Creating something new: mixed prints musing dress from a pattern refashion

This was another moment of inspiration from a magazine, that I was trying to decide whether I liked or not. The underlying blues are very similar, but the prints are so different. What would I have in my stash that I could use like this?

Resident Magazine, NT - Model, Magnolia Maymuru - Dress from Raw Cloth, Darwin

I pulled fabric out, only large pieces, to see what colours I had. I would prefer not to do blues, too much like the picture.

The basket print piece, from Injalak, is 2 metres long.
The Japanese-style cotton duck is a couple of metres too.
The third piece is a large scrap, but I think it would go very well with the other two.
I could make a fairly straight dress out of the basket print alone, but I want a skirt with more flow. I should have enough fabric between all of them to do whatever I like.
I have a rockabilly dress pattern, maybe I'll have a play with that.

I didn't want to make the jacket, so that meant there were seven pattern pieces that I didn't need.

Cutting the pattern out is the most annoying part... the paper is tissue thin! At least it is recycled.

And then there's the instructions...

The pattern also has a side zip, which I hate, so I was more than happy to make extra cuts in my pieces so that I could make a back zip instead. A few extra seams never did anyone any harm!

I couldn't decide if I wanted to makes stripes or do blocks of print, with the way the pattern was styled it was all meant to be one colour.

This is what I thought would be the front of the skirt, because its the fabric that I like the most.

I deliberately cut one half of the front of the top out of the third, darker bit of fabric. Hopefully I would have enough left to use for the trimmings.

I had enough of the basket print to cut the whole back piece of the top out.

When I used the fabric I didn't just fold it in half, I folded as little as possible so that I would have bigger scraps leftover. Far more useful that way.

I did the same for the straps and other small pieces, to use as much as I could.

The front of the top looks pretty good, huh?

I'm glad that I had so many metres, because I still ended up running out of fabric! I had to cut four bands, about 10cm wide, for the contrast strip on the bottom of the skirt. Turns out I didn't have enough length in my leftovers to do this, so I got creative and connected a lot of the scraps together so that very little went to waste. It will make it a bit bulkier, but very funky.

Onto the skirt. I had cut the two large pieces out and there were two ways they could go.

Solid front, solid back?

Opposite fabric split?

My husband gave his opinion on the layout of the skirt and I agreed: the split front is the way to go. And the skirt is the perfect size. The top, on the other hand... is too small! Argh! I HATE patterns.... time to refashion it!

What was wrong:

The darts under the bust went up too high and made the top tight across the bust. Luckily I could make them smaller.
It's too tight around the body, meaning I have to put some extra material in the sides.
The straps seem far wider than in the picture, even when I cut them down further...

Look at the gape in the back! There were more bits of fabric that I had cut, but I really couldn't see myself adding anything more to this top.

And how tight it is on the sides, and yet it puffs out alarmingly around the sleeves?

I added in the side bits in first, to see what difference that made. It was significant. With a dart in the bust on both sides it actually fit and would wrap around.

A better fit on the back, too.

A couple of extra seams to sew and I was better off. Just needed to finish all of the edges. Bias tape is a time saver: it makes hemming and edges less bulky than if I had hemmed by folding. The lines are cleaner, too.

A much better fit! Just the bottom hem to go at this point.

I like how the binding has brought all of the parts together. It might have been too much of a contrast otherwise.

What I hadn't counted on was that by making the top wider, it no longer matched the skirt. I would have to lose a significant amount of the length of the top to make it match. My solution was to keep them as separates instead. It does always mean that I can mix and match things.

I overlocked and joined the edges.

And then I put the zip in.

After that I hemmed the bottom of the skirt - which was metres in diameter! I almost didn't have enough bias binding to complete it.

Unfortunately I didn't end up using a lot of the strips that I had cut out for the pattern, but it meant that I could use one for the waistband of the skirt. I folded it right-sides in and sewed it in a tube.