So, remember the Tetris Dress? In case you don’t remember … back in 2006 I idly remarked that someday I’d love to have Tetris fabric, so that I could make a border-print Tetris dress. Then, in 2009, the extremely awesome (and cool) Jenny at Chronically Uncool made some Tetris fabric with Spoonflower. A few months later … this dress happened.

I should really go check how many people find my blog after googling “Tetris dress”, shouldn’t I? It’s still one of the dresses I get the most emails about. (I wore it to give a short talk at the Web 2.0 Summit.)

Here’s a closer look at the very-80s-blue front facings:

Here’s the back … I almost didn’t get that yellowy-greeny piece to clear the middle back seam.

This pattern is Vogue 9670, which I’ve made quite a few times. Here’s the side zipper:

The bright blue pockets:

And, of course, the most important part — the border.

I don’t wear this that much anymore, because the fabric wasn’t entirely colorfast … there’s fading on the skirt:

And on the bodice:

And especially at the front waist seam:

Now when I buy digitally-printed fabric I wash it first with this color fixative stuff from Dharma (it is extremely poisonous and has a super-scary label, but it works …) and I haven’t had as many problems with fading since trying this trick. (I don’t do a separate soak, just running it through the regular wash seems to do the trick.)

I miss wearing this dress, though, because it always gets a great reaction (and standing offers of demonstrations of affection, it seems). Is there anyone who doesn’t love Tetris?

(And … we’re halfway done with a-hundred-dresses-for-The-Hundred-Dresses! If you’re just joining us, please check out the links to the book here.)