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Banksia Dress

Another week, another sewing adventure.

I decided to go with photographing the dress in my room this time around. Not only because the British Weather has been wildly unpredictable (and I don’t really fancy getting a wet camera), but also because the fabric colouring is pretty in line with my general nest vibe.

First up, let’s talk about this beautiful fabric, which was kindly sent to my by my mother a couple of weeks ago.

The design is by Anne Waters, who has a variety of quite beautiful and whimsical hand rendered pattern designs, many involving plants and animals, and ranging from the very adult-sensible to much more kid-friendly styles. I would particularly point out this beauty, for those of you who are  into that nautical blue and white (with a pop of red) theme, but have a preference for florals.

I thought that this fabric was black when I first saw it in thumbnail, and am honestly delighted that it’s such a lovely teal colour.

I only asked my mum to buy me 1 m, originally intending to make a top. As it turns out, the fabric width, 1.12 m is pretty much the perfect fit around my hips.

So, dress it was.

Design wise, this is all pretty simple. The bodice is my old faithful, a reverse engineering from a well fitting cotton dress I’ve had for years.The skirt is simple cylinder, with slight gathering at the waist to allow for some definition.

^ nearly getting KO-d by my mobile while trying to pose with it.

The back is also ridiculously childlike. A deep U scoop with a slit to the waist, and small ties to keep everything together.

While the top two ties are sewn to the edges of the slit, the bottom one is anchored slightly further in. This allows me to tighten or loosen the dress at the waistband, depending on my intended meal size.

Ultimately, all dresses should be dumpling friendly.

The second benefit of this is also a reflection of my laziness. It means that the waist (the narrowest part of my body) can be left wide enough to allow me to slip the dress on over my boobs. Otherwise, I would have to continue the opening, and associated closures, down to my hips.

Which, obviously, is a problem if using the very lazy ‘ties’ method.

^smug about my laziness.

Of course, apart from ‘dumpling capacity’, any good item of clothing should, nay MUST include pockets.

If you haven’t heard my rant about how ready-to-wear women’s clothing and its general lack of pockets is a facilitator of patriarchal oppression, well then.. you probably don’t know me very well.

By this point in the project though, I had run out of material.

Which just meant that the pockets had to be made with a lightweight cotton I found in my fabric stash.

Because ‘going without’, when it comes to pockets, is never the right answer.

That’s all for this week’s editions of ‘Tegan Has Pockets.’ Until next time!

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