The Accidental Zero Waste Dress

I’m all for zero waste, but the last time I attempted a zero waste garment it didn’t turn out so well.

What can I say. Not great unless you are after a Japanese look.

This time zero waste wasn’t my intention, but this is all that was left of 2m of batik, 120 wide. Not quite zero, but pretty darn close!

We are about to treat ourselves to a holiday in Vanuatu, after a very stressful and extremely busy year. Once upon a time I had 3 weeks off for my Christmas summer break, but this year it appears not only to be late, but to have shrunk as well. Still, one week is better than nothing. I am so tired I intend to veg and do nothing but eat and sleep. Forget sightseeing, culture and shopping, I intend to be almost exclusively in the pool or in the horizontal. (Well, maybe a bit of fabric shopping, if there is anything interesting.)

What I thought was needed to swan around the resort, on my way to meals, was a tropical style caftan. Not the sort of garment I need in my everyday life or will wear once back home, but I had some batik left from my last Bali trip and was going to give it a go.

I started off tearing a 6cm strip off along the end of my fabric, for the shoulder strap. Then I sewed the fabric length into the round with a French seam and topstitched that. I made this the side seam opposite the draped side and used a bodice pattern piece (Eva dress) to cut the armscye. I didn’t bother to make the front and back armscye different, just layed the back piece onto the doubled fabric and cut the armscye and shoulder with a rotary cutter. I sewed up the shoulder seam and finished the armscye with a bias trip in a matching colour. This resulted in a rectangle with an armscye in the top corner, worn on an angle.

The shoulder strap had to be placed carefully to hide my bra straps and this would have been a great deal easier with some help. But DH was at work, as he always is right now, and I eventually managed to get the straps in the right place. This took longer than all the rest of the sewing time on this garment! Then I sewed up the open fabric below my armpit and let it drape down.

All that was left now was to use the cut off piece from the armscye to make a tie to gather the straps on the top of my shoulder into a sort of simulated bow and hand sew this in place. Mission accomplished!

…and some location shots…

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Lizard Print

Creativity needs energy, and all my energy has been syphoned off by endless hours of work lately, so I haven’t done much printing or fabric painting for yonks. But a few days off over Christmas have revitalised me somewhat, so I have got stuck into block printing. It didn’t hurt that my first project has turned out really well, so then I wanted to do more. Here is a lizard print, grey on light blue cotton.

The Tessuti Mandy, sleeveless and in a cotton woven, is the ideal backdrop. Super simple shape, although you need to enlarge the armscyes etc to make the pattern woven friendly (instructions here). The fabric is the other side of the doona cover I already used for the Sydney dress. I also made a shirt out of the same side as this top, so I really had to eke out the top from what was left. A shirt, a top and a dress isn’t bad for the $11 the ‘as is’ Ikea doona cover cost me! Who says you can’t save money sewing?

However, I have been a little dissatisfied with the quality of block printing. It doesn’t deposit a nice thick layer of paint on the fabric like stencilling or screen printing. Here is a close-up of what I mean.

Not the end of the world that the prints are patchy, but I am going to try some stencilling to see if this will make me happier with the quality. Because I print whole garments with repeating motifs, block printing has been convenient. Put the block on the fabric, apply pressure, take it off, ink it again and put it in the next spot to build up a pattern. With stencilling I could create a stencil with several motifs at once, tesselating, but getting it all to fit together nicely is a bit more effort. So I think I will attempt the same MO with one motif on the stencil. For that to work the important thing is to use a transparent stencil, so I can see where the motifs have to go.

Pyjamas

My doona covers tend to not wear out evenly all over, because DH perspires a lot during the night, which means that the top of his cover gets weak and tears while the rest is still good. Sometimes I can patch it, but often I have to replace the doona covers, which leaves me with a lot of fabric on my hands. One lot I made into furoshiki, Japanese wrapping cloths, to cut down my use of plastic bags, and some has been good for muslins. This particular fabric yielded summer and winter pyjamas, a nightie and a top.

So here are the summer pyjamas, authentically rumpled and photographed one morning before getting into the shower. The top is based once again on the Tessuti Mandy Tee with a cuff instead of sleeves, and the pants on my Vogue 8712, my favourite pants pattern but unfortunately OOP, cropped short. Any wide leg pants, elasticised at the top for comfort, would be similar if cropped to above ankle length.

The fabric came from IKEA and originally made lovely bedding, and now has a second life as equally lovely night wear.