a ridiculous melon dress

So originally, there was a point behind the making of this dress.

A few months ago I got Butterick Retro 6318 free with a magazine, and despite it being absolutely nothing like my usual style I was beguiled enough by the illustration to want to give it a try. I bought this citrus-print stretch cotton from Fabric Land so that the toile could plausibly be a "wearing to Lindy Hop events" dress (even though I haven't been to a lindy hop event in about two years) and sat down to cut out the pattern.

Then I stopped. And then I reconsidered.

The pattern for the skirt was literally a rectangle intended for heavy gathering, and I discounted it as soon as I realised. One, I'm not toiling a rectangle. Two, I can handle a little bit of gathering at the waist in light fabric, but because of the way I'm shaped (my high hip is very wide) I turn into a shelf if there's too much bulk there. I decided to find a different skirt and put that onto the bodice. Then I looked at the bodice, and it made me nervous. I couldn't work out how I was going to do an FBA on a pattern piece that was basically a square. The shoulder sloped straight down from the neckline creating pointy triangles, and extended into grown-on short sleeves that weren't very short-looking. Maybe pointy triangle shoulders are a legitimate thing, I don't know, but based on literally everything else I've ever made I couldn't see how it would be comfortable. And by this point, I really liked the idea of the citrus dress.

So I wussed out.

What this dress actually is is an Anna/Hollyburn mash-up. Yes, another Anna bodice, I'm sorry. But it's so quick to make and fits so well! Also it was actually the closest approximation to the original dress - high neck, grown-on sleeves, no extraneous pattern pieces. I chose the Hollyburn for the skirt because it was a level of "fuller skirt" that I knew I'd be comfortable with and I wanted to try the slash pockets on a dress (for possible future transferring onto everything). Looking at it now it doesn't even remotely give off the vibe of the original,even with the couple of pleats I added in the front, and I probably needed to go longer and fuller, but that would run the risk of turning into a dress I'd never wear. Originally I intended to use the sash from the original dress, but after cutting it out and mocking it up I decided I didn't like that either. The sash is single-layer so the wrong side shows and it just looked sad and sloppy. At some point I might try it again, in a thinner fabric, doubling up the sash so there is no wrong side on show. But for this one, I just threw the idea out.

On the plus side, I actually really like this. Novelty print cotton dresses are not my style at all, but something about the colour combination of dark and lurid makes this work for me. It's incredibly comfortable and rather than just being a dance dress, I've been wearing it all the time. More of these!

I will say, though, that I totally didn't realise how the straight edges of the citrus slices would break up the print. I almost threw out all my back shots because I thought my skirt was hitched up and the zip was super wonky, and had to look quite closely to realise that everything was fine. Also it looks like there's a huge bust dart or fold of fabric on one side, and I swear there's not. Stupid optical illusions.

I will definitely be repeating this one, though almost certainly not in novelty-print cotton (unless I find more fruit I like. Turns out I'm not as averse to fruit print as I am to most others). Even in the winter I get tons of wear out of it with a jacket and/or a wrap top over it, and it's nice to know that a dress doesn't have to be jersey to be super-comfy for day to day wear. And I will be putting these pockets on basically everything. I've been realising lately that I rarely use in-seam pockets because I'm worried about stuff falling out, but these? CARRY ALL THE THINGS.

Yup.

Next up: the expensive and time-consuming paisley dressing gown which I have THOUGHTS about...