The Girl in the Grey Flannel Dress

The first make of the new year: my official favorite thing right now.  A grey flannel dress.  

I've been wanting a grey dress or skirt for a while, and I actually bought the fabric to make an Everyday Skirt, but I realized I would wear a dress more.  So I ordered another yard and a half of fabric and set to work.  The funny thing is that I think I ordered this fabric a year or two ago to make a dress or skirt or something, but ended up sending it back because I didn't like it at the time.

Not an issue now--I totally love this dress.  I have two sweaters that don't really go with my print dresses, and I also wanted something super neutral.  I seem to hit a point in every rotation where I just want solid neutrals.  (I bought a black knit dress from eshakti as a Christmas gift to myself earlier this month; it is basically the perfect dress)

But back to this dress.  The flannel is a nice thick woven flannel with a subtle black yarn through the gray, which I think gives it some visual interest.  I used my self-drafted small patch pocket but made no modifications to my basic block for this dress.  I didn't have quite enough black bias tape to get all the raw edges done in black, so the hem is faced in navy blue bias, but it is on the inside of the dress, so it doesn't matter.  I was more interested in finishing the dress to wear than waiting a week or more for black bias tape to arrive in the mail.

The fabric has nice body and holds its shape well over the course of the day--I've worn it a couple of times already and I really love it.  It is Robert Kaufman's Shetland flannel line.  I've sewn with it before (for a few skirts) and was pretty happy with the way it wore over time.  This dress is warm, comfortable, and perfect for layering.  Pretty much everything you'd want in a cold-weather garment.

We had a freak warm up for about 36 hours where it got up into the upper 50s after being in the low teens for a couple of weeks, so I temporarily put away my fur lined boots for rain boots and my gray ankle boots, but the day I took these photos, the temps had dropped back into the normal range and I was cold!  Thankfully I only had the boots on for the photos and then ran back inside to get warm!  The gray boots will keep until spring.  I'm happily back in my mukluks.

In domestic news, I've had various kids home for two weeks between snow days, early dismissals for ice, respiratory viruses, stomach flus, and fevers.  We are having some tile work done in the bathrooms this week and next, so there's that hassle too (although, to be fair, the workmen have been very pleasant and easy to have around; they even clean up after themselves!) And then there's Theophany on Friday.  

I took down all the Christmas decorations except for the tree yesterday.  It is prelit and I thought it looked nice without anything on it, so I decided to leave it up a few more days.  Boo and Ponchik are home today but I'm hopeful that everyone will be back to school tomorrow at least.

I'll be glad when things get back to some semblance of normal!