Curtain call

A few months ago I was browsing at the Frock Me vintage fair at Chelsea Town Hall when I spotted this fabric on a stall selling vintage haberdashery, fabrics and curtains.  I just love the colours in it and although it was made up as a curtain it was long and wide enough for me to cut the heading tape off and have enough fabric to make a dress.

And so it came home with me, was washed, dried and put to one side because summer came along and I didn't really fancy sewing with thick fabric.  However, there it was every time I opened the airing cupboard and I decided that actually I would make it up using a tried and tested combination of the By Hand London Elisalex bodice and a New Look 6824 pleated skirt.

It wasn't the nicest of sewing experiences though; being furnishing fabric it was quite loosely woven and therefore frayed like a be-atch.  Somehow I managed to sew the two back bodice pieces the wrong way round at the shoulder seams and discovered that not only did the fabric fray, it was also effing difficult to see the stitches when unpicking and I had to be careful with this otherwise the fabric would have pulled.  Having spent quite a bit of time with pattern placement at the cutting out stage I didn't have any fabric to spare so couldn't afford to mess up any of the pieces.  This meant that I had to be particularly mindful with sewing the rest of it, which of course slowed the process down!

Gorgeous green curtain dress

 The bodice is lined and I decided to underline the skirt with the same fabric - some dark grey lawn which I had in my stash and had intended to use for something else.  I usually use white lawn for lining, but this fabric needed something darker and the grey was all I had.  Normally I pink seams to finish them, but knew that wouldn't work for this fabric due to the fraying issue, so I overcast the bodice seams and finished the skirt seams and hem with bias binding, so all in all quite a lot of actual sewing.  It was very relaxing hand sewing the hem though.  I usually machine my hems, but knew that wouldn't work with thick underlined fabric - it would make the hem much too bulky so I spent a very pleasant evening with Monsieur Poirot and a needle and thread.  And then it was FINISHED!!!  And I love it.  Not ideal to be making dresses with fairly voluminous, lined skirts in the middle of summer though, and yet I chose to make four fully lined dresses this summer. Why?

I have quite a bit of blog catching-up to do so I hope to be posting more frequently until I'm all caught up.  And I don't think I'll be sewing with furnishing fabric again for a while.  Now I have some knitting to do.  Toodle pip.