Self- drafted Dress Made With FS Dusty Lotus Midweight Linen
I started making this dress in the depths of infertility hell. Superstition or perhaps some degree of hopelessness meant all of my makes were the kind without much ease. The opposite of a maternity make.
When I got this beautiful soft green linen, I planned a long column-style dress with a fitted Gracie Steel Frolick Frock bodice and self-drafted midi skirt. I imagined an afternoon aperitivo, a pair of wedge heels, a chic, slimline silhouette.
All I needed to do was attach the skirt to the bodice and I’d be done.
Self- drafted Dress Made With FS Dusty Lotus Midweight Linen
Of course that’s when I finally got that positive pregnancy test and all the bloating, ballooning fun that comes with it. Which was perhaps the point – all of these makes were simply daring the sewing gods to waste two metres of some of my favourite linen to sew with.
I put the dress in a little mesh WIP bag (mesh because in theory if you can see it, you may one day pick it up again) and put it on my WIP shelf ready for the postpartum ‘snap back’. I’d used up every last scrap making a pair of shorts for my partner so there was no option but to wait until it fit again.
That was two years ago. Between then and now, I found out that there was no miraculous snapping to be had, and that a column dress probably wouldn’t be ideal for chasing around a toddler anyway. So the dress and it’s tightly fitting proportions, continued to stare at me from the sad corner of my sewing room.
Self- drafted Dress Made With FS Dusty Lotus Midweight Linen
I often write and talk about anxiety and how it shows up in our creative lives and I think the WIP – Work In Progress – pile is a perfect example. It’s such a widely held understanding in the sewing world that things that languish in the WIP pile will rarely make it out. I’m convinced it’s a symptom of the fear of failure so many of us struggle with.
The fear of wasting good fabric, of not having the skills or patience or creativity to get ourselves out of a sewing hole. But it’s not just anxiety holding us back. I think it’s the imagined boringness too. The full-of-potential start giving way to the less fun and often slow process of trying to figure out how to fix our mistakes.
And if no one else had had a vested interest in this dress, it might never have emerged. But thankfully, this was a commissioned project so I had no choice but to face my demons and see what I could salvage.
Self- drafted Dress Made With FS Dusty Lotus Midweight Linen
I knew there’d be no way that the fitted skirt, with all of its darts, would fit. But thanks to its elasticated back panel, the bodice still did. This unlocked all sorts of options, as well as no small amount of side eye at the pair of shorts I’d optimistically used all my scraps to make for my partner.
By the time I had unpicked the skirt and darts, given the little sewing holes a good rub to get rid of them (one of my favourite qualities of linen fabric) and ironed all three panels, I had a plan. Luckily my hip measurement gave me just enough length to make a mini skirt when the fabric was trimmed to a rectangle and flipped on its side. The back pieces was sewn together horizontally, which isn’t necessarily ideal, but I decided that what I can’t easily see, can’t bug me. I gathered the panels and sewed it all together.
Self- drafted Dress Made With FS Dusty Lotus Midweight Linen
Turns out I like this dress so much more than I ever imagined. It’s fun and easy to throw on and I don’t have to suck my stomach in to feel good in it. I took these pictures on a recent trip to Tuscany and the colour is perfect for hills that are the best celebration of green I’ve ever seen.
All this to say, if you’ve got a make in your WIP pile that’s been there a while, that’s in some kind of fabric that you really hate to waste, let this be your invitation to get it out and see what’s possible. It might be easier and less boring than you thought. You never know, it might even be ready for aperitivo o’clock.
1 Comment
I love this story and Oh My Gosh how it speaks to all of us!! You describe the creative anxiety so well – and the changing circumstances. Thanks. Love the dress.