Hi everyone! It’s time for a new post in my series about how I made Vogue Pattern V2004! This time, I will be talking about the fabric I choose for the outer/fashion fabric and the lining fabric.
By the time this post is published, the dress is already completed! The reasons why I decided to delay posts about making it in a more realistic time is due to the fact I had some fit problems with the bodice. I know what went wrong and how to fix it, but I needed time to focus on it instead of writing posts about the dress in real time. I will go into the fit problems and how to fix them in a future post.
And now, onto my fabric choices!
Both the fashion fabric and lining fabric are cotton sateen. I wanted to make the dress out of natural fabrics, but I also had a specific type of fabric design in mind. I wanted the dress to be made out of fabric with a cottage core, shabby chic, and/or romantic inspired print. I found many fabrics I liked, but they weren’t available in the amount I needed to make the dress. So, I decided to do something I was thinking of doing to a different piece of clothing I wanted to make.
And what type of fabric was I thinking about?
Bed sheets.
Yes. You read that right. Bed sheets.
So, here’s what happened: I discovered the Laura Ashley brand, which I have loved ever since I was a little girl, had a line of bed sheets available for purchase at places like Amazon.com, Marshall’s, TJ Maxx, and Home Goods. I also saw McCall’s was reprinting their line of Laura Ashley brand patterns. So, I decided I wanted to make a Laura Ashley pattern with official Laura Ashley fabric… from the bed sheets. There isn’t any Laura Ashley fabric available to purchase by the bolt or yard, so buying a packet of sheets is the only way I have available to me to purchase Laura Ashley fabric.
After browsing the sheets available to purchase online, I found this design on Amazon…
Here is closeup of the design…
It is called Lilian Coral. On the moment I saw it, I fell in love with the design! (Apparently so did others. Last time I checked the sheet design is sold out of certain sizes.) I bought a queen sized sheet set, but I needed only the fitted bottom sheet to make the dress. I still have the top sheet and two pillow cases (And some scraps from the fitted sheet) to use to make something else.
As for the lining, I decided to keep the theme of using bed sheets and decided to use a cotton sateen sheet set I found at Walmart…
The photograph of the pillowcase didn’t show the colors accurately, so here is a photograph of the Laura Ashley sheet with the Walmart sheet side by side…
Initially I didn’t know if I should use such a dark beige fabric to line a white fashion fabric. Yet, it worked. It actually complemented the lace I decided to use as trim. I’ll talk about that lace in the next post!
That’s all for now! Thank you for reading!