What's this? Back to back poppy print dresses? Oh yeah, I think we all need another hit of pretty poppy goodness. Just shield your eyes from the glare coming off of my lily white legs. Ahhhh it burns, quick find me some sunglasses!!!
Everyone have their protective eye wear in place? Good, good, then I can show you this. Poppies precious, so many poppies!
Dipped hem Heather? Did you go and make another Flora skirt? Guilty as charged. To say that I've been jonesing to make another Flora would be putting it mildly. Instead of going the TNT pattern repeat route, my brain was all, "Let's switch things up and make something fun and semi impracticable." Just like that a plan was hatched to do a little BHL pattern mixing and matching.
Yep, it's the Elisalex bodice with it's gorgeous neckline and sleeves for those of us with reptile blood. Wooo Hooo, I'm only partially freezing in these pictures and there was a nice patch of sunlight out of frame. Mmmm warm me sunshine, but don't burn my pasty flesh.
For this smaller sized Elisalex bodice I did all of the same pattern alterations as the
first time, with the exception of increasing the diameter of the sleeves. One new change was made, the front of the sleeve cap was flattened to compensate for the 3/8" taken out of the front princess line seam. Here I was wondering why there was so much ease in the front sleeve with a forward shoulder adjustment made. Ummmm because you removed 3/4" of armhole diameter without adjusting the sleeve Heather. Ooops.
The good news for those of you who also like bodice/skirt swamping is that the Elisalex/Flora patterns don't need much tweaking to fit together well. I sewed a size 10 for both pattern parts and found the Flora skirt to be around 1/2" bigger in the front then the Elisalex bodice. It was then a simple process to make the knife pleats a little deeper so that the circumferences matched up. The back circumferences were the same to begin with, but I moved the box pleat over an 1" or so to match up with the princess seam line.
All pleat adjustments were done on the fly while attaching the skirt to the bodice. The proper way would have been to check the patterns and adjust them before cutting out the fabric. But I'm all for truth in sewing and doing it the lazy way work out just fine. Don't tell the sewing goddess lest she smite me.
Now about this fabric, it's a Milly cotton sateen with.......wait for it.....an ivory background. Past Heather really had an ivory background buying problem. This fabric should have gone in the "give to other people with warm complexions" pile. But as you can see I greedily held on it it cause poppies and reasons related to poppies. I hope you can forgive me.
Overall I'm pretty pleased with this pattern mash-up. The one thing I would change is to slightly lower the front portion of the dipped hem. Because the front seemed short, a very narrow rolled hem was used to preserve as much length as possible. I still get the feeling that a pair of poppy modesty shorts might be needed for getting out of cars and stiff winds. I see London, I see France, I see your underpants, you hussy! So sorry, that's my inner grandma talking. Go bake me some poppy seed cake grandma and keep your opinions to yourself. Mmmmm caaaaaake.
