It is getting hot now, being an El Niño year, so I thought long, loose linen dresses would be just the thing to keep me cool this summer.
For my first one I chose a pinkish-grey-mauve linen, which looks lovely, sophisticated and cool. But unfortunately it soon became clear that teamed with black this colour instantly turns to anaemic and washed out. Too late, once the black ink is on the fabric there is no way back.
So I finished the dress and took photos, which sometimes makes me change my mind. But this time it only confirmed what I had feared, the two colours did absolutely nothing for each other.
There is no way to change the black ink to something lighter, but thankfully the base colour is easy to overdye and I have a whole arsenal of dyes with which to attack this problem. Not that I would want to use them all at once. 🙂
The idea was to deepen the colour, to make it hold its own against the black. Dyeing can be a gamble, but I keep notes on previous dye projects which help a lot, and also have a fair bit of experience now. I am really happy with the result. The main thing to remember with linen is that you need only a fraction of the amount of dye that cotton takes for the same colour depth. I used as much soda ash as I would with cotton and there was very little dye left unfixed. This is great because that way it is much quicker to wash the garment out after dyeing than if there is lots of dye left in the water, and it’s much less wasteful too. And in case you are wondering, the printing ink is not affected by the dye.
So here is the dyed version (enthusiastically photo bombed by Amadeus, the Siamese kitten).
The pattern used is the Tessuti Lily linen dress, with the elbow length sleeves modified to cap sleeves.
It’s not always easy to judge if it is worthwhile persevering with a project that turned out to be disappointing. Sometimes it is enough to put it out of sight for a while to realise that something that bothered you a lot when you were obsessing about it has somehow disappeared once your mind has moved on (probably to obsess about something else).
On the other hand I have learnt to take the time to fix something that can be fixed, rather than have the garment become a wardrobe flower. That is why I am so excited about the possibility to recover a dyeing disaster with TUD discharge powder. Like the dress below, which definitely ‘does not spark joy’.
What was I thinking? But I like to experiment, so I’m glad I tried this idea and satisfied myself that it doesn’t work. But as the fabric is linen it would have been sad to have to bin it. Then I remembered that I had removed dye once before with this discharge agent called TUD (thio urea dioxide). It only works with fibre-reactive dye such a s Drimarene K or Procion MX, and doesn’t remove all colours perfectly, but it sure gives you another chance. In this case I even removed the dye twice, as my second attempt was better, but still not good enough for my liking.
A big bonus is that I discovered that the particular linen I used will discharge back to a natural linen colour, as I have quite a bit more of it, being part of two pairs of Ikea linen curtains, which is 10m in total. I buy heavily reduced linen curtains and sheets for experimenting when I have the opportunity, sometimes in colours I don’t particularly like.
So this is what it looks like, with the dye removed and then re-dyed, and I will be only too pleased now to wear this dress after its rather drastic ‘colour correction’.
If you are interested in the dyeing process, here is a short video explaining how to do this:
How to use TUD to remove dye from fabric (only works with fibre-reactive dye):
For every 100g of dry fabric weight you need:
2 litres of water
Quarter teaspoon TUD
one teaspoon soda ash
Boil the water, add the dissolved soda ash and the wet fabric. Add the TUD slowly because it fizzes up. Leave the fabric in the boiling water for about 20 mins, agitating from time to time. Wash out in soapy water or put through your washing machine.
Regarding the restriction to fibre-reactive dye, if you have dyed the fabric yourself you know what you have used, but if it is the original dye in the fabric there is no way of telling. With the linens I have discharged with TUD, one turned into close to the natural colour of linen, and one turned from an original pink that was dyed purple into a warm mid brown. So it’s a bit the luck of the draw.
What I like about this discharging process is that it is quite quick compared to dyeing. If you use hot water out of the tap it does not take long to boil and the 20 mins needed are not much compared to the 80-110 mins it takes to dye mid to dark colours. Let alone all the tedious washing out of the dye.
Discharging also adds to making the linen very soft and wrinkle-resistant. Dyeing has this effect already, even more than a mere soak in soda ash. After three dye baths and two discharges in boiling water, my linen dress is now beautifully soft and won’t need ironing even after washing.
