Me vs J. Crew : Knock it off

The idea of the Hide and Seek dress with a button placket was one that was handed up to me on a platter. There had been some discussion on the Oliver + S forum of how one could adapt either the Hide and Seek or the Cinema dress patterns to have a front opening placket. Then Rachel sent me a link to this pin....

I didn't just want to make a dress like that one, I wanted that dress. I mean, navy and white stripes, grey chambray, snaps... It was perfect. So I'm linking up with Elegance and Elephants Knock It Off series with my J. Crew knock off

I'd seen the perfect half inch navy and white stripe knit at the local super cheap Vietnamese fabric shop, but she'd sold out of it about 24 hours before I got there! Still, the J. Crew dress is listed at AUD$99.10. I could have spent that much trying to get the right size stripe posted from the US, or I could spend $8 on 1.2m of the slightly too wide stripe. Done.

The dress is the size 3 Hide and Seek with the length of size 4. Both the yokes and the skirt panels were lengthened to the size 4. It's exactly the same sizing as my first Hide and Seek dress and I knew with the interlock knit it would be plenty roomy enough.

To get the long sleeves I pulled out my School Bus sleeve that was already traced off in a size 4. The Hide and Seek sleeve was much wider and only comes as a short sleeve. I kept the sleeve cap of the Hide and Seek, drew a half way compromise in width and used the length of the School Bus to create my new sleeve pattern piece.

They turned out to be quite a bit too long and I probably lopped about an inch and half off the bottoms before hemming them. I can see now that this dress has a bit of a dropped shoulder compared to the T-shirt and that's probably where the extra length came from.

Since I didn't know if I was going to be at all successful I kept it simple and avoided doing the forward shoulder seam adjustment and curved inner back yoke that would have given me a closer match to the original dress. Yeah, lazy I know. :)

The only other modification was to cut the side panels a little off the grain so that the stripes always remained horizontal. The pattern isn't perfectly suited to stripe matching if you pay heed to the grain lines. But if you take the red wine and caution-to-the-wind approach to stripe matching it works just fine!

So where are we and why so many pictures?

We took a quick trip into the city this morning before kindy to take these photos at the NGV Ian Potter Centre. The foyer has this wonderful installation as part of the Emily Floyd exhibition.

And then the perfect payoff for a well behaved model is the exhibition and kid's installation upstairs....

In one room is a huge pile of white plastic letters. Kind of like a literary sandpit!

Either she's going by an alias or couldn't be bothered finding the right letter!

Then to continue the theme the next room has a Small Press where you can create your own Manifesto with that near-extinct beast, the typewriter

And some quirky stamps... "Solve your personal problems socially"

Finally, when you've had as much as you can take of your mum taking photos, you can go into the members lounge for a biscuit! Awesome!!

We had a delightful morning out together and she's terribly proud that now that she's turned 4 she has to pay for the train ride. Big steps!

This turned out to be a very successful dress modification and one that I can see myself making over and over again. The tutorial for the front placket is over on the Oliver + S blog. My next post for them is also inspired by a trip to the gallery. It's a bit of a nuts idea, here's hoping it turns out cool, not just weird....

Hide and Seek Placket tute

Failing miserably at coming up with a clever blog post title, I present what I think is quite a clever modification of the Oliver + S Hide and Seek dress

Click on the image above to see the tutorial for adding a front placket to the Hide and Seek dress.

I made the navy/white stripe one first and surprised myself that it worked well. I hadn't taken any photos along the way as that would seem to jinx me, but I was so happy with the outcome I immediately made another to be photographed as the tutorial.

Of course that time, I muffed the placket and ended up sewing it left over right instead of right over the left, but thanks to the magic of Lightroom I flipped the images for the Oliver + S post and that can just be our little secret!

Here's A in her back to front placket dress:

I was particular about the fabrics for the first one as I was working to a specific brief. I'm hoping to get some good modelled pictures of that dress and share more of its origins tomorrow.

For this second dress it was a case of whatever fabrics were in the stash that I thought would work together. I had bought this cotton interlock from Spotlight a little while ago with nothing really in mind, the chambray is more of the table cloth (?) that I used here, and the orange is a quilting cotton that happened to match my fish nicely.

Apart from my reversed placket can you spot the other "mistake"? this one I knew about but thought I could get away with...

With only one metre of the fishy interlock I had no choice but to cut the sleeves upside down. I stared long and hard at the fish and finally decided they looked the same either way. What I only noticed as the scissors cut the fabric was that their bubbles should, of course, go up not down. Oops, not so interchangeable after all. It gives the curious effect of looking like the bubbles are coming from the other end of the fish....

 

So there's my Hide and Seek Fish dress with farty sleeves!

(perhaps that should have been the blog post title)

Hide and Seek

A couple of months ago I cleaned out my wardrobe of clothes that didn't fit anymore. Some things that I couldn't bear to part with went into storage, some to the recycle shop and some fabrics were set aside, destined to be upcycled into something for the kids.

The Oliver + S Hide and Seek dress is perfect for showing off a little bit of a much loved fabric. The yoke and front skirt panel is made from an old linen/silk skirt with beigey-gold birds of paradise printed on it.

I was inspired by this beautiful version of the Cinema dress sewn by Sarvi. The Cinema dress is an adult version of the Hide and Seek dress, and given that I have that pattern (although not yet sewn) there are more opportunities for accidental, awkward matching outfits in the future!

I wish I had remembered to leave out the V notch in the neckline as Sarvi did with hers. The upcycled fabric is a bit too soft to neatly hold the crisp corners that would make the V look good. Still I wanted to sew this one exactly as per the instructions since it was my first time. There will be others and I will tinker, that much is certain!

As with all the Oliver + S patterns, this is a dress pattern that seems simple but surprises with it's detail and subtle shaping. Those welt pockets are just gorgeous and the bodice and side panels create a really lovely shape. I haven't measured either of the kids for a while, but my pick of a size 3 with size 4 length seems perfect.

I had taken some buttons off a cardigan my mother in law had knitted for A and replaced them with some slightly bigger ones so they didn't pop open all the time. The little buttons, of which there were three, were just perfect for this dress.

The main fabric is some leftovers after having cut a pair of trousers for me. Yep, you read right, I'm going to tackle the terrifying territory of trouser sewing! The fabric was super cheap and is a very light weight stretch chambray. I think that browny green colour is great, but I wasn't expecting it to appeal to my three year old daughter at all...

In fact, as I finished it I was both delighted with the pattern and the sewing but also wondering if I had out-beiged even myself. Was it going to be consigned to the growing pile of dresses that she refuses to wear but I'm still glad I made? Is it just too drab?....

But once I saw it on A, I was completely in love with it all over again. With the apron effect at the front, it puts me in mind of what Cinderella might have been wearing before the fairy godmother turned her all chintzy and over the top.

Since she takes the three year old's mandate of being infuriatingly unpredictable quite seriously, she's surprised me by seeming to genuinely really like this one. I just shrug and am grateful.

And our beautiful, beige Cinderella did get to ride in a golden carriage when we went to the NGV to see the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition. More on that another day (I may have been a little bit inspired!)...

Golden Mirror Carousel : Carsten HOLLER