Plaid Flannel #1

Happy New Year!  New year, new project!

Technically, I made this dress just before the new year, and wore it once already, but I'm wearing it again today, so I think it counts for the first project of the new year.  In any case, it's my blog and I can do what I want to.  ☺

I've been wanting a plaid flannel dress for several years now, but my last attempt a year ago was an utter disaster, and pretty much put me off working with plaids of the flannel variety.  My mistake then was choosing a cheap fabric that was badly off-grain, but the experience was sufficiently frustrating to make me never want to make a plaid flannel dress again.

Enter Robert Kaufman's Mammoth flannel.  I've been eying this stuff for a long time, and saw some lovely things made with it on the interwebs.  When the color way I'd saved came back in stock at fabric.com, I decided to take the plunge and just make it up already (as an added bonus, there was a discount for ordering three yards, which is my usual dress yardage).

I confess, I made no attempt to pattern match on the side or shoulder seams.  I probably could have done it with some better attention, but it is the winter break, all four kids are home, and I've spent the last two weeks getting interrupted approximately 5,246 times a day.  I felt I was doing well to complete the dress and alter my rust corduroy skirt again, which has gotten too big on me lately.

I made my pleats slightly looser, using a 3/8" seam allowance rather than my usual 5/8" because I knew I would always be wearing an undershirt with this dress, and the undershirt that goes best is a thick waffle henley, so I wanted a little extra ease.  

I also gathered the back slightly looser to the elastic, and I'm really quite pleased with the fit of this dress.  It is so comfortable and warm, especially with my wool-cotton blend cowl!  I made it for the kids, but none of them wanted it, so I took it back and have been happily wearing it the last couple of weeks.  I realized recently that my uniform for the fall and winter has fallen into something like this outfit: undershirt, dress, knitted neckwear, simple earrings, cotton tights, and tall boots.  Sometimes a cardigan over the top.  It feels like me.

I decided I need more knitted neck warmers in my life, but my knitting queue is a bit long at the moment, so I'll probably get to them this summer so I can use them next cold season.  Neck warmers are great traveling projects because they are small and require little concentration, so I like to take them on trips or to keep my hands busy when visiting with friends.

I made my pocket on the bias for some visual interest, and I did line it up exactly on the center orange line of the dress.  It was the only pattern matching I did, but I made it count since it is front and center!

The texture of this flannel is rather interesting--it is almost crepe-like.  I really like it.  I like it so much, that, as the title of this post suggests, I have another in the works!  

I recently went through my fabric stash and made better sewing plans for spring and summer, and realized that I really wanted another winter dress or two.  There are at least two dresses/sweaters in my current rotation that I'm kind of meh about, and either aren't warm enough for really cold temps or don't fit the way I prefer, so I might rotate them out or retire them.  (I am also considering another canvas dress from some Cotton + Steel fabric, but might hold that for next year)

Another discovery I made when I was writing my 2016 Wrap post was that the main problem with my summer clothing was that it was all too light.  The clothes that I wore the most, felt the best in, and generally was happiest with, were darker shades in light weight fabrics.  I wore the Blueberry dress and Lily Pad linen dress a ton this summer.  I like having one or two lighter colored dresses in my summer, but not a whole closet full.  That realization helped me to make some changes to my sewing plans for the summer, as well as to critically examine my summer rotation as a whole and make some good decisions about it.

Here's to 2017!