture.  Four days to go. 

I quickly realised it was better to pin the flowers to the silk for the rough cutting phase.  I just needed to get them into a pile of flowers, it didn't matter if they were a bit askew on their individual fabric pieces.  An unexpected participant joined the fun: Paivi LOVED all the excitement happening in her personal playground and joined the sweatshop with enthusiasm.  She particularly liked all the sharp objects, and unpinned bits of paper...

Cutting the flowers out on my new surgical desk: 2 days. 

I now had 2 days to sew the dress, plus the day of Frocktails which was after night shift so I could do some sewing, but nothing too strenuous.  It ended up being the bindings, done on the day from that original organza.  Organza is a terrible thing to cut and also to sew on the bias and was a horrible choice to use for bindings, so if you look closely, they are a bit messy.  

The insides! There are many micro holes at the corners where my sewing lines weren't perfect, but you can't see any of this in the dress when worn.

 

I showed up at frocktails slightly glassy eyed post night shift, and with a few faint chalk marks here and there on my dress - but DONE!  and it was a perfect way to celebrate a project that ran my life for about two weeks, while also being a kind of sanity-saver and distraction from some simultaneous health drama.  To give you some scale: I consumed 4 audiobooks during the simple parts of cutting these flowers out. 

And you know, I would do it again.  I would actually use fabric scraps and just not worry about the fraying edges and make a wildly ridiculous patchwork version of this dress.  Also, it has heaps of room and needs pockets.  I was absolutely not going there this time around but I see no reason to skip it on a future attempt.   

Demeter dress, the palate cleaner turned binge

Last summer: I had just gotten back from a trip and was going to travel for work.  I really wanted a few extra items with me, so I made this while visiting my best sewing friend Tessa. The fabric is rayon from Otara in Auckland, from The Fabric Shop, and they still had it in stock when I went back the first time but I didn't take seriously a remake of this dress, and unsurprisingly now it's sold out.

I started out with size 4 and I shortened the waist by 1cm.  I didn't want to overdo modifications!  The fabric is really so exquisite, I love the pattern.  It is not a challenging make at all, very standard dress, easily done in my one day (I also made some underwear.) 

The dress is very wearable, rayon is a pretty decent match for it, but I think the pattern can handle more substantial fabrics. That is what inspired....a full on many-month (endless and painful) sewing binge while I failed to balance my new work and travel schedule with any free time for sewing.

Though it's quite similar to the Hinterland in theory, the high low shape of the bodice is subtly very different and rather more sophisticated. I love it whereas it took me awhile to like the Hinterland at all and I struggled to find the right size for me. 

However: the wearing ease on this is huge.  So much that it felt like it was falling off me side to side off my neck. And then I gave it away to a friend before I got proper pictures, so this is what I have left from my Instagram post: 

I moved on to a size 2.

I was able to cut down the pattern, just two little edges on the middle neckband and sides of the front bodice had to be creatively reimagined but I didn't have to reprint it.

I also cut off another 2" of the hem, as it just seemed too long to me.  I know it looks fine on, but I felt like I was swimming in it. This second version was absolutely a muslin that I was going to give away.

The striped second version has a lot more body to it.  I guess it's the combination of the shorter length and the fabric itself, which is tencel jacquard, rather than the super lightweight rayon.  I feel a bit silly with a dress that puffs out so much around me - I might undo the 1" bodice shortening!  I do think this length is more proportional. The fit in the shoulders is a lot better, the dress no longer slides side to side on my chest.  In the photos, this looks like it fits properly but I see that it hangs straight down from the bust, which the rayon didn't do as much.

Then I made that tactical error of buying quilting cotton. Ugh!!  I thought I had actually cut off the hem of the pattern, but I didn't. This version is thus size 2, full length, with a full length bodice as I undid the shortening on it. It is horrific as an adult dress, but useful anyway to test out the size.  However I was pretty over the dress at that moment!  It was surprising to see it looks good in the pictures since it feels really silly on me.  In the front, I like it, but in the back, the waistline does seem too low.  I also prefer the shorter length of the previous version.  

 

Made the tank top. It is theoretically very quick but the bias binding is a pain and I was so very tired of making these at this point...

And then the tank dress, no modifications, as I thought this could go to a friend who is longer in the waist than I am, and after the mushrooms version I wondered if a slightly lower gather line in the front would be better.  I made the tactical error of rushing into this right after the tank top without trying the tank on - but I wasn't really planning to keep the dress anyway. 

The tank style is too tight on me in the usual ways: the back is too narrow, my bias binding gapes no matter what I do, and the armholes are too high.  These all have easy fixes (except the bias tape issue).  The tank top is also very short.  The dress is too long for my taste but quite nice and floaty since it's silk - though in the photos it is floofier than it feels and I find the top to skirt ratio to be really offputting.  

Having finally made what feels like an endless list of this dress I am going to sit on it for awhile.  I liked the rayon first version a lot, though I felt like I was swimming in it I also adored wearing it.  I don't feel currently inspired to pull out any deep stash for this as most of my deep stash is Liberty Tana Lawn or lengths of silk.  I do think the blue jacquard is probably the best fit though I could do with the full length bodice on it.  Alternately it might be fun to do a serious redraw of the tank top dress with quite deep armholes and of course a cropped skirt.  My original feeling that a lot of body would work has not really proven to be true, I think the really floppy rayon created the best silhouette.