The evolution of a dress

I made this dress yesterday. It has a  twisted cowl neck  and nifty extended sides.

 

I have been seeing lots of garments on the street where the hem is extended to the full  selvedge to selvedge width of the fabric.

You get a top or a skirt that looks really complicated but is in fact quite simple to  both draft and construct.

You can see direction for  a skirt made with this principle here table cloth skirt. Here is an earlier example of using the same concept . The skirt is cut wide at the hips and creates a lovely vertical cascade.

 

I was also poking through a Japanese sewing magazine ( a constant source of good ideas) and found this.

I realized, perhaps influenced by the very graphic Japanese sewing magazine, that I could more easily explain the process with pictures than with a whole lot of words.

 

I cut the dress as usual from shoulder through high hip. Then I cut straight out to the selvedges.

 

Here is the dress unfolded. The dress front and back were  each made from half of the width of the fabric. I would have gotten a more dramatic drape had I used the full width for each half of the dress.

 

 

And this is the completed dress with a modest cascade on either side. please forgive the poor quality of the image. My trusty camera slipped out of my hands as I went to take this photograph yesterday. My husband was kind enough to take the photo with his phone.

I added a twisted cowl neck. Once again, it looks complicated but is really easy to do.

 

This seems to be the moment for electronics to fail. Aside from the sad demise of my camera, our microwave oven died a spectacular death yesterday. My watch battery gave up the ghost.  There is now a new battery in my watch. A new microwave and a new camera are on their way from Costco., hopefully soon and in our day.

All of you who look forward to Food Friday will have to satisfy yourselves with descriptions rather than photos. I made chicken in pomegranate molasses.  It’s beautifully golden brown and resting in the fridge. I also made barley with mushrooms and chestnuts. Earthy flavors go well with barley.

There were blood oranges in the market today.  My husband fell in love with blood oranges during the year he spent in Paris.  They usually come to market right around my husband’s birthday. I usually cook with blood oranges in honor of my husband’s birthday.  His birthday isn’t until the end of the month, but it’s a nice way to usher in his special day. The blood oranges will be added to a green salad tonight.