A few months ago (in October, to be exact) I used my first ever Atelier Brunette fabric – a lovely cotton lawn in the Garance print, of course from Sew Me Sunshine, to make a lovely Doris dress and Marigold trousers. Since then, those two garments have definitely made their way into my most-worn handmade clothes category, and I definitely think it was the fabric to thank for that. So, naturally, I've been obsessively checking which Atelier Brunette fabrics have been coming into stock on the Sew Me Sunshine site… and then I found my new favourite and (you guessed it) topic of this blog post, the Abstract cotton lawn.
It took me a very long time to figure out exactly which pattern I was going to pair with this beauty of a fabric, a decision that I was taking very seriously because I'd already committed to the idea that this would be the dress I was going to wear on my 19th birthday. I concocted lots of different plans, made up toiles of my ideas (that's how dedicated I was) before I realised that none of them were really 'me' enough – I wanted to wear something that I would feel comfortable and myself in, that I would be able to put on on an everyday basis rather than having to save it for a special occasion, and that was a pattern that I'd love. It just so happened that on the day that I was trying to figure all of this out, I was wearing my other Doris dress – I'm sure you can guess the 'eureka' moment that I had.
And, so, another Doris dress was started. There were a few changes that I wanted to make – the neckline was a little bit too low for me on my first Doris, and I toyed with the idea of hacking it into a v-neck rather than a scoop neck, but abandoned that plan when I +was feeling too impatient to make another toile but didn't want to risk ruining this fabric with a first try. Raising the scooped neck was a very simple thing to do – all I did was take an inch off of the front bodice shoulder seams and voilà! The fit was suddenly much better. I also added the ties to this version to add a bit of that summer feel, and to give me the option to tighten or loosen the dress depending on how much cake I was about to eat.
I really love how the dress turned out – I'd advise making a mark of some kind on the wrong side of this fabric to avoid any pattern piece mix ups, and also to wear nude underwear because I've notice that if the fabric is held close to the body, you can see your pants! The whole making process went really smoothly, and I added some super cute opalescent pink buttons to the front bodice that I had in my stash.
On my birthday we travelled up to Scotland for a wedding, and stayed in a big house-turned hotel with all of the other wedding guests (which, may I say, was super fun). During the day I chatted to some ladies while I was sewing the buttons onto the bodice, and then debuted the dress that evening when we all had dinner. I got loads of very kind comments on it, and now will forever have lovely memories associated with my new Doris! Even better, I have around a metre of the fabric left thanks to my stingy cutting, and am planning on making a pair of Marigold trousers with what's left – I'll keep you updated!
Harriet chose this fabric, and she chose the pattern she wished to work with, the fabric was provided free of charge in exchange of a written blog post.