Hey I am back with a red flower: Papaver somniferum (Red oriental poppy)
Caveat: Please do this kind of thing at home but this could be a month or 2 overhaul
(It took me from July to October)
You know, for a while now, I haven't posted. I have been losing weight and as frustrating as it was, it did take a while to settle to a level state and in doing the waiting game I thought of so much I could be adding to my blog. I have so much wanted to add to my inventory that in the process I knew I couldn't while I was transitioning into smaller sizes every other month or so and here I am posting my latest.
Well, as everyone who has encountered this dilemma will know this:
" I want this look, but the dress is the wrong cut...or the print pattern is all wrong....or it's the wrong price...or I can't find a dupe online....or it is out of style and it is nowhere to be bought....or there is no sewing pattern out there for a dupe"
Yeah...sewer's have been asking and perhaps struggling with these issues for some time and it seems to me that the old voice inside of me keeps saying:
"You can by the fabric, buy the embroidery floss and put the design on your 'blank' canvas youself"
And you know what? I did just that.
Well what exactly...poppies. The ones you see as fabric prints but you search all over on the internet and just can't seem to find what it is you're looking for?
I mean really... it just blows my mind how hard it can be. But if you have the patience and willingness to finish a lengthly project then this IS your answer.
The first step for me was to research the growth habit of poppies themselves, find the right size of images and colour gradients within the petals themselves. Then we are ready to go ahead.
I came up with a number of images that worked which I then modified a lot or very little. My main point was to focus on the reality of the natural stages of the bloom period and its various stages of growth to make it feel real.
I am telling you this was no weekend thing. It took months. I also like challenges.
The thing is, I have been making my dresses in a pattern size 16, now it is 14. It fits with a 1 cm seam allowance instead of 1.5cm. So, I could be a 15? I don't know.
As usual, I started with the bodice pieces because I also had traced out drawings of flowers that were small than I would have liked and I also knew that the bodice pieces were smaller in area than the skirt portions.
So, starting with the bodice back (don't ask why... I just did)
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| First flower on the bodice back |
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| More flowers on the bodice back |
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| Completed bodice back |
And then I did the front:
And then I proceeded to finish the front and back of the skirt. This phase took the longest because the flowers were larger and had to put some more thought into it to make the growth habits more life-like.
I didn't mind that too much because since I was half way through, I felt "Hey let's go for it!" and so I ended up putting 5 flowers on the front and 4 on the back.
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| Finished front |
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| Finished back |
Now, since it is all done here are the finished views.
Front:
Back:
Do you want to know what else? I already did this dress before in size 16 with a B&W colour block for an evening kind of look and I made this one when a 16 felt snug with some stretchy material. The poppy dress happens to be made of a linen-rayon blend so quite strictly a woven material
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| See how much of a size difference this is? |
The one last thing to add to this is:
- I fully lined the Papaver somniferum dress
- I only lined the bodice in the B&W dress because I beaded the bodice with some toho beads
- Both dresses are the exactly the same view of McCalls's 5972
Of course I have plans for more!
Bye Bye!
