Spring Into Color

My favorite weekend thing to do (or an evening when I'm not teaching) is to visit a local thrift store and see if they have any donated fabric and sewing patterns. This is what happens when they do!

In this particular thrift store in Decatur GA, the fabric that had just been donated is still behind the counter and you have to look and ask to see it. So of course this fabric stood out and there was 3 yards - Score! I washed and dried it right away and it did well - a new dress for the Spring. TIP: if you spend $3 on a piece of fabric that was donated and you wash it and it does NOT do well, i.e. twists, shrinks, shows holes, etc....you just made a donation to a cause. So don't be upset, it happens. I did consider the idea that this fabric would not stretch as much as I'd like, but again it did well.

Standing outside really shows the colors, I will probably live in this dress on the weekends. Love how it turned out. I tried to test my pattern matching skill on the neck band, but heres another sewing tip - the pattern of a stretched neck band cannot match the base design. Maybe if the design included using elastic instead of the fabric stretch, maybe. I wanted this dress (and others) to have a natural neckband that self-stretches rather than elastic.

This dress is the first self-drafted garment I made after my Moulage Class with Kenneth D. King last month. A bit ambitious for an effort to use the specific techniques from the class, but I had made a top in the past and based on my new knowledge of garment measurements and construction, it was simple. See my blog post on the class.

Thanks for the love -

NKY-G