For this top I used the Georgia top pattern by Elizabeth Suzann Studio. The fabric is linen and the flowers were stencilled with thickened dye for the blue and screenprinting ink for the grey. As a general rule, I use dye only when I must for the vibrant colour and the soft hand of the fabric, because it is a pain to work with. When I can get away with it I prefer the ink.
I used an Ikea curtain for these culottes, a heavier weight cotton with a nice herringbone weave. It was a creamy white originally, now dyed blue. The pattern is a variation of Vogue 8712 and the details are on PetternReview. The top is an older one, hand painted with dye.
Very happy with this grey linen top, love the geckos. Although I am always careful when using animal motifs, trying not to make them too cutesy, I don’t want to look as if I am working in a childrens ward at a hospital. (No offence intended to nurses, we are all very grateful for what they do.) BTW, this is straight off the clothes line, no ironing!
For the next couple of projects I am using a set of linen sheets, bought at a steep discount which worked out at $8/m. Great price and allows for a relaxed approach with my experiments. I do like the colour, a sort of muted pinky greyish mauve, but king size sheets yield a lot of garments and I can’t see myself with a whole wardrobe of this colour. It is also not that easy to combine with another colour either, grey is all that comes to mind, both for outfits and for painting. I tried to think outside the square with using pink, but wasn’t impressed with the result.
Not that great. I am really fussy, if I don’t love it I won’t wear it. I then tried to save this by dyeing the background purple, but let’s say that it was only a very modest improvement. The photo is actually kinder than the reality.
The purple turned out far darker than intended, and again, this is likely to languish at the back of my wardrobe. While it doesn’t look too bad, what do you combine this with? Pink pants? Purple pants? I tried black and didn’t like it much. I think I will continue to experiment with this top, removing the dye with a discharge agent. There is nothing to lose at this point and I might as well get some experience with discharging.
But I did learn something valuable from this disappointment: it seems that this linen, and possibly linen in general, takes the dye much more intensively than cotton. I have not done much immersion dyeing with linen, usually I paint on thickened dye with a brush. But with this immersion dyeing I used 3 teaspoons of dye powder, a third less than recommended in the recipe I have been using for cotton, and it turned out way darker than anticipated.
So I dialled the dye back a lot with my next project and that was sooo much better.
This time I used a plastic baby spoon to measure my dye (repurposing what’s left from when the grandchildren were little rather than throwing more plastic into landfill). The baby spoon is much smaller than a teaspoon and I used only 1 spoonful. That small quantity over-dyed the original colour really quite spectacularly. Dye is transparent, so when you dye you expect the original colour to show through and influence the result. This is why you can’t dye a darker colour lighter. But the fuchsia is really quite clear and untainted from the rather murky original.
I am too traumatised for now to try purple again, but I have already tried light blue and that was successful too, a nice mid blue denim colour.
Good to know as I work my way through many metres of this linen, although for a change I left the original colour intact with my next project.
But surprise, I used a new pattern! Doesn’t happen very often, but the Assembly Line, a Swedish independent pattern maker had a sale and i bought their cuff top. Normally they are too expensive for me and i would have just altered one of my patterns to reproduce the style, but their discount tempted me and I thought that I really need a new style for my tops. The Athina is great as a canvas for painting but we all need a change now and then.
There will be more of these tops and I might even make a skirt to go with this one, the top seems to be asking for it. Maybe a box pleat number? Or an A-line? This is what the pattern maker suggests, looks like a quarter circle with a gathered waist.
The sewing details for the Cuff Top are on PatternReview .
My last wavy shirt was painted freehand and it was quite laborious to get nice clean edges on the rough-ish surface of medium weight linen. I thought stencilling the edges would be much easier and so here we are with another wave top to put my theory into practice.
I cut the waves out of overhead projector transparencies, joining with sticky tape where necessary to get them long enough to cover the whole front or back garment piece from edge to edge. The OPT bought from office supplies are cheaper than acetate wet mixed medium stencils from art material shops. Using a stencil gives you a nice clean edge without too much trouble.
You need thickened dye to get a sharp edge, then fill in the middle with thinner dye in different blues to get nice colour graduations. I brush on additional soda ash solution to aid colour blending, taking care to stay away from the edges so the dye won’t bleed into the un-dyed areas covered by the stencil.
I used a new pattern for this project, the Tessuti Athina top. This is another free pattern and I feel a bit embarrassed to rely so heavily on freebies in my sewing, when I really should be supporting pattern makers by paying for my patterns. Unfortunately it is the simplicity of these free patterns that makes them so attractive to me, they are just the right canvas for my art work.
