Finished: My Van Gogh Dress

How often do you get the opportunity to use sewing in your work life? When my work colleagues started talking about making dresses from custom-printed fabric, to wear at a work event, I was all over it. The four of us organised a pop up exhibition and symposium about copyright and cultural heritage (broadly speaking), and we chose images associated with my friend's open source exhibition project: http://displayatyourownrisk.org/

 This Van Gogh painting was used as the basis for my printed fabric:

I ordered from Spoonflower - the first time I had ever used them. As my friend is a graphic designer, she was able to help with working out how the image would be placed on the fabric.I think I might have found it difficult otherwise. It's also hard to get a grasp of the scale of the design too, but happily mine worked out well.

When the fabric arrived it felt a little stiff but softened after a wash. I put a colour catcher in but there was hardly anything on it. I have read variable accounts of the quality of Spoonflower fabrics so it will likely take a few washes to see if there are any effects. The substrate I chose was cotton sateen and it seems like pretty good quality. One thing I noticed was that it felt very slightly greasy to me, although this may be because my pattern was made up of pretty dark printing that covered the whole fabric surface, so it could be as a result of the heavy ink saturation of the fabric.

 

Although I considered going for a simple shift dress to show off the fabric, I decided to use this vintage New Look Maudella pattern:

I bought it a couple of years ago when I bought a load of New Look Maudella patterns from this same era. I think this pattern must typify my style, as I was also kindly sent the same pattern some time ago by fellow blogger-called-Kerry, Very Kerry Berry! (I will do a giveaway for this at some point).

It doesn't take up too much fabric (I used nearly all my 2 yards) and the skirt has a nice amount of movement. My main concern with pattern placement was that the spray of flowers would be nicely displayed on the bodice. As it worked out, I really like how the flowers look at the hem of the dress too.

 

Overall I think it was a successful project , and it's preety cool to be able to say that you have designed the fabric for your dress as well as made it. It also counts as part of my Vintage Pledge for this year too - the first item I've managed to blog - it's only taken 6 months!

K x