Purple Patchwork Dress

This week I finished making my sixth item of home-produced clothing (if you include pyjamas... which I definitely do). Anybody who knew me during my look-like-a-boy phase (that is, between the ages of about 4 and maybe around 16) would be astonished to discover that two of these items are skirts and that the sixth itself is, in fact, a dress.

A dress!

Now, I'm very excited about this dress. So excited that I'm choosing to disregard all the probably quite shocking sewing techniques I employed, instead boldly and gleefully posting photos on the internet. I'm finding that it's hard not to be proud of an item of clothing you've made yourself - even if you know it's really messy on the inside, or the waistline is wonky, or it only has one pocket because you forgot to include them in the original plan and couldn't work out how to add one to the side that doesn't have a seam.

Technically I believe this is what they call a 'refashion', because I made I the dress out of an old patchwork skirt I bought ages ago (on a college chapel weekend away in Sheringham) but didn't wear very much - partly because the waist was actually rather tight, and partly because full-length skirts don't get on well with bicycles. In fact I wore it so infrequently that I couldn't really find any old photos of me in it - this was about the only one, taken on Northern Cross in 2010.

Anyhow, I decided that the skirt had gone unworn long enough (and my sewing craze had gone on long enough) for me to try turning it into something else. I wanted to try making a dress anyway. So I got my t-shirt pattern (drafted with the help of Design-It-Yourself Clothes by Cal Patch), found the best parts of patchwork at the top of the skirt and chopped away. Now, this pattern was drafted for use with jersey fabric (nice and stretchy). My old skirt was made of a woven fabric (not stretchy at all). My clever solution to this discrepancy? Add an extra centimetre or so and hope it'll still go on over my head! This I did - I could get it on (just) but it looked very shapeless. So I improvised some darts (no idea if I put them in the right place) and could still, just, get it on. So far so good... I had a bodice part, unfinished, without sleeves. Never having made or used facings before, I decided to try them. Using a pencil (shock!) I traced round the neckline and armholes of my front and back bodice onto an old white sheet that my mum gave me... a bit of cutting... a bit of sewing, clipping and pressing... and hey presto, facings! I don't know if I did it properly though: the armhole facings always stick out when I put it on and I have to tuck them back in.

Next challenge: join the shoulder parts together. If I had planned in advance I could have made the strap parts longer than they needed to be and fastened them with a button (making it easier to don the dress). If I had cut and sewn extra neatly, then the straps would have been the same width and I could at least have sewn them together neatly. But no... I pondered for ages (overnight in fact!) before realising that I could sew a curved end to each strap (with the strap/facing combo inside out) then join them together with zig-zag stitching on top. What can I say? It... works. I'm too impatient too spend ages getting it to look perfect, but it holds together.

All this and I still only had the bodice part. It was getting quite late on Monday evening when I suddenly decided that I had to finish the dress in time to wear it for work on Tuesday. Why, I'm not sure - I guess I knew I wouldn't really get any more sewing time until the following weekend. So I took the bottom part of the skirt, with hem still intact, and cut it in half (it was very wide). I made my first attempt at gathering (only partially successful, because of the patchwork catching too much on my threads), sewed a side seam and joined the skirt to the bodice. Yay! Finished!

Except, oh, what about the pockets? I hate not having pockets in my clothes - and especially when I'm at work, where my classroom is separate from the rest of the school and I need a key fob to get in or out of anywhere. So, now truly hurried as it was already past my bedtime, I ripped (and ripped really is the word) an original pocket out of one of my remaining skirt scraps. I (slightly more carefully) ripped open the single side seam of my skirt, spent quite a while puzzling how to place the pocket so that I could access it; so that no stitching would be visible from outside; and so that no holes would be left in the side of my dress. Finally I sewed it in, adding extra stitches for security at the top and bottom. Amazingly, it worked!

Trying my new dress on with delight, I completely failed to notice that the waist (and consequently the hem) was extremely wonky - I'd say there was a couple of centimetres difference between one side and the other. I noticed as I lay in bed that night, looking at my lovely new dress hanging on a hook on the door. "I don't think the waistline is quite straight," I said. Noah's reply: "Oh, I thought you knew that. I thought it was meant to be like that. You know, like a kind of fairy dress."

I've been wearing it anyway - and feeling very happy indeed :)