Lepidoptera dress

I know, I know, a lot of posting from me in the past week.  Can you stand another?  This is the butterfly dress I made from the Cotton+Steel lawn that I got the bolt end from fabric.com.

 The fabric was on crazy good sale (almost half price!) and I ended up getting more than three yards for the price of two.  I'm not exactly sure what drew me to this fabric, but I do like the colors very much, and it goes well with my teal-mint-lemon-orange-rust color palette this year.

 Not much to say about this one, because I pretty much followed the same script as my Woodland Birds dress: shorter sleeves, narrower skirt sweep, waist casing and tie, 1" hem.  I think I skipped the bias at the neckline on this too (as well as the Woodland version. 

Lawn and pre-made bias don't seem to play very well together over time).  I just made a baby hem around the neckline and sleeves by rolling it under a couple times and pinning.  Pesky, but a nice finish.

I dig it with my pale yellow amber necklace and coordinating earrings.  I'm finding this year I'm wearing my regular jewelry with my summer clothes, instead of my summery kitchy jewelry, and I'm liking it better, because it feels more like the winter parts of me that I miss in the summer.

I thrifted a short-waisted pointelle cotton sweater in a bright aqua-teal color that goes really well with this dress too.  I wore the combo for traveling and the pullover sweater was perfect--I'm not feeling any of my cardigans so much right now.  What is wrong with me?  (Answer: everything.  And nothing).

So, that's it for new makes for now.  I did make a linen Rose skirt for the fall that I'm saving to wear then, so will show that in a few months.

Woodland Birds

This is my second iteration of my current summer dress pattern (S1080, but seriously redrafted).  I've had this cotton lawn from Robert Kaufman in my bin for a couple of years, having received it as a birthday gift right about the time I no longer had a dress pattern I liked.  

 So I prewashed it and waited for the right pattern to present itself.  (I have a length of rayon from the same birthday that is also waiting).  After the relative success of my Bluebird dress refashion, I decided to have a go at this fabric. 

I made a few changes to the pattern based on my fiddling with it last autumn, plus my experience with the linen skirts I made recently for sweep and fall.  (Incidentally, that green linen dress did not survive the fall, as it washed and wore badly, and the back elastic proved uncomfortable over time, as well as distorting the fabric at the side seams.  I considered trying that iteration with this fabric, but ultimately decided to go with this version instead as I thought it would wear better).

I cut 1/2" off the sleeve edges to start with, and did a baby hem instead of using bias.  I also narrowed the front skirt in a wedge from the bottom to match the sweep of my redrafted Rose skirt pattern, and did the same for the back skirt (which is just slightly wider than the front).  

I also made the whole thing significantly shorter and put in a 1" hem.  The waist casing seems to work best about 5" below the underarm curve, and I made a 1" finished casing, plus a 1/2" tie, both with 2" wide strips of fabric.  

 I'd like to figure out how to add inseam pockets without messing with the skirt flow, but that is a project for another day, as the current pattern is very quick to sew up.  

I've worn it twice now, and it is fine.  Not super-fantastic, but fine for summer, and an okay-change from my separates.  The print seems grown up enough for me, and the silhouette good enough.  The lawn is lovely and cool, and it doesn't bind around the middle, so there's that.  #horseshoesandhandgrenades