Last night, while we hosted one of our children’s (11 year old) friends, I finished the white linen dress I’d been envisioning for Sophie. It’s actually a linen / rayon blend (underlined with a cotton / poly batiste), and it’s oyster-colored, not white:
Honestly? Linen is hard to photograph in a flattering way. Or at least it was today. The dress is lovely and very substantial – a perfect dress for our winter weather. The coolest thing is Sophie helped design it: she asked for a pocket on the right-hand side for her bus fare:
No wait – there was another great thing about the dress – besides working with the linen, which was a dream. After I finished sewing it last night Sophie immediately put it on. She wanted to sleep with it. And this morning, when she woke up, she slipped it on again and came out to see me with her hair sticking up, looking very well-slept.
You can see more detail shots of the dress here.
The pattern is from Ottobre magazine’s Winter 2004 magazine (I had a friend gift me with a subscription; after the year ran out I didn’t renew. I want to renew someday, as they are a wonderful pattern line). Here’s a picture of Sophie in the same dress pattern (different details) – and also the first thing I made from the Finnish magazine.
By the way – I loved that Drive-In fabric used in that earlier dress. It was so bright and fabulous. And if you’ve followed my sewing efforts thus far, you’ll also know I love matching, or rather mis-matching, fabrics. In this case a very garish novelty print featuring a lot of hot pink with a more demure Asian-inspired red floral. I got a lot of compliments on the dress – I wonder where it is now?
I also recently finished a princess-seamed flannel blouse – in a wonderfully soft blue and green cotton flannel houndstooth (I loves me some houndstooth!) from Denver Fabrics – which after all the effort didn’t fit me correctly. My mom spied it today and when she heard I wasn’t wearing it, she asked if she could try it on. She was very happy with the fit and now it’s hers.
Yup, very happy. Can’t you see how happy she is?
Well done. Your daughter is lovely. I like the way she looks at you/the camera.
Thank you, Amanda! Yes, she has a very direct gaze.
I absolutely adore that linen dress. The stitching on the cuffs and collar is really neat, I can’t stop looking at it… wondering how on earth that is done.
It’s called a sewing machine! And yes, it’s fast, easy and not at all scary! I’m sure you could handsew it pretty damned fast too.
My class starts up again in January, if I can get 9 students or more. Wish me luck!