Vogue 8813 - Fishy Fishy

Ages ago I promised my mum a dress by way of talking her out of buying an overpriced dress that didn't fit her. Almost a year later that dress is nearing completion....

But, while she was visiting for the day to go fabric shopping for said dress, I got her to try on my Big Puppy Pockets Dress and, as I suspected she might, she loved it. So, of course, we had to find some fabric for a version of Vogue 8813 for her too.

We found this fabulous fish printed lightweight linen at Darn Cheap Fabric's Heidelberg shop and since she was about to head to the beach for a holiday, a fishy linen dress seemed perfect.

I missed getting any photos of her in the fish dress on the beach, but after their return she kindly posed in the garden at their house. Flipper took the pictures while I was busy decorating my dad's Renault 4CV for the annual Easter Monday parade (bunnycar!). Mum has given me permission, or an order perhaps, to crop her head out in any photo in which she's squinting into the sun, so please excuse the whole lot of headless dress photos which follow...

Putting the other promