August 2019 | Mismatched Buttons (A Monthly Journal)
Frocktails, Best-Laid Plans
And thus, we arrive at Frocktails Month! Otherwise known as August 2019. As is my habit, my plans for my Frocktails outfit were ambitious beyond the time allowed, changing until they really couldn’t be changed anymore and, although I loved the final outfit I arrived at, I didn’t compete everything that I had hoped to.
Some of July and all of August was completely given over to the planning and sewing of my Frocktails outfit (in the gaps between, of course, general life-ing), so this post is going to look at my various plans and how they changed in the lead-up to Frocktails. In my next post I will look at the final outfit.
Red, Glorious Red
Perhaps it’s my bone-deep left-leaning political-affiliation rising up in me, but when it comes to special events, I’m drawn to the colour red. It’s a colour that I don’t wear often in day-to-day life (unless it’s at either a red-brown or pink end of the spectrum), but give me the promise of a party and I’m like a bull to a matador’s proverbial red cape. So from the outset of my planning I knew I wanted something red.
And at my local, The Fabric Store, I found the linchpin for the whole outfit. The sun to my movable plan-ets (see what I did there?) it was the one certainty for a long time in my Frocktails thinking. I didn’t yet have the pattern, I didn’t know if I was going to make a dress, a jumpsuit, a two-piece spectacular or something else, but I knew that this swishy, drapey, glorious satin twill would be the solar star in my outfit. Other small planets rose up within this fabric’s solar system, and although my plans still weren’t clear, I had an inkling that this toffee silk-velvet and wonderfully over-the-top Liberty Satin would have a place.
I knew, after my experience at a previous mid-winter Frocktails, I wanted to make a coat—a dramatic, long one, and cocoon-shaped so as not to crush the dress beneath. So, after settling on the above fabrics, I practically squealed with joy when I pulled out some stashed wool coating from Blackbird Fabric and realised it was perfect—perfect—for a coat to top this outfit...
Patterns and Patterns and Patterns, Oh My!
My plans eventually coalesced around these patterns: from Decades of Style, the 1940s Point Made Gown in the satin twill, and the 1930s Parisienne Coat in the wool coating, lined with the Liberty Satin and using the toffee velvet for the collar. This would be topped with the Oslo Stole from Orageuse, made from the toffee velvet lined with more of the Liberty satin. There. Decision made. Full steam ahead with my plans.
But then another pattern snuck into my life and my head was comprehensively turned…
A few months ago I saw this glorious dress—go on, click through! It’s a treat!—by the ever-so-stylish @wait_and_sew (one of my favourite follows on instagram for her gorgeous garments, her on-point styling and her awesome photographs) and had to track down the pattern. It is the Bella Dress from Make My Lemonade and, I gotta say, it took a fair amount of persistence to navigate the labyrinthine website and find the pattern’s webpage—only to realise it was out of stock but had a ‘notify me when this is back in stock’ button, which I hit … and then waited, and waited, and waited until I’d virtually forgotten about the dress altogether. But then an email popped up while I was sitting in a waiting room. My breath stopped, I hit purchase, and the pattern arrived from France at just the right time to scupper my early planning and set me on a new trajectory.
With Bella becoming the frock to my Frocktails, I quickly rejigged my coat decision, feeling the Parisienne wouldn’t work so well with this dress. Seduced by the deep pockets, the cocoon shape and the various styling I had seen of it, I’d had my eye on the Artemis Coat by I AM Patterns for a long time. While the original pattern is for a simple, short, unlined jacket (very beginner-friendly by the way) it comes with some excellent free hacks. I used this tutorial from the I AM website to lengthen the coat and this tutorial to line the coat.
And onto the sewing…
Artemis Coat
As my priorities can sometimes be occasionally somewhat questionable, I made my Artemis Coat first, rationalising that it was a really simple pattern, a winter garment that would get the most wear if I started it in July, and surely I’d be able to toile and sew a completely new-to-me dress pattern, from a completely new-to-me pattern company in a week. Surely this is a sensible way to go about things! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As it was, I made a lot of changes to the Artemis on the fly. I felt that the shawl collar looked too dressing-gowny on me, and I wanted some way of wrapping the coat closed in addition to the button closure the pattern offers. All this meant a series of tweaks and mods to the coat, and me fussing over those details until—literally—the afternoon of Frocktails. Details about these mods and tweaks in my follow-up post. I know, I know, such a tease! But here’s some photos of Artemis in progress.
Bella Dress
Poor old Bella got fairly short-shrift when it came to time and consideration, but I did make this fabulous wearable toile! The fabric is Atelier Brunette’s viscose dobby in Posie Blue that I bought from Miss Maude. It was with a deep sigh of relief that I finished the toile with nine days to spare before the event, and realised that it was going to be a smashing dress! I love this more ‘casual’ version (casual, that is, as far as any version of this glorious design can be casual), and had high, high hopes that my final version would be even better still.
I still ambitiously thought that I could perfect my Artemis Coat, sew my real Bella, add to that a lined Oslo Stole, teach, keep going on my PhD research and be a functional partner/friend/coworked (oh how I make myself laugh!). To find out about my success or otherwise, stay tuned for my next post!