I saved fabric by putting a CB seam in, which allowed me to cut the back almost opposite the front, upside down, out of one width of fabric. You need 150cm wide though. To make it easy to have the painting match up seamlessly at CB I sewed up that seam beforehand.
And here is the finished top, worn with my Marcy Tilton pants. I took these photos in the morning after getting dressed, and the Australian bengaline used for the pants is still showing the creases where they were folded up in my wardrobe, but they will drop out very quickly. This is quite a relaxed and comfy look, reminiscent of my Lagenlook days. Because I treated the linen with soda ash it is lovely and soft, and even more comfy to wear. Doesn’t crease much either.
Sewing instructions for the Athina top are on PatternReview, not that there is much to say, as it is a very quick and easy sew.
Fabric was medium weight, 100% linen from an Ikea curtain.
Soaked the linen in soda ash solution (1/2 to 1 cup per 4L water), hung up to dry leaving the soda ash in the fabric. I left if for 2 weeks, which makes the linen beautifully soft and drapey.
Painted with Drimarene K (you could use Procion MX if easier obtainable) thickened with sodium alginate gel. Mix 1-2 teaspoons of sodium alginate powder per 250ml of water in a blender. Leave overnight for bubbles to subside.
Pour enough gel for painting job into a bowl, add Drimarene K powder and mix. Brush onto the fabric.
I used mid blue and black with navy base, which is in fact a dark blue.
Blend the two blue tones with more soda ash mix, taking care not to go near the painted wave edges so there is no bleeding into undyed areas.
Cover to keep dye wet and leave overnight to cure, then wash out and sew up.
I have been experimenting with ways and means of creating a pattern of undyed shapes on dyed fabric. In other words, leaving small areas of the fabric unaffected by the dye. Easier said than done if you want sharp edges, as dye is runny and bleeds easily. You could avoid the issue by stencilling with white screen printing ink after you have dyed your fabric, but the screen printing ink leaves a stiff, plasticky feel. Unprinted or dyed fabric remains soft.
Thankfully there is freezer paper, which blocks out dye, although it has to be the American variety as our freezer paper here in Australia is entirely useless for stencilling. Reynolds is the brand sold in supermarkets in the US, I believe, although there are also freezer paper sheets available in craft shops marketed to quilters.
For my tops I used the fabric from a repurposed Ikea Nattjasmin sheet. This is 60% cotton and 40% lyocell (viscose) and I really like the subtle sheen and luxe feel. At 2.5 m 150 wide it is very reasonable for $20. I soaked it in soda ash solution and let it dry, then cut the shapes I wanted to use out of freezer paper and ironed them onto the dry fabric. You iron with the shiny side down, which is coated with some sort of plastic that melts onto the fabric and seals it. But not to fear, it just peels off again at the end without leaving a residue. You can reuse the freezer paper shapes again many times, which I can vouch for, although I haven’t explored exactly how many. These bird shapes are again courtesy of Henri Matisse, who has inspired quite a few of my creations already.
After I had ironed the freezer paper onto the fabric I brushed on the dye, which has to be thickened with sodium alginate to avoid the bleeding issue. A large brush such as for interior painting is useful to dye large areas and you need to brush in one direction as the brush strokes show (unless you want a wild and woolly effect). You also need to make sure that you brush the dye right up close to the edges of the paper shapes, but not with so much dye on the brush that it runs underneath and dyes from the wrong side where it is not protected by the freezer paper.
This flower themed top was inspired by Kate Roebuck, who is an artist with a background in fabric design, which is probably why her art work appeals to me so much. I followed the same technique as for the bird themed top, ironing on the cut out shapes, then brushing on the dye. But by the time I got to paint this top I had run out of my sodium alginate thickener and all I had left was a remnant of xanthan gel which was months old and had not only developed a very nasty smell but also a top layer of mould. I am an impatient sort once I have fabric layed out ready to paint, and taking the time to mix up more sodium alginate, and wait for half a day for it to settle and lose the air bubbles caused by the blender, did not appeal. So I used the yucky stuff and it did the job, except that the mould made the dye lumpy which caused a more textured look. I quite like this effect.
The brown lines representing stems on the flowers are drawn with a graphic marker, but unfortunately the colour runs and disperses quite a bit on the thin fabric. It’s not all bad as it makes the lines softer, but it also bled a little into the white flower spaces where it has no business being. I touched this up with white screen printing ink. It is almost invisible, but not quite, but then this is a learning curve. Problems generally teach you more than if everything goes smoothly without effort.
I am looking rather pleased with myself in my new top and — finally — with my new haircut!. So happy to be out of lockdown!
The pattern used was again the Tessuti Mandy top, with a rounded neck line, without the sleeves, and with cuffs added instead. You can download the pattern for free. I have made this top many times, both in woven and knit fabrics, and a detailed description of the sewing process is here.
Dye painting notes:
Fabric used was Ikea Nattjasmin viscose/cotton mix single bed sheet, which is very smooth and has a nice subtle sheen after dyeing, not unlike a cotton/silk mix
Dye colours used were Drimarene K mid blue for the bird top and Drimarene black with navy base for the flower top. Because xanthan gel was used with the latter it turned out quite pale.
Soak the fabric in soda ash solution (1/2-1 cup per 4 litres of water), the dry. You paint on the dried fabric. The soda ash solution can be kept for the next project and will not go off for a long time, possibly indefinitely.
Cut out your garment.
Draw or copy the desired shapes onto the freezer paper and cut out, then iron into place onto the garment pieces on medium heat. High heat will discolour the soda ash dried into the fabric, although that disappeared completely in the wash for me so far.
Make sure the edges of the paper shapes are ironed well onto the fabric, then tape the garment pieces onto a solid surface, so they don’t move under the brush. I use a sheet of corflute.
Pour enough sodium alginate thickener (1-2 teaspoons of food grade sodium alginate powder per 250ml water, whizzed in blender) into a container, add dye powder (Drimarene K or Procion MX), mix together until homogenous. Do not use dye in your blender as it will then not be safe to use for food again later. Sodium alginate is a safe food additive used commercially for thickening of liquids, so that can be put in your blender.
Paint the thickened dye onto the fabric with a large brush, brushing in one direction. Horizontally looked good with these tops.
Cover with another sheet of corflute and leave overnight.
Now that I have mastered painting with dye without it running, I thought I would try the opposite. I have done this on silk a lot a few years ago, but my only try on thicker fabric at that time wasn’t a success.
With silk, because it is so thin, it doesn’t matter what you do, you just slap on the paint any which way and it works it’s magic.
I wanted to try something similar on linen. Last time I hung my garment on the washing line and made patches with the dye. This time I used my current technique of laying the cut out garment pieces on a sheet of corflute, and I thought I would do stripes of three different blues with a thick brush.
Easy peasy! I didn’t thicken the dye, just mixed water with dye powder, and this time I also added the soda ash, because I was only painting a short sleeveless top using a big brush, and I thought I could do this inside the hour it takes for the dye to lose potency if mixed with soda ash. The fabric was covered and left overnight, and after washing, drying and sewing it turned into a nice top!
The top was machine washed and left overnight in the machine after spinning at 1200 rpm, then line dried. It has not been ironed. The dye chemicals seem to stop wrinkling, although the linen has a subtly rumpled look when viewed at a certain angle.
Fired with zeal I thought I would do the same with a dress I made some time ago and had intended to dye because the original light yellow colour didn’t appeal. But because dye painting only works on a single layer, I had to take the dress apart first. I suppose I could have put some plastic inside to stop the dye from leaking through, but I didn’t think that could be done very successfully. Besides, I wanted to make some modifications to the design anyway. The sewing details of those mods are on PatternReview.
To do the painting I took off the sleeves and opened the sleeve seam to lay them flat. Then I separated front and back, did my modifications and laid all the pieces out flat on my corflute. I needed two sheets of that to accommodate the dress, and to save space I stack them like a sandwich. I paint the fabric on one, then stack the second piece of corflute on top with the rest of the fabric pieces, then put on another sheet for a cover to keep the dye wet.
Painting Notes
Drimarene K fibre reactive dyes on 100% linen
Powdered dye dissolved in water, painted on with brush
Soda ash solution added to dye for the top, but sprayed on after painting for the dress
Covered and cured overnight for top, but in sun at high-ish temp (50 or 60 degrees?) for dress and only for a few hours
After my dotty shirt I thought I would like to try a large area design. You don’t see these often in RTW fashion because fabric with very large repeats is hideously uneconomical to cut with a commercial process or it has to be pieced which is tricky to sew and therefore expensive. When you do see large area prints it is usually in the $$$ price bracket to allow for this. Here is an linen vest designed by Cynthia Ashby for the Artful Home, for the cool crowd at a cool $288.
Of course hand painting is ideal for these types of designs, so here is my first go at this.
I drew the outlines of the coloured shapes onto the fabric with an ordinary pencil and then coloured them in with thickened dye. I didn’t quite get the waves to meet perfectly at centre front and at the shoulder seams, although I tried. Next time I will need to measure and put in a couple of reference points instead of doing it freehand.
Then there was the painting. I used linen fabric which has quite a rough surface and painting the hard outlines of my shapes with a brush was slow and frustrating. You tend to get broken outlines which I didn’t want, so I used a very small, hard brush to get a hard edged line. It was painstaking work, load the brush, paint a cm or two before the line peters out, reload the brush. Next time I will cut a guide out of stencil material which will allow me to use a larger brush, which will make this much easier and quicker. I know that stencils give a nice clear outline with thickened dye on dry fabric, but don’t think that I need a stencil for the whole shape, just for the edge. This uses less of the stencil material, which is a consideration because I am down to my last sheet and getting more during lockdown is difficult. I could use sticky tape, but that is very geometrically straight, not a nice organic hand drawn line. Or maybe I could use a permanent marker??? — Radical, but worth trying. Not sure how it will wash but then there are special markers for fabric which are supposed to last.
Once you have done the outlines, you can use a large brush to slap on dye in between them which is ridiculously fast and easy. I used two different blues for a little extra interest. At the end I brushed over the colour blend areas with water to get them to flow into each other. I should have used soda ash solution to fix more of the paint as a lot washed out. Still, it looks ok and the colours won’t wash out any further.
When the painting of all the garment pieces was finished I covered the wet fabric and left it overnight, then washed it out,and dried it before sewing it up. With the medium weight linen there was some fraying at the edges, so sewing it up before washing it might have been better.
The fabric used was more of the Ikea linen curtain I used for the spotty shirt. It is 2.5m x 150 wide and there is still enough left for a boxy top, so 2 shirts and a top is not bad for an outlay of $24. Great for my experimentations when I don’t want to risk expensive material. The pattern was again the Cap Sleeve Shirt from the Assembly Line, slightly modified this time. The details are as usual on PatternReview.
Fabric was medium weight, 100% linen from an Ikea curtain.
Soaked the linen in soda ash solution (1/2 to 1 cup per 4L water), hung up to dry leaving the soda ash in the fabric. I left if for more than a week, which makes the linen beautifully soft and drapey.
Painted with Drimarene K (you could use Procion MX if easier obtainable) thickened with sodium alginate gel. Mix 1-2 teaspoons of sodium alginate powder per 250ml of water in a blender. Leave overnight for bubbles to subside.
Pour enough gel for painting job into a bowl, add Drimarene K powder and mix. Brush onto the fabric.
Cover to keep dye wet and leave overnight to cure, then wash out and sew up.
This shirt is my first attempt of painting with thickened dye on linen. To make the dots I used circular foam stamps like the ones below.
This stamping is ridiculously quick and easy. I used both perfect and imperfect stamp prints in three different shades of blue, and two sizes of stamps.
One major surprise has been the feel of the linen when the shirt was finished. For years I have been struggling to make my linen softer, torn between its beauty and comfort and its amazing capacity to wrinkle and look like a rag after carrying around small children or having them wriggling around on my lap.
But this shirt is really soft and buttery, and drapes like tencel, which I suspect is from the soda ash treatment. Soda ash is necessary to fix the dye, so I soaked the fabric in soda ash solution and dried it, leaving it for a week or thereabouts before I got round to cutting out and dye stamping. I sewed the shirt up before washing out the dye and soda ash, because I was worried about the raw garment pieces distorting in the wash. So the soda ash was in the fabric for quite some time, and it is said to break down the fibres somewhat as part of the bonding process with the dye (you are told not to use soda ash with silk as it is too harsh). But with the sturdier linen the feel of the fabric is amazing, like a garment that has been softened through many washings, almost lustrous and silky. I did iron the shirt after washing, so not sure if the linen will feel the same if you don’t iron. In my case the ironing was necessary, because I did not iron during the sewing process because the soda ash in the fabric will discolour if ironed at high temperature and I wasn’t sure it this would wash out. Fortunately I found that it does.
I am not sure if there will be a penalty to pay down the track, in that the soda ash will shorten the life of the linen in the long run, but short term the feel is absolutely luxurious. As I continue to paint on linen which entails putting it through a soda ash soak I will soon see if I will get the same effect reliably, or if this is some sort of miraculous aberration. Let’s hope not, I would love to have something up my sleeve that makes linen sit up and behave.
I used a new pattern, the Cap Sleeve Shirt by a Swedish company called The Assembly Line. The sewing details are on PatternReview.
Stamping notes:
Linen soaked in soda ash solution (1/2 to 1 cup of soda ash powder to 4L of water) and dried, left for a week or so before washing
Dye thickened with food grade sodium alginate. Blend sodium alginate powder with water ( 1-2 teaspoons per 250ml of water), then add dye powder to the gel.
Spread spoonfuls of the thickened dye on a flat surface such as a plastic plate to load the foam stamp with dye. The plate can be washed and re-used, the stamp too of course.
Cover the wet dye with plastic to stop it from drying too quickly and leave overnight. I use a sheet of corflute to paint my cut-out garment pieces on and a second to cover the wet paint
Wash in cold, then hot water with a little pH neutral detergent, such as Synthrapol. Dye left in the fabric should be inactive but if there is any active dye left a neutral pH stops back-dyeing of undyed parts of the fabric.
I made this Vogue 8659 a few times when it first came out around 2012. — Gosh, is it really 8 years old? Well, I still like it a lot and hope it doesn’t look too dated, even though it is now very OOP. It is still around on Etsy though, so someone must think it is still worth buying and therefore making.
My early versions have now passed on to the great wardrobe in the sky and I feel ready for a couple more. It is a particularly good pattern for semi sheer fabrics if worn with pants underneath and I have some silk/cotton voile which is too transparent on its own. I suppose I could make it into a lined dress but this maxi dress/tunic idea appeals much more to my quirky taste.
I am also always on the lookout for a back drop for my fabric printing and it ticks that box too. That said, I had some trouble with my colour combination initially, thinking for some weird reason that light olive green would pair well with a mid grey. Well, it didn’t. I knew this as soon as I pulled the block off my first print, but at that point I felt I was committted and couldn’t change to black, which would have looked so much better. Ever heard the Einstein quote that the definition of madness is to keep doing the same thing over and over and think you are going to get a different outcome?
>Blush<. Not sure how many leaf prints are on that garment, but with every one I kept hoping that somehow, when it was all done, it would magically turn from an ugly olive-grey duckling into a swan.
Well, it didn’t.
So it languished in my wardrobe, waiting for my next bright idea. Which was a long time coming, a couple of years to be exact. At one stage I made a half-hearted attempt to overprint the grey with black and that was a bad idea too.
But I don’t give up easily, especially not on expensive fabric, and in the end I decided that a darker background colour would suit the grey prints much better. Fortunately the screen printing ink I used to block print does not take the dye at all, and the colour of the leaf motifs would be unaffected while the rest of the fabric would take the dye. So off it went to the dye pot, to go from a light olive to a dark blue-ish green.
And would you believe, it worked, and now looks so much better!
Sometimes it takes a bit of perseverance to get a garment to behave. This top started life as an unattractive shade of khaki and although I liked the fact that the cotton jersey was fairly hefty, the colour got me down. I had also been a bit lazy when carving the lizard stamp and hadn’t carved all the little lizard toesies quite nice and round enough. So the print was scrappy as well.
Then my first attempt to improve the colour was a disaster. I had overdyed in a turquoise, hoping for a nice sea green. As if! There was far too much yellow in the original khaki and it ended up a hideous shade of sickly light green. Oops.
The only way to fix it after that was to get the big guns out, meaning to overdye with a much stronger colour. So I mixed 2/3 of mid blue with 1/3 of blue black, off again into the dye pot, and here we are: much better! From flop to favourite, even the scrappy print does not show because of the reduced contrast. Happy days!
The pattern is my usual TNT tunic pattern, based on the Burda Lydia t-shirt. I paid for mine years ago, but it has now become a free download. The details of how to adapt this pattern to make a tunic are here.