Pinafore dress

Last summer I did lots of flower pounding with cosmos, coreopsis and purple pincushion flowers for a pinafore dress I had planned. I sew the dress a couple of weeks ago to wear for my daughter’s graduation.

Several things came upon me for this dress to happen. First, I had somewhat of a dyeing and printing frenzy last year, with lots of fresh leaf indigo dyeing and flower pounding. Second, I found an intreaguing modular dress that I wanted to make. I put the two together and made me a pinafore dress with pounded flowers on the yoke and skirt borders.

Tataki zome: Flower pounding

To learn more about the Japanese indigo I planted last year I took lots of courses, both online and in person. The Dogwood Dyer has lots of online courses in most things indigo and natural dyeing, as well as botanical prints. She shared all her favourite cosmos types for tataki zome, or flower pounding, and I planted them.

As soon as a bud opened I was there with my snips and kidnapped the flower to my project. Pounding them onto fabric was lots of fun and I giggled like a school girl at the beautiful colours that emerged on my swatches.

Enter pinafore dress

A textile artist I follow on Instagram, Anna Sjösvärd showed a pinafore dress she had made, inspired by a tutorial from another Instagram profile. It was the simplest model, basically two aprons joined at the shoulders and tied at the back and the front. The result was a lovely dress with a snug wrapped bodice and flouncy skirt. I decided to make one for myself, and combine it with my need to pound innocent flowers onto fabric.

I cut the yoke and skirt border and pounded away all summer – cosmos flowers of all colours, orange coreopsis and rich purple pincushion flowers. To save flower material and to create some depth in the prints I pounded the flowers between the pieces. This way one piece got the back and the other got the front of the print.

Sewing

There weren’t many pieces for this dress. Two skirt pieces, one for the back and one for the front. A front and a back bodice piece, divided above the bust for the flower prints. Two bands to tie the back apron to the front and finally a handwoven band for the tie of the front apron at the back.

Since I had cut and zigzaged the pieces during the summer, all that was left when I came back to the dress this spring was the montage of the pieces. I did the joining seams on my 17 kilo Husqvarna 2000 from the 1960’s that I got for my 21st birthday, and the hems by hand. The skirt was just two 150 centimeter wide rectangles that I added running gathers to to fit the bodice parts.

The last thing I did was to add bust darts. The sides of the bodice flared and I couldn’t live with that. I did them daringly off the cuff. A little wonky, but quite pleasing and still better than before.

I wore the dress on my daughter’s graduation and I felt very comfortable in it. The antique linen shift comes from the Berta’s flax project and it was perfect underneath the dress. I used a clutch from Onni design as a tie-on pocket.

So, the first child all grown up, at the university and in his own apartment and the second ready to meet the post-school-system world. Now what?

Happy spinning!


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