Dearest Needlework Monday People!
Oh, I get so excited to share with you all about each garment I am completing, and I am finding a lot of pleasure indeed in this steep learning curve of sewing this year; I especially am relishing the new understanding of layers and form in the clothing I'm making (and remaking).... It is delizioso to think up new ways to use a fabric or a shape in a garment, which allows a new way to wear it - like making shorter underskirts which add just enough length to a long top/ very short dress...
Anyways, this second silk dress is from the same big billowing orange silk skirt which I cut up a couple of weeks ago, and blogged about here last week. The two dresses are quite different styles, and this one is a bit fancier for going out in the evening: just in time for Vinalia - our big annual wine festival!
I was doing my photoshoot this morning, whilst my dear volunteer and new friend, from Poland via Milano, was painting the walls of my old stable, downstairs... I'll write up an article about that soon too: it is heavenly to have a lovely travelling person to visit for a week, and to share the beauty of the town and my house with! It motivates me a lot to have company with some of the big jobs, too; hopefully we'll get the water heater installed over the stove - hooray!
The photoshoot was very early morning, before the heat makes it impossible to even expose one toe to the direct sunlight... I took some snaps around my street, and down on this lovely renovated tarrace which is at the end of my Via Dietro Gli Orti.
please excuse that some of the photos are not perfect: it was hard to photograph and edit the colour correctly, in this light!
The beginning of the skirt came from the leftovers after I made the hupil-like dress last week; there was already a mostly-skirt-like form, and I just cut the circle of fabric shorter, so I'd have some left over for straps too.
I had a basic idea - the silk is very light and flowy and I wanted to use the gathered form around the neck, to reach down and wrap around the belly and then fasten in the waist.. (I actually had to add more buttons, because the first attempt it was slightly too tight, and I wanted the option of more settings for the straps.)
And this is the construction of the first part of the straps: a kind of collar, which then was added to, to make the long straps which wrap all around the body...
I put it on the dress-form/ mannequin as you can see in the following photos, and made some straps out of the long length of the bigger strip of skirt which is pictured above.
These photos above are from before it was sewn together: just the lovely crinkled orange silk pushed down into the waistband, and no buttons yet: I'd added the original zip that I showed in last week's post, as the skirt zip, and was quite pleased about how that was sitting nicely!
INTERLUDE!
I shared this dress project some weeks ago, but only on the mannequin, so wanted to show you just a couple of snaps of it on myself!
I will also wear this dress out during our wine festival, as it is quite a nice evening dress too, and very cool with the beautiful vintage cotton...
SECOND INTERLUDE!
Sewing interlude, as I took my dress to the bar one afternoon and had a lovely session sewing a long seam!
Then for the more difficult aspects, which I put off for a few days, knowing that they would be challening! Button holes. Urgh! I love covered or maybe you call them lined button holes; either way, I follow the instructions very carefully, from my old Reader's Digest book of Sewing, but every time something doesn't quite sit right! I will persevere with this: maybe I can find a video which helps explain the missing step that I think is the problem!
The finished button holes are okaaaaayyyyyyyyy but not as perfect as I want to be able to make them!
The big buttons hide some of the neater parts, and help show the less neat parts - waaah!!
I really liked how the straps came around and naturally made this belt-like effect: it feels lovely when I wear it, and helps hold the fabric in at the middle of the torso, which without the straps coming around the front like this, would be too puffy altogether. You can see in the above photo also, the seam at the front-middle of the skirt, which I decided in the end to cover completely, as it was a bit too 'unfinished' for me.
These are all the buttons in place: three different types... One big maroon flower one for the zip closure, the two beautiful flat purple ones for the first strap-attaching I made - then the third kind, larger red-pink ones for the final-solution strap fixing.
Once the buttons were in place: yey - outside I went!
Action shots: real life, walking around the medieval quarter of Guardia Sanframondi! A few friends and strangers asked me what I was doing, and why I was dressed up so nicely - 😍
you can see in this photo, how I covered up the seam, and made a kind of feature of the strip down from the waistband to the lower hem: I really like how it is a very particolare detail!
It's quite a quirky dress - not too formally posh, just a weeee bit fancy, but also with imperfections, like I love all my clothes to have, and which keeps everything from getting too serious!
Like with most of my garments too, I need to wear them a little, just to figure out if any imperfections are actually a problem in the long-term! I will add some hand-stitching perhaps to the shoulders, to prevent too much movement in the top of the upper dress. And perhaps will design a short underskirt, like I mentioned in the first paragraph, above, to give it some oomph: either that, or a vintage lace trim like the first orange silk dress has.
I hope you enjoy this post and my photoshoot! I look forward to sharing more with you, about my Workaway volunteer, and the wine festival starting on August 4th!
