Springtime Pastels

Here is my latest Britex project - I am rather pleased how this one came out!  My goodness, the weather has been beautiful lately, and working on a new Spring frock was just what I needed to push me out of a minor creative funk.  

I was certainly glad to have the capelet handy when I took these pictures last week because there was a definite chill in the air.

Between the lovely fabric and the fabulous dress design, I cannot really take much of the credit – both those elements really make the dress. 

I have had a couple of questions about working with the fabric, itself.  The linen blend is extremely ravely (as are most loose weave fabrics), but so worth the extra effort.  I am always drawn to the novelty category because the choices are glorious, although they do present their own challenges. 

The blend is comprised of 66% linen/17% cotton/13% viscose/4% acrylic.  Linen loves a good hot iron, as does cotton, but acrylic does not.  After studying the weave, it became clear that the acrylic portion is woven into the top layer of the fabric every inch or so.  This makes it easy to press from the wrong side of the fabric, but those synthetic bits had me worried about the right side.

It is rather embarrassing to admit, but I am not great about using a press cloth.  I have become much better about it over the years, but still get lazy about grabbing one most of the time.  For this project, however, it was essential.  My iron is a basic model, but I did not feel like picking melted bits of synthetic fabric off of the faceplate – and I certainly did not want to hurt the fabric!

As far as dealing with the shredding edges, the best bet is to handle cut pieces as little as possible until they are stitched up and finished off (my favorite method is seam binding).  Underlining with a denser weave linen/rayon blend also helped me out during construction - because the underlining did not fray as much, I still had a good idea where the original seam line was located, even when some of the fashion fabric was lost to the shred monster.

And now I am definitely going to say farewell to the Winter wardrobe - pastels and bright colors, here I come!

Dress:  Made by me, Colette’s “Parfait”

Capelet:  Made by me

Shoes:  Banana Republic

Earrings:  Banana Republic

[The fabric and pattern for this project was received in exchange for my contributions as a Britex Guest Blogger.]