Two and a Half Months Early, or Five Years Late

After I started considering sewing Gunne Sax dresses, I found out about the GunneSaxOween hashtag from 2021.  Me being me, I'm going to sew things from Halloween prints anyway.  So!  Even if it's not trendy now, I have still just finished a Gunne Sax inspired dress that involves Halloween prints.

 

(What I have not yet done, however, is get my better camera repaired.  This plaid print seems to be a challenge for this camera to capture from across the room...)

The last version of this dress I made had some oddness (beyond the whole unnecessary zipper thing) that I worked out for this one--namely: flattening the curve of the front waist inset, and raising the neckline an inch.  I did both of these things based on directly comparing that dress to the "proper" Gunne Sax dress I made last year.

The plaid print of the main dress, and the witch and cat print of the bias binding, cuffs, and underskirt ruffle, both came from the last visit to the craft thrift store.

The cat print, though...  It's called Belinda's Big Kitty, by Alexander Henry Fabric.  The selvedge also has a 2016 copyright, and that's probably when I first bought it, finding a remnant of it again in 2017. 

It is a heavier quilting cotton--not the least bit, as far as I'm concerned, suitable for entire garments.  (Evidence online shows that not everyone shares that opinion.)  I used some of it for a Halloween patchwork jacket in 2020, but, mostly, I've been stashing it away for ~just the right~ project.

I did not initially think this project would be it.  I thought those parts of this dress would be made from the olive green candy print that I also thrifted at the same time, but there just wasn't enough of that.  After a bit of argument with myself, I decided to go ahead and use the Belinda's Big Kitty, however much it would take.  And it did take most of it!  ...but I have enough to use in another patchwork project, along with that olive green candy print...

I don't regret it! 

The quality of the plaid print fabric is pretty good, too--the lines are even almost printed on-grain...  That meant that it didn't feel like a contrast of quality to use the Alexander Henry with it.

The orange fabric with the silhouettes, though, is not great.  It's very loose and thin (but not at all in a luxury lawn kind of way), and had slubs and misprints.  There's a bit, just barely hidden in the side seam on one of the cuffs, where a knot in the warp yarn caused an unprinted wiggly line, and I didn't have enough of that fabric to cut that piece from anywhere else.  It worked out, though, and the fabric's thinness did mean it pressed very easily into the bias bands, and it went through the hem roller with no problems at all. (So did the significantly heavier Belinda's Big Kitty.)

The original Gunne Sax pattern that this dress is based on calls for, one, cluny lace, and, two, several different widths of it.  Before this dress, I had been very pedantically using cluny lace on my Gunne Sax and Gunne sax-like dresses--because that's what the pattern said!--but, when researching genuine Gunne Sax dresses in general, I did see that a lot of them did use raschel lace.

Thanks to Deb's Lace selling whole large spools of lace, I have...several hundred yards of raschel lace.  However, most of it is not in the widths the pattern wants, so I doubled the narrow lace that I had also used around the bodice facing (and I hadn't eased it around one of the facing curves enough initially, so it wasn't laying properly, which made me pick it all off and try again, this time easing it aggressively enough that it ended up ruffled), and then used that same lace around another lace to get the look of the widest lace that the pattern wanted at the bottom of the over skirt ruffle.

I had initially hesitated, because the lace in the center is lovely and soft and delicate, while the narrower lace is...none of that.  I think the fact that the narrower lace is used along both edges makes the result look unified, though.

I did not have enough  of any of the prints to make the hidden underskirt.  I considered using the heavily polyester print I'd bought in the last craft thrift store visit to go with the fabrics I used for this dress, but its extremely rough polyester hand made me say "No.  I do not want this touching my legs."  I didn't have any other cotton/cotton blend fabrics I wanted to use up for this hidden part (the original pattern wants you to use the same fabric as the ruffle--I've seen people posing with versions of that dress made and sold by Gunne Sax that clearly show that the underskirt is made from plain fabric, but I guess Simplicity was trying to keep the yardage requirements simple?)

Then I realized that...this could be a good place to use lining fabric, and chose a perhaps too interesting lining fabric I got from the craft thrift store last year.  It coordinates oddly well, I think.  Not that anyone will ever see it.  The pockets are also made from it!

The back of the dress has some interest added by the tie, which I made belt loops to hold, since my earlier experiences had noticeable sag back there.

I also too the time to stop and start each piece of lace in a different area on the back, so there aren't big obvious areas of overlap.  This is something obvious that I hadn't tried before,and, not only do I like how it looks, but it added a bit of a fun puzzle to the lace application.

 

I have not tried this on yet! It has been very very hot!  And it will remain very warm for a while, which is why I made a Halloween dress with short sleeves.  If I ever do experience a chilly Halloween again, I can add layers under and over this dress for warmth.  That sounds so lovely...