I have been shuffling through my cottons with the idea of making clothing that mixes them more aggressively than I usually do. I am not one to shy away from mixing prints, but I do feel like I'd fallen into a rut of how I did it: a shirt with contrast bands; a dress with a single contrast print at the skirt hem; patchwork (so much patchwork.)
The Gunne Sax/Gunne Sax Inspired dresses (and the dress I revisited while planning them) did help shake up my ideas of how and where to place the other prints, at least a little. I definitely think that visible facings are something permanently added to my arsenal of contrast print placement options. (Those projects also helped me think more about using lace and trim just...in general, although it may be a while before that's something I think of with any frequency.)
I recently stumbled upon the "layer cake dresses" made by PerfectJacket on YouTube. Those looked, in a general kind of way, like fun, so I grabbed a stack of Halloween and other prints and ran with my version of the idea
It is ridiculous.
I will say, PerfectJacket made a lot of decisions that I absolutely would not, like pleating instead of gathering (although I do understand that traditionally gathering that much fabric would be excruciating, while I can zip through my smaller amounts relatively quickly with the ruffler), and also very often ignoring fabric grain. She also sews the strips of different fabric together in stacks, and then sews those stacks end to end to make the full loop of each tier, while I am more comfortable sewing each set of fabric into a complete strip, then sewing those full strips into each tier--well, no, actually. I made front and back units, the same way I sewed the patchwork skirt with a separate front and back, so I could have side seams to add pockets. Big swirling skirts are fun, but pockets are important, right?
The layer widths ended up being around 90", 120", 180", and 270", very very roughly. Some of the layers were made from full widths of fabric, some were made from odds and ends pieced together. It was surprising how far they went, without getting so narrow they lost definition in the finished arrangement.
I used all of the jack'o'lantern with moons on black background, and all of the orange bats. The jack'o'lanterns in funny hats on the pink background is indeed the exact fabric as the dress posted about two weeks ago, but I had a day, years ago, where I was experimenting with bleaching so, so many things, and, after bleaching most of those many things, when, I threw a yard of that fabric into the sink, hoping the result would be a softened version of all the colors, the purple turned pink and not much else changed. It was a fluke of the chemistry created by all of the previous things bleached, because,when I clipped a bit of the purple pumpkin fabric and put it in a fresh bleach bath, it...didn't do that.
And then I would go on to realize that some of the pumpkins were problematic, and the fabric sat in the stash for a long time. I was determined to use it in this project, and thought of acquiring some heat transfer vinyl to cut concealing hearts from this time. I took some time to analyze the print, though, and realized that I could, by cutting along the print instead of ripping along the grain, create strips that largely concealed the problem pumpkins.
I ran the fabric-to-be-ruffled through the ruffler with the lower edge of the next tier, doing each tier of each side in turn. The bottom ruffle was the farthest off, leaving maybe eight inches extra unruffled, but that was close enough. The other ruffles were up to two inches extra, which is pretty close. I did the ruffling with the tex 24 thread, then went back and did proper seams with the usual tex 40. Of course I serged everything, and I'm still picking little threads off of everywhere.
I thought about top stitching at every horizontal seam in the skirt, but decided against it. I'm not confident in how they'll come out of being laundered, but that's for future me to deal with.
The bodice is straightforward. I chose to do visible facings for the print contrast up there
I thought about adding some trim to cover the less than perfect pressed and stitched edge, but, given the overall...everything...of this dress, I don't think it's too obvious.
I also remembered that I have a shorter bell sleeve variation prepared for this pattern--it's Fake Burda 6401, of course it is--so I went with that, because I didn't have a huge amount of the haunted house print left. I cut the sleeve bands a bit wider than the pattern piece I have, which is meant for the sleeve version that hits closer to the elbow...not that I have big bulging biceps, but I do have issues with things being too tight around my upper arms, and this worked out fine. Do I know how much I added? Pfft.
I did take a tiny bit of care to place the strips of the haunted house print that showed more purple on the front of the skirt. I also acknowledge that the haunted house print is cut on grain, even if it is, as it turns out, not really printed on grain.
It is certainly not as massive and dramatic as the PerfectJacket dresses, but it's still pretty massive and dramatic.
I had made a shirt from the haunted house print a few years ago (nine? nine years ago???), but I never really gave it a chance because there's just so much yellow and orange in the print--while I do tolerate yellows and oranges in Halloween prints, I just didn't like the combination of them in this one. I think the teal around the neckline helps make the print work for me now, as well as the fact that there are so many other prints going on in the whole dress.
This was actually a fairly quick project, and it has definitely added "pieced tiers" to my print mixing/stash busting repertoire.
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