Way back when, I went on a bonanza shopping spree in London, assisted by my brothers, and gathered up a range of fabric, with no particular aims for it apart from “to make nice things”.
Now: it’s stash busting time.
And what a fun bust it was! I picked up this curious wool (I think) knit – it’s very dark brown/black, with little green diamond flecks in, and pretty stable.
It’s too thick, though, to make a well-draped wrap dress so I decided, in a pique of optimism, to attempt to draft my own fixed wrap dress. Yeah, you heard it.
Having discovered that raglan sleeves do nothing for a lady of my stature (evidence here), I decided to re-draft that pattern but with proper sleeves. Then, I realised that in fact I could just take my favourite wrap dress pattern, shorten the top half, secure it together, and use the raglan dress skirt! Genius. And it actually worked pretty well (apologies for the over exposed background – I had to do that to make the dress an accurate colour):
I finished the neckline with very thin pre-made black bias binding, which worked really well, and stablised it considerably:
And here’s the inside, where you can see that I also put on a strip of fusible knit interfacing, which will help further stablise the neckline so that it won’t stretch out or go wavy. Theoretically it should then be covered up by a lining, but I actually think it looks Ok as is.
Here’s the full guts and glory on the inside with an excellent reflection of my tumble drier:
In celebration, I wore it the next day and I am pleased to say that not only did it not fall apart, but no-one pointed and laughed at me either. Result! To follow: pictures of me actually wearing it….
