Fit’n’pleat dresses part 2

It’s all washed and snugly folded in my stash, waiting….!

I was trying to clean up my blog a bit and found this unpublished post. So here it is! Featuring two dresses from at least 3 yrs ago, a previously unblogged follow up to Fit’n’pleat dresses are so easy to wear

I worked out a fitted bodice block a while back. Mostly by making something (forgotten what), fitting it nicely, then transferring the changes back onto the bodice pattern.

Wow! It makes it so easy to fit things, especially simple bodices. Not so helpful for princess lines, but usually I don’t find fitting them too difficult.  Anyway these dresses are made with that bodice block. Happily it still fits me fairly well in early 2022!

This is the same frankenskirt pattern as the grey one in the fit,n,pleat post.  The gloriously patterned fabric is from the Spotlight stretch cotton sateen range. It, like all things I’ve made from that fabric, stretched out and became too big and sack-like long before the cotton content of the fabric wore out. It’s so depressing, espeically when I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THE PRINT, paid a decent amount and have put a lot of effort into making something, that I’ve subsequently stopped buying it, no matter how desperately tempting the absolutely gorgeous patterns this fabric has. (*cries*)

So, sadly, that was the life-cycle of these dresses, including the original grey one 😦

The shoes were $10 from China through Aliexpress. In the monsoons and heavy rains of the wet season it’s better to wear plastic shoes than my usual (expensive, high quality!) leather ones. This is one of the cheapy plastic ones that can dry out to be just fine after a dunking. They looked fantastic with the dress!

My beautiful (Expensive, high quality ;-D) gorgeous red clogs also worked beautifully with it! I can tell from the background this picture was taken at one of my favourite cafes. And here is one taken with our gorgeous old dog who is sadly no longer with us ❤ ❤ <3

The next dress I made was this pink rose dress. I know, there’s a theme emerging, isn’t there?! It was of the same stretch cotton sateen. This one had a pretty sweetheart neckline, which is really my favourite of all neckline shapes. It stretched out a bit across the curve because I didn’t stabilise it properly for the stretch 😦

But as my mum would say, no one would notice unless I point it out, right? 😀

I used the cap sleeve I got from a pattern so long ago I’ve forgotten what it was. But oh such a useful pattern!
The placement of the darts is so dependent on the bra I’m wearing underneath, it’s just hard to get ‘right’. Especially as I have ‘Proper underwire bras’, sports bras, ‘Proper Soft Cup Bras’ and Secret Pyjama bras each with a different profile. Not to mention there’s monthly changes, which usually are fairly significant. Then there’s bra age. So hey… The darts end up where the darts end up!

This dress went the way of the other two – it stretched out but I didn’t. So within 2 wears I was swimming in it, and looked … Um… a lot of not very nice, very fat-shamy words come to mind, which isn’t fair to me or anyone to use, so let’s just say, given the fabric itself was just fine, it went to an op shop to hopefully be found by someone they now fit beautifully!

This perhaps seems like a sad post due to the fabrics stretching out so quickly. However there is a fantastic post script. I’ve been in love with the Outback Wife fabrics since I first saw them. I wanted this one in particular (Hmmm,,, I wonder why?!) And searched the internet high and low for it. Nope. It was clearly Not Meant To Be.

Until…

I walked into our local quilt fabric shop dragonflyfabrics with mum (Who’s a mad keen quilter) and almost fell over a bolt of this fabric. Oh. My. God!!!! That’s the exact Outback Wife fabric I love the most!