Gah! Where has the time gone? I have been sewing a tiny bit but somehow not enough to finish a blog post? For 6 months? That's never happened before unless I was literally unable to get to a sewing machine.
Anyway, I borrowed a few different editions of LMV a long time ago and traced a few patterns. Here is this one. Unfortunately the only way to access it is by finding a copy of that magazine. I was kind enough to my future self to add the seam allowances too, so basically the traced patterns were ready to go. I've already made the Charlene sweatshirt which I thought was quite cool, though I sort of hate voluminous sleeves in real life.
This is a long tshirt dress with no remarkable features. I had traced size 34, which I presume is my size, and I could see by the lines on the pattern pieces that I'd given myself a good 1 cm seam allowance. I cropped the pattern as long as the length of my blue fabric.
I had schemed to use an amazing little tiny metre of Pucci fabric...so first I followed the pattern and made this nice swan dress for a friend. I was too lazy to add pockets. The swan fabric is rayon and it's from one of my European binge shops about 18 months ago, I don't love it, so I was happy to offload it onto someone else. I liked the fit of the dress, but it's SO A-line. Too much for a tshirt dress. If you made it full length that would be a lot of fabric. Maybe nice to swish around, but anyway. Because of the higher neckline it does not Show All, unlike the Closet Core Ebony dress, but I would say it's only a bit less voluminous. I didn't choose that pattern because I thought it would be harder to balance the pattern across the raglan shoulders, and because the wide shape is the point of the pattern so removing all that volume seemed like a bad idea.
So I retraced the pattern flat instead of on the fold. I laid out my tiny metre of fabric on the floor (my kitchen floor isn't a great cutting space but unfortunately the carpets aren't crappy enough to rip up yet) and laid out my new pattern pieces onto it. Then I proceeded to basically crop off the A line until it fit the fabric. I cropped off a lot! EEEK! I played around with the fabric layout as much as I could but had to give in and use the geometric border, which I would have liked to avoid.
I was overjoyed by the results. I again didn't add pockets, this time because I didn't want to mess up the line of the dress. I have stashed this insanely cool fabric for about 18 months and it's been on my mind the whole time. I don't think another garment would have suited the heavy rayon drape and stretch as well as a tshirt dress, and it's obviously the best canvas for a print of this nature. I also managed to keep things like mountain tips off my nipples, which is a grand success. The geometric bits are all on the same side, and the other side matches up harmoniously. Overall, a win for a special stash fabric.
