Tag: Tetris

The Hundred Dresses: Day 51

Erin9 Comments

If you’ve ever wondered what Vogue 9929 would look like in Tetris fabric, consider your curiosity satisfied:
Spoonflower Tetris Vogue 9929

After realizing that there was probably no way to salvage yesterday’s dress, I decided to try for Tetris Dress 2. This time I prewashed the fabric with dye fixative, and I think the results are MUCH better:
Spoonflower Tetris Vogue 9929 bodice

You’re still never going to get a deep deep black from digitally printed fabric, I think. But that lessens the contrast (SLIGHTLY) with my not-especially-invisible purple zipper:
Spoonflower Tetris Vogue 9929 zipper

I used hem facing tape to help weigh down the hem, which was necessary because the fabric’s a bit lightweight. (And a Tetris dress should have a solid hem, don’t you think?)
Spoonflower Tetris Vogue 9929 hem 3

Here you can see it finished:
Spoonflower Tetris Vogue 9929 hem

And … the back:
Spoonflower Tetris Vogue 9929 back

 

I would say that this is probably my last Tetris dress for a while, but who knows? I should also mention here that I do not make these dresses commercially, but if you do a quick Etsy search you should find several people who WILL sell you a Tetris dress of your very own!

(Disclosure … Spoonflower uses the Wordnik APIs — you can read more about it here — but no money changes hands and I was a customer of Spoonflower before they began using the Wordnik API.)

The Hundred Dresses: Day 50

Erin5 Comments

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.
Tetris Dress full view

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.)
Tetris Dress bodice

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

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

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

The bright blue pockets:
Tetris dress pocket lining

And, of course, the most important part — the border.
Tetris dress hem

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

And on the bodice:
Tetris dress fading

And especially at the front waist seam:
Tetris dress fading #2

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.)