Monday, July 21, 2025

A Floral Vogue 9299

I love the painted fabrics that Julia Allison Costs sells. I've purchased a few pieces because they speak to my creative heart. This is my third garment using her fabrics. The Sunshine Katie and The Mountain Range jacket that is still under construction.

Supplies ~

3 panels of a large floral print from Julia Allison Cost

12 5/8" buttons purchased in Lancaster, PA

A scrap of interfacing

2" twill tape

This was the "Inspiration" for my shirt. I've been seeing this big, bold print on shirts everywhere lately.

Layout ~

This is always the challenging and exhilarating part of a make. How to use the fabric to it's best advantage. How to make the design and silhouette sing. This is also the part that's anxiety inducing because one wrong cut and everything goes south.  As an aside why I generally buy one more panel than I need to make a garment...making sure I have more if disaster does actually occur.

A few photos of the tunic during the construction phase...

Putting the label in the back yoke

Cutting table layout making sure the fronts match

Back without sleeves

Front without sleeves

Construction ~

There are no new construction techniques. However, since I hadn't made the garment in over a year, I did reread the instructions and didn't wing it. Was definitely interesting to see the steps I'd skipped when I remade the tunic as a TNT pattern.

This pattern has several sleeve variations. I've never used them. For this one, I added the sleeve I previously used but I added a cuff to it instead of the elastic in the hemline. I wanted a more classic sleeve and look for this bold printed tunic.

A Few Photos ~



This fits in with my new aesthetic..."Art Teacher Chic" It checks all the boxes for me.  Functional, comfortable, and a bold floral. Everything I like in a tunic and was the perfect garment for a long train ride to Boston this summer.


...as always more later!




Thursday, July 03, 2025

Water Lilies Myosotis - UPDATED!

I've thought about why I return to this dress pattern over and over again. Like why don't I use another pattern? Honestly it's because this pattern checks all of my boxes. It's comfortable to wear. It works in a variety of fabrics, patterns and colors. Mostly I feel pretty in it.  Let's not forget that!

At the end of May 2023, I spent my birthday with my bestie in Lancaster, PA.  The home of cheap sewing supplies and a short ride to Fabric Mart.  The true Disney World of my life! We visited a few quilting stores and shocked several employees with me stating that I wanted to use some of the quilting cottons for clothing.

At one quilt store (Burkholders), I purchased the Water Lilies border print by Michael Design Works and the coordinating striped water lilies & print pattern because as I held the fabrics in my hand, I could see another Myosotis.  So why would I deny this fabric what it wanted to become!


One thing though, this is a complicated sew. Therefore, there are a lot of progress photos making this a very long post.  Right here I'd like to thank my pass self for being diligent in taking them because when I finally finished this a year later I would NEVER have remembered these details without them.


Supplies ~

5 yards of 100% quilting cotton Water Lilies


2 yards of 100% quilting cotton coordinating Water Lilies print

9 - 5/8" green sheer and patterned buttons (purchased from the Quilt Store) Normally I use 12 buttons but they only had 9 so I made due.

Construction ~

Working with a border print is always a challenge. It makes me think outside the box to make the fabric sing yet end up with a wearable yet amazing garment. This was a complicated sew because I was basically remaking the pattern pieces to fit the vision in my head.  There was some pattern work done to accommodate the fabric.  

Bodice:

The bodice piece was enlarged and then the button front piece was removed.  I made a separate piece for the button front. 

I knew I wanted the bodice to be from the lighter part of the fabric. So I needed to sit on it a minute to figure out how to make the fabric work for me. I ended up cutting it on the crosswise grain to make the most of the lighter fabric.

After the bodice piece was cut out, I did a trial of how the fabric from the other pieces of fabric would work with the bodice.

I also did a test with the buttons I choose to see how they would work once the bodice was completed.

Skirt:

The skirt is cut on the crosswise to use all of the border print in the design. 

I removed the original border and added the border from the coordinating piece of fabric after adding the button band to the front.

Sleeve:

Was cut from the main border piece so it coordinated with the dress' skirt. I added elastic to the sleeve to make them short and puffy.  I like this style because it adds some grown up whimsy to the dress and it covers my bodacious arms.

Collar/Front Band:

This was made entirely from the border piece of the coordinating piece. It's the ultimate border/stripe to the entire piece. And the reason it took so long to finish the dress.  Fussy cutting that border held me up for WEEKS! 


Then I had to recut the collar and collar band because of the way I added the border to the front of the dress.  I was hoping that I had enough of the border print left to just cut larger pieces. Ummm no.  The collar had to be pieced to get the length I desired.

I will admit that this went through a few iterations before I settled on this one. But this one highlights the water lilies but yet brings the drama a good border print garment should.

It took me over two months from the time I started this to finish it.  When I say my sewjo had been vacationing, I wasn't kidding.  However, I had a few days off at the end of July/beginning of August 2023, so I finished this up.  When I say this was an involved sew, please believe me that it was.  I had to rethink everything to make the border print work the way I saw it.  All of this took time and since my sewjo was weak, those things took longer than normal.

Then it sat while I waited to get the urge to sew the buttons and buttonholes on the dress.  It sat almost a year before I decided I needed to wear it to church one really hot July Sunday. Then and only then was I motivated to do the last 2 steps!

Tie Band:

As you know, I've lost quite a bit of weight, and I didn't want this dress to sit in the closet or get packed away. I decided to add a ribbon tie to the bodice side seams to remove some of the fullness of the top. 

  • I thought I had a solid green wider ribbon in my trims stash.
  • However, the green I had was a 1/2" wide and would get lost on the dress. 
  • There was a 2" pink ribbon on hand. 
  • I cut a 15" length of both ribbons.
  • Then I laid the green ribbon on top of the pink ribbon and used 1/2" steam-a-seam 2 to iron the two pieces together.
  • I didn't want to stitch the two ribbons together because they both have a distinctive stitch on their edges. 

A few pictures of the dress in 2025. I wore it to work the other day and my co-worker graciously took the photos below:







I'm calling the sewing I'm doing now, "Art Teacher Chic" cause I'm all about the fabric.  How can I manipulate it.  How I can make something unusual and different. I know I will make another Myosotis because it's my go to pattern.  

I know it's a lot of photos but we took them near my job at Broadway & 39th Street at the Art Installment, I'm calling the bones. I only wore this beauty only once last summer and I received so many compliments. I'm glad I finally got to wear it to work this summer and document that fact.  This was such a complicated sew, I'm glad I posted it in case I want to refer to it in the future.


...as always more later!



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