Jungle wrap dress

I think, this is a rebel dress. It is me rising against 6 months of darkness, cold, lockdowns and isolation. And there is still snow outside at the end of March! This is a dress that shouts out loud that the spring MUST come, all that snow MUST finally melt and sunshine has to fill everything around us. It is quite likely that my impulsive purchase of this fabric in all the colors of a rainbow was a subconscious protest, desperation, that I only now am able to articulate. And not only the fabric purchase – I started sewing this dress the next day after the fabric arrived and finished it the day after. Hectic rush or not, I believe it is an awesome dress! 💚💙❤️

There is a disclaimer to be added here. I would never in the right state of mind purchase this sort of print or ready to wear garment, for that matter. I have never owned anything as flashy as this. And now – here it is! I ordered this colorful fabric from The Fabric store online. And of all the fabrics in that parcel was waiting for this specific one the most. As soon as it arrived, I proceeded onto sewing.

It was an absolutely enjoyable project. This fabric is proper and stable cotton with a touch of lycra, it holds shape very well and in this case worked perfectly for this clean line wrap dress design by Simplicity, that was the pattern S8137.

Cutting the pattern pieces out of fabric unexpectedly involved a bit of zoological kind of planning 🙂 Parrots were abundant, whereas toucans were not, and I was determined to make sure I had toucans represented appropriately in the jungle! Things were not easy as I had only 2 meters of fabric and had to use it wisely. Am especially proud of a beautiful toucan sitting on the right shoulder 🙂

I cut the top of the bodice in size 10 and graded to size 12 at the waist. Wanted the dress to fit me perfectly and tried my best to make sure nothing would be gaping in any way, so had to manipulate the bodice pattern quite a bit. Eventually I found myself in a soup of seam allowances. Instead of following standard 1.5 cm seam allowance everywhere, I had 0.5 cm for the neckline, 1 cm for the waist seam, 2 cm for the bodice side seams and 1 cm for the skirt side seams, grading in between. It all worked out fine. I ended up having to make notes on all these small changes for the next time, if I decide to use this pattern once again.

The bodice took the longest to assemble as I was fitting it over and over again, and after that had to attach belt parts to it. Skirt was simple, I just installed pockets, which were not part of the original design. The bodice is lined which makes for a beautiful and very clean inside finish. It took quite a bit of time for me to actually finish the dress – to hem the skirt, for which I used my rolled hem foot, to slip stitch few remaining bits of the lining, and, finally, to add the hidden closure to make sure the dress stays securely wrapped.

All in all it took me one day to make this dress. Initially I was planing to take the pictures of the dress outside, to wait for the summer, for a sunny day and go somewhere nice. Meanwhile, now, when I first put finished and ironed dress on and went downstairs to show it to my husband, I was still wearing my massive wireless headphones, which are always on when I’m sewing. And then I abruptly changed my mind and figured that it was still worthwhile taking few pictures inside, regardless of how unprepared for a photoshoot I was. This is the reason for my cropping of the photos 🙂

This statement dress was made using Simplicity pattern S8137. I purchased this fabric called Parrot and toucan print cotton from The Fabric Store online, I needed 2 meters of the fabric and a bit of black cupro lining. Other notions were: a bit of interfacing and interfacing tape, thread and 1 snap for the inside closure. The dress cost me 44 EUR. It was made at the end of March.

I dearly enjoyed this project. The time was brighter whilst working on it. And I truly love this dress! I love it in all neon colors of it!

Let’s all stay healthy!

~Giedre~