Beautiful Needlework Monday friends!
I am excited and proud to be presenting this project: I made not one but TWO new dresses from an old billowing orange silk skirt, which I have had for decades, and which I originally bought secondhand in some fabulous charity shop or another, back in Scotland.
The skirt is so old that it has multiple paint marks on it, from when I used it whilst painting in my studio - and/ or fixing up my magical Italian Arthouse! I tried to turn it inside-out where I could, to avoid making a feature of the green and white and other-coloured splatters, hehe!
Anyways, it was a seriously nerve-racking moment when I decided finally to CUT the silk! I had to talk myself into it: the skirt is too small, and either way I'd have to do elaborate work to widen the waistband - but ultimately, it was not a very practical skirt, with soooo much material in it, and I had this other top which I'd recently bought at the 50c stall, which I had a feeling wanted to merge with this silk and make a beautiful kind of hupil/dress...
I love oversized clothes like these: light and airy for summer, where the body can move and breathe in the excessive heat, and I can feel free and comfy - and I ADORE taking apart any very-well-loved fabric item and making into a new project that can be loved and used EVEN MORE than it was before...
This is a particularly enriching aspect of deconstructing and reconstructing clothing - and of making ones own beautiful and original clothing with practically zero budget.
Not only was there a lot of fabric, but also other features of both the skirt and the white top, which could be reutilised... Though I rejected the zip, as I am very much enjoying making clothing that doesn't need a zip. Zips are great, but only when terribly necessary!
I've been learning a lot through practise - this is the middle of my Year of Mastery Of Needlework - and am loving learning about composition of clothes; finding just the right place to cut an old top, and then the right place to make it attach to the new shorter skirt...
I also am excited about details and edging. Especially beautiful, particular handsewn elements like this - this particular uncinetto crocheted edge was taken from an old tablecloth, where I felt it was under-appreciated! I loved the idea of adding it to the sleeves and to the collar....
Below this new dress, I wanted to use a favourite edging which I unpicked from a big cushion cover - HOWEVER! - it was too short to go around the bottom of the skirt - waaaah! - so I decided to take a risk and improvise, by cutting a vaguely-similar piece from inside a more complex pillowcase detail, and using it to make up the gap.
At the same time, I was busily constructing this new form, and sort of doing it all at once, so don't have particular steps! Above it handsewing the closing of this new skirt shape around this new dress form.
This is when the dress was strting to take shape: the basic form of the white top (cropped and a kind of belt made of the turn-up at the bottom of it) attached to the new skirt, and then the detailed hem attached below - I think it is just pinned here, above...
These are the two different edgings: the one on the right was an integral part of a more complex design, which I cut out the edges of to make it a border. The two designs look more contrasting here than they are in real life, because of the camera lens exaggerating their differences... You'll see in the final dress, that it is not even so noticeable.
I was pretty stoked to be making my first ever collar!
BUT then it turned out all clunky and not how I had hoped it would work!
I did, however, love how the cotton and the silk met, and this affirmed my intuition about putting them together in one dress: when I'm wearing it, this feels so lovely - elegant, cool and wonderfully, organically sensual.
Here, I am beginning to construct the sleeves. I LOVE puffy edges of sleeves, or short to medium length sleeves which puff a lot.. I had this feeling about the edges that I'd taken from the tablecloth, fitting really nicely as a compliment to the skirt colour. That feeling was right! As it invariably is!
I managed to correct the collar just enough to make it not look like a bloody mess, and got on with the final construction details of the whole garment...
Do you love the sleeves?
I do! My best sleeves ever!
For the photoshoot, I used this short underskirt which I made last week: it has a favourite needlework detail, and I threaded a black ribbon into it. I actually need an even shorter underskirt, which I will make very soon: I used a pair of very beautiful, hand embroidered (by myself) pair of antique pantaloons under the dress, when I took it out for the first time to the market on Sunday...
The pantaloons fit amazingly perfect, just the right length to make sure I do not expose my underwear, as the dress is pretty short - perhaps more like a long top! This underskirt I hiked up a little, to keep the correct proportions, for the photoshoot this morning. I took these photos at the side of the Arthouse, on the big marble steps which go up into the town.
This is Beniamino! He was a stray cat who I found as a kitten on the mountainside up above Guardia - so random! I think he had been sleeping inside a car engine, as cats tend to do in colder weather, and had fallen out up on the hill, far from a village! I stopped my car and fell in love with him immediately. He is my oldest cat curently, and around 5 years old. I wanted a photo with him next to the dress, as it makes a nice variety of orange and coral tones!
The cat in the header photo is Betty: she was found trapped on a rooftop, after I heard her mewing desperately, days before... I had to coerce an elderly woman who had windows out onto the top of the roofs, to open up her shutters and let me get the cat in! She came immediately and was super-grateful and terribly hungry - when I brought her into my house for the first time, she really badly scratched me, and she is kind of legendary for being crazy-aggressive with all other cats, even her own babies who are now grown up!
Anwyays, I had fun photographing the dress in the cool of the morning, and I liked how it fitted well with my nice leather shoes...
I love colour contrasts, and these are some steps that I created in my lower cantine/ cellars... I will do a DIY post about the mosaic project, when I eventually finish it!
I took a few extra photos in the kitchen too, as it was already too hot at 8 am outside - I had to take the dress off as soon as I had finished the photoshoot, and sit in my underwear! Above you can see how the different edging doesn't draw the eye tooo much - sort of!
I so enjoy how it sits softly on the body!
And can you notice how the cotton is very thin, and you can see the bralette with the lovely hand-cross-stitching on it, underneath? That is a nice detail which I enjoyed about it!
