TransPacificTextiles

I thrifted about two yards of cloth a few years ago, with a lei and Hawaiian quilt motif and a selvedge that said Trans Pacific Textiles, so my guess was that it was some souvenir cloth, very likely purchased at a Discount Fabric Warehouse store, which would mean there would be a 25% chance it came from the one in Kona I was able to visit back in 2000.

Neat.

Anyway, I decided I absolutely wanted to use it for a breezy summer dress, but not in the same skirt-gathered-to-empire-waist style as the last few I made.  Nah--for this, I absolutely wanted an exaggerated A line!  And of course I had no patterns for that shape.

So, no problem, I just find some to cobble together, and I eventually ended up fusing an early 1990s pullover tank shirt for wovens with a 1970s wrap skirt...and the pockets from the skirt-gathered-to-empire-waist dress.  I forgot to take pictures of the patterns I used,and, at this point, I do not want to take any more pictures of this project.

The combination of patterns blended together just fine, and the shape turned out as I hoped

 Oh, yeah, I decided to give an all-in-one facing another try, and this time I looked around to see if there were any easier ways to do that on a garment with no center front or back seams of any kind than the way I had figured out to do it myself.  The answer, from the little research I did, was "no not really" but I decided to try this method anyway and it worked well enough.

 It might get easier with practice, so I'll keep trying it whenever it's needed.

The pockets are gingham too.

 I tried out the larger hem roller on this curved hemline and it took me to tries to get it started right and it could stand to be pressed, but I'm still calling it a success.

 Nothing notable about the back view

except

the whole thing...well...

The thrifted shirt pattern I used had been cut out by the previous owner, and in my excitement about figuring out which patterns I could combine in a way that wouldn't require me to draft angles and curves myself , I kinda didn't pay attention to the fact that it was cut out in the largest of the pattern's multisizes...and...as an early 1990s item, even the smallest size included probably has what would seem now like a lot of wear ease...

so

uh

So it ended up with what I would generously call an 8" wear ease, and not so generously say was just plain too big.

Not that I couldn't fix it, of course, because, as you may have noticed, I do sew.

So I did some rough calculations and brought it in at the side seams at the arm holes

 ...and my calculations were too rough, and it ended up just a bit uncomfortably snug.

But!  I was able to let it out a half inch on each side--because I had clipped things to deal with the transition from shirt pattern to skirt flare, I lost a lot of potential area I could have reclaimed from the seam allowances.  But it does feel better to wear now!

Just...don't scrutinize the side seams.

The shape is exactly what I wanted and the fit is fine but it turns out the cloth is...not the most opaque.

Every project is a learning experience, even after 25 years of sewing, right?