Slip Dream

I dreamed a very distinct garment about two months ago.

It was a patchwork slip dress, in muted yellow greens and warm dusky purples, in various textures--charmeuse, fine velvet, lace, lamé--and everything on the bias.  The textures were further enhanced with gathered lace set asymmetrically in some of the patchwork seams and on half the neckline.

Someday maybe I'll make it as it appeared in the dream, but, for now, it did inspire me to use up some stashed fabric odds'n'ends to make something way more brightly colored and less detailed

The slip dress in the dream was a work of couture art, impressive all around for textile use and expert construction.  This is a big honkin' garishly bright clown dress that makes me grin to look at.

The stars of the fabric selection are definitely the sequined embroidery, scavenged from two 99¢ stained thrift store polyester crepe kameez.

The purple and green (and the orange piping, which was scavenged from the green kameez) are the only polyester here--I'm fairly sure everything else is silk. Silk that was in my stash since the late 1990s and silk that was given to me within the last few years, but shows signs of having been in someone else's stash for a few decades as well.

The base pattern used is the slip from the much loved McCall's 6966

 Maybe I'll make the proper dress part someday.

Of course I deviated a lot from what the pattern expected, and beyond  the whole "patchwork" part.

The embroidered green piece used at the neckline was originally a sleeve, with the orange piping detail included. (The yellow top stitching was all me, though.)  I removed the piping from the other green sleeve cap and used the sleeve cap shape to cut a roughly matching curve into the top of the purple piece before applying the piping.  I tapered it out into the seam allowance at a point just past where the two pieces would meet and sewed them together before edge stitching on the purple side to hold down the seam allowance.

Not surprisingly for me, there's a lot of edge stitching in this: along every single seam, both patchwork and construction. I also serged just about everything, including the bottom edge before turning it twice and stitching.  But no serging on the piping. I tried serging there, but...it didn't go so well. So.  That's just trimmed somewhat close to the stitching.  (This is 100% a Hand Wash Only kinda thing.)

I also did not make the straps from bias cut fabric, because I didn't have enough of anything left to cut anything that long on the bias.  Encasing the edges like this was also not what the pattern wanted, but it seemed like the best way to finish the area, and with some added stability.

I also ignored the intentions of the pattern by folding it and the assembled fabric in half lengthwise, then swinging the pattern out a bit to make the resulting cut pieces wider, for more swoosh and swing and also because I had cut out the pattern pieces back when my size was smaller. 

The angles of things on the back aren't as acute as those on the front, because, no surprise, the fabric supply was getting a bit short at that time. In retrospect, I probably could have added another strip of the orange, cut off of the bottom of the strip with the Japanese printed patchwork piece in it, on the outside of the purple and green strip, and tat would have made the angles sharper, but it's fine.

Who knows if I'll ever even wear this (if so, absolutely as a layering piece), but it was silly fun to make.