Tag: Fringe

Summer is for stripes

Erin6 Comments

blows dust off top of blog, hits power button

Well, I’ve gotten two shots (shoutout to my Pfizer Pfriends) and in a week or so I can perhaps consider leaving the house, so I suppose it’s time to start sewing again?

I have basically been wearing the same seven dresses for a year, mostly in shades of gray and black, and I am assured that at some point I will emerge (like a cicada, only quieter) into the light of the sun. So this seemed like a relatively sunny fabric to start with.

heavily modified Chalk and Notch Fringe dress in Kaffe Fassett yarn-dye
heavily modified Chalk and Notch Fringe dress in Kaffe Fassett yarn-dye

I think I bought this fabric at Scrap in Portland, in the beforetimes, but I’m not sure.

So yeah, this is the Chalk and Notch Fringe dress, which is super-comfortable, even more so when you turn the skirt into a six-panel one and add gathering to the center front and back and extremely deep pockets. As you can see I also turned the facing to the outside so I could play with stripes and piping.

Fringe bodice
turning facing to outside means never having to match the center seam
Fringe back
back with gathering at the waistline
Fringe sleeve
bias finish for the sleeves
Fringe facing with piping
I forgot to interface the neck points so they’re a bit gentler than usual
Fringe hem
bias bind the hem too? why the heck not?

I’ve actually done a tiny bit more sewing since putting this together—I finally bought a cutting mat large enough for my cutting table, so I am now a late convert to the Church of the Rotary Cutter. (Wow, those things are neat!) Rotary cutting means that a bunch of knit projects I always bought fabric for and then dismissed as too much effort to cut conventionally are now within reach—I made my first jersey knit dress in more than a decade (a Cashmerette Turner) recently, and it was such a quick sew! (I also acquired some stretchy bobbin thread and a jersey double needle for topstitching, which was extremely satisfying.)

Anyway, in addition to not sewing, I’ve mostly been spending my time this past year appreciating how lucky I’ve been and trying to quash my incandescent rage at those who made the decisions that caused other people to be hideously unlucky. Also, as is now required by statute, I started a newsletter. (It’s free.)

How’ve y’all been? I’ve missed you.

Still on the Fringe(s)

Erin6 Comments

Hello! Happy New Year! Well, 2019 has been a blur, hasn’t it? I did more sewing than I did blogging, that’s for sure. 😬

The dress I was obsessed with for most of the latter half of 2019 was the Chalk and Notch Fringe dress (with some significant alterations, mostly in the pocket department). I liked the neckline and the roominess of it, and the shirt-tail hem (which I faced for better weight/drape rather than using a narrow hem finish). It’s nice in the summer, with sandals, but I’ve also been wearing it over a long-sleeved tee/with a cardigan and leggings with boots.

What did I make it in? Well, probably a better question is what didn’t I make it in. My favorite was probably the Nani Iro double gauze, which I made in two colorways because one is never enough:
blue Nani Iro grace stripe dress

I didn’t take a good picture of the multicolor stripe, but you can get a glimpse of it here. I also made it in a lovely gray broken plaid double gauze from Stonemountain and Daughter (did you know they send you sewing stickers now if you mail-order?), but no pictures of that yet, I’ve been too busy wearing it!

This pattern is great for fabrics with large motifs (and/or masochists), because there’s really only one big, important seam to match:

Anna Marie Horner fabric matched across front seam

In order to have pockets in the style to which I have become accustomed, I split the front skirt panel into three pieces, and changed the pockets from in-seam to scoop, like so:

view of pocket with black piping on black and white gingham seersucker fringe

(Of course there’s piping, pockets are 87% to hold your stuff and 10% to give you an excuse to add piping, and 3% to put fun linings in.)

By making the skirt three panels (I did this with the back skirt, too) I could add some more gathers and make my now-customary Sir Mix-A-Lot adjustment to the back pieces.
gray chambray fringe dress back view

I replaced the cuffs and ties in the pattern instructions with plain ol’ bias finishing:

bias tape finishing on Fringe dress sleeve

This dress has a button-front version, which I also made at least three times (but only have pictures of one version so far). This is a gray chambray with some slightly dodgy topstitching:

gray chambray fringe dress with white buttons

With any luck it won’t be another year before I update again!