Hayley’s Myosotis/Fringe Mash Up
It’s not often I get the chance to stitch up a garment using the fabric from the boxes ahead of time but once I had decided on the absolutely beautiful Loseta viscose crepe from Fabric Godmother I contacted Josie to ask if she could send me an extra 3m a few weeks before and she super kindly gifted me some.
I knew I wanted to make some kind of shirt dress with it and had planned a Lennox shirtdress from Cashmerette but without a whole lot of spare time available to me (lockdown + work + toddler) and after a couple of less than successful makes I needed a win and so dug out my tried and tested Myosotis pattern from Deer & Doe.
I love the Myosotis pattern and have made it a couple of times now, however I wasn’t a big fan of the collar and wanted more of an open neckline. Time to get hacking.
A couple of months ago I made the Fringe top from Chalk and Notch which is fairly similar to the Myositis in that it has a shirt bodice with a gathered skirt, however it has grown on sleeves which I didn’t love and the bodice didn’t fit me quite as well. But I did love the open neckline and it looked like it would be pretty easy to combine the two.
Having made the decision that I was unlikely to sew another Myosotis with the collar I was very naughty and hacked directly onto the pattern without tracing it first!
It was a super simple task of just laying the front bodice of the Fringe on top of the front bodice of the Myosotis, matching up the shoulder seams and tracing a new neckline, cutting off the excess. I then did the same with the back bodice pieces.
Then I just used the facing pieces from the Fringe pattern when cutting out the fabric. Easy peasy and I absolutely love the result!
The neckline is just a tad too long however and so there is some gaping, not that you can really tell but an easy fix for nect time just to take some of that length out.
The next step to navigate was pattern matching. The print of the fabric is based on a 1970’s wallpaper that looks like tiles, with four “tiles” coming together to form a motif in the middle.
I knew that if I didn’t pattern match at least along the centre front of the bodice it would look terrible, and for someone who usually keeps clear of anythign that needs matching I’m pretty proud of the success.
I cut the left bodice out on a single layer of fabric, then used that to find the mirror image for the right bodice, taking into account seam allowances.
The only thing I didn’t take into consideration was which side the buttons should be on so in order to maintain the print I had to stitch them on the wrong side but considering I can take this on and off over my head without undoing the buttons it’s no issue.
All in all I am incredibly happy with this dress and I think it may well be my most favourite make to date. Now, someone pass me a cocktail!