February 23, 2017

Sprouts are good for you! Sprout Patterns Turner Dress


One of the things I like most about sewing is the creative potential. If you can think of it, you can make it! Compare that to Ready to Wear clothing… ugh. I remember a particularly enlightening trip home to Scotland where I tried to find a black wrap top in a size 18. NOPE. Sewing has saved me/spoiled me.

However. There is one teensy issue, sometimes: finding your dream fabric. It’s all fair and well to have an amazing idea in your head, but sometimes you just can’t find the fabric. Or, it’s only available for an astronomical price. Or, they’ve run out of stock. When I started sewing (and especially before I discovered my fabric godmother, EmmaOneSock) I used to get SO FRUSTRATED at the lack of good fabric – and especially high quality printed jersey for my beloved wrap dresses.

That’s why Spoonflower and Sprout Patterns are basically genius. Can’t find the fabric you want? Then make it yourself, woman!

If you’re not familiar with Spoonflower, it’s a print-on-demand fabric company – and it also prints wallpaper and gift wrap. They print on a variety of fabrics, including – HUZZAH! – knits. Their quality in terms of dye fastness and brightness has improved over time, although their modern jersey still remains my #1 pick. That’s because it has all the poly benefits of strong colour, no-fade, and amazing resilience to being washed, without the nasty, cold poly feel. I don’t know how they’ve done it, but it really feels just like cotton.

Sprout Patterns Turner Dress

Sprout Patterns is a new wing of Spoonflower which also prints your *pattern pieces* directly onto the fabric. Read more how it works here. It’s a fantastic idea if you fit into a “straight” size of a pattern – and with Cashmerette Patterns having 3 cup sizes for each base size, your chance is much higher than with other brands. If you have to make major adjustments however, it likely won’t work for you for now (hopefully at some point they figure out how to make that happen).

Lucky me, I can fit into a straight Cashmerette size (20 G/H at the moment, sometimes the 18; I do need to take the sleeves in on this version a little), so when Sprout started listing the Cashmerette Turner Dress too, I couldn’t resist making my own. I found this beautiful large-scale abstract watercolour print in the Spoonflower shop (yep, you don’t have to be an artist – pick someone else’s design), and played around with the 3D model to get the pattern placement just so.

Sprout Patterns Turner Dress

I went with the modern jersey option, and as usual it’s gorgeous to feel and wear. Maybe I won’t wear it in the middle of summer, but 10 months of the year in Boston it’s definitely do-able!

Sprout Patterns Turner Dress

And then, we discovered this blue wall out the back of our AirBnB in LA, and it was kismet.

So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to get back to a-swirling.

Have you tried Spoonflower or Cashmerette Patterns on Sprout yet? What do you think? If you want to try them, you can get 20% off (until 11.59pm EST 2/26) using code CASHMERETTELOVE at checkout. If you know curvy folks who’d like to design their own dress but can’t sew, you should also get them to check out the White Glove Service – for a surprisingly small amount of money, they can have their Turner sewn up for them!

2 thoughts on “Sprouts are good for you! Sprout Patterns Turner Dress

  1. Rebecca Grace says:

    Jenny, this Sprout thing is FASCINATING! I’ve spent the last two hours trying different designs on the Turner Dress. LOVE! I have a question about how the pattern pieces print on the fabric, though. Those wide white areas around each pattern piece — are those completely cut off, or is this fabric printed so the white part is the seam allowance? I worry that, with a dark fabric print, little bits of white would show at the seam line when you’re wearing the dress.

    1. The white part is completely cut off so there’s no chance of it peeking out!

Let me know what you think!