A little while ago, I decided to buy myself a book. I'm a bit of a sucker for books full of patterns because I'm always convinced I'm getting a fabulous magical deal. "Twenty patterns for twenty quid! What a bargain! Sure, I wouldn't wear that, or that, and I'm fairly sure nobody in the history of ever would want to wear that, but that's still an amazing bargain! And yeah, I already have a pattern very similar to that, and that, and that one looks more trouble than it's worth, and that barely warrants a pattern at all..."
[several hours later]
"...three patterns for twenty quid! Bargain! You can't say fairer than that! ...OK, maybe two patterns, but still, that's not bad value all things considered..."
I'm trying to stop that now, because I don't need the most patterns for the least money, I need the right patterns. And in my defence, I really thought this particular book had that.
The book I bought was Famous Frocks: The Little Black Dress by Dolin Bliss O'Shea. It seemed like a great mix of practical and fancy-ass patterns, including a long-sleeved 1970s wrap dress that I pictured making in about four hundred different fabrics. A Coco Chanel dress, a 1930s cowl neck modelled after Joan Crawford, Audrey Hepburn's Sabrina dress... I was sold. Despite the micro-mini with chiffon sleeves and a Peter Pan collar, despite the crotch-length Kate Moss dress which only works on people who are Kate Moss, despite the Princess Diana dress (i.e. the super-boring piece of nothing which belongs nowhere near a book called "Famous Frocks" - do Americans really think Princess Diana was a style icon? Really?), I decided that overall, it was worth it.
The first thing I tried to make was an Anjelica Huston jersey dress. Volume on top, tight on the bottom. This is the exact opposite of the way I normally like my dresses, but I had this piece of black fabric with a textured mesh overlay (blame Teen Goth Jen for that one) that I couldn't figure out what to do with, and a friend of mine suggested a batwing dress. Once she'd said that I couldn't think of anything else that fabric could possibly be, and I fished it out of my cupboard to start cutting.
I do not have photos of the finished dress, because nobody needs to be subjected to that. Here, instead, is a list of the things that were wrong with it:
1. It was MASSIVE. I cut it in my size, but I had to take 4cm out of the seams on both sides to get it to even remotely fit.
2. When I got it to remotely fit, it didn't look like a dress with a deliberately larger proportion on top, it just looked like it was too big around my waist.
3. The facings were massively bulky.
4. It was a lot longer than the photo suggested it would be (and I am not a short person)
5. There wasn't enough material in the cowl for it to remain cowl-y when on me and just created a weird slash-neck thing instead
6. The entire neckline stands up away from my body and makes me look like I'm poking my head through a man-hole.
I am in the process of trying to salvage something semi-wearable from this dress, because it is incredibly comfortable (of course it is - it's jersey and it has no fastenings or waist elastic or anything else). I've taken it in at the waist and plan to shorten it, sort out the cowl and somehow strap the neckline right the hell down. If I can find myself a black waist belt that I like, I will have something that I could wear, but bears absolutely no resemblance at all to the original dress except for the fact that it is a dress and it has sleeves. I have it on now and it really is comfy, but I would never let anyone see me in it. Seriously, this neckline is INSANE.
I then tried my hand at the wrap dress which was my main motivator for buying the book. I was a little gun-shy and definitely not willing to risk my amazing abstract aubergine print jersey (oh, amazing abstract aubergine jersey, when will I find a pattern worthy of cutting into you? I want my aubergine dress, dammit), so I bought some disposable stuff for £1 a metre at Walthamstow Market and made a toile. It's meant to have a full skirt, but it looks exactly the same on me as my other wrap dresses and it uses an extra half metre of fabric to do so. Nope.
Having tried two patterns and come up with nothing better than 'meh', I'm not really prepared to try a third. It's a shame, because I have some amazing green drapey stuff that's crying out to be a fancy-ass Joan Crawford cowl neck dress, but my trust has gone. Also I went to the author's website, because I do that, and there was a big thing at the top saying "BOOK ERRATA" and apparently there is something wrong with six out of the ten patterns, including three that are scaled incorrectly. Which is pretty shit, to be honest. As a result I have cleared all these patterns off my "to make" list. And then bought several new patterns to cheer myself up, but that's a story for another day.
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