Linen gift and dress

I've been trying to create a world where both of my crafting loves, knitting and sewing, can co-exist. However, it's been pretty obvious that sewing has taken a hold of my time and attention. The main reason is the close to instant gratification that sewing can give. For example, Sarita and I decided to celebrate Huay's half birthday, because she always gets shortchanged (her birthday is on December 30). So we had lunch, brought her flowers, and I made her a little present.


Or is it a big present?

I made her the pig from my new favorite craft book. Isn't he cute? I made him out of the same linen/cotton blend fabric that I made these pillows with. Whenever Huay comes over, she always hugs one of the pillows. He still doesn't have a name, but she promised he'd live on her bed with her bear Churchill.

One of my sewing goals has been to sew a solid-colored dress. I love my prints because they are so forgiving. A mistake here and there disappear among the flowers and I'm happy as a clam. But the clothes I find myself drawn to in catalogs are solid colored classics that fit just right. One of the pieces I've been wanting to make is a simple wrap dress. I finally found one I liked in this book.


Sewing Time by Machiko Kayaki, ISBN 978-4-579-11052-0

It's exactly what I've been looking for - a simple, sleeveless linen wrap dress.


However, as most things go at marirob, it was easier said than done. On my last post, Blossom commented that she wasn't sure that Japanese patterns were the best fitted patterns, but the books are so beautiful and so inspiring. I think she's absolutely right. My thoughts are that Japanese clothes tend to be a bit boxier and loose fitting than we're used to and, especially for this book, the instructions are minimal and assume a certain amount of sewing knowledge of the reader.

Making the dress was easier than I thought. Since I've made a couple of dresses, I used some of the techniques I already learned and followed the illustrations for the few details that were a little more difficult. I made the dress, tried it on, and thought, "hmmmm... something doesn't look quite right." So I increased the back darts, took in the side seams, and fiddled around with the camera...


...and here it is. But do you see how I'm posing? Three-quarters pose, legs just so, shoulders back? From the front, I look a little... figureless. Enough to where I can't post a photo. I think it's a little low waisted for my body, but I don't know how to fix that without taking the whole thing apart and shortening the waist.

The fabric is a beautiful brown linen I had in my stash. One hope I have is that once I've washed the dress a few times, the linen will soften and fit my body a bit better. My favorite part of the dress is the trim around the neckline.

It's lace that I got from Linnet.

I think the next time I decide to make a solid colored dress from a new pattern, I'll either make it with a print or muslin first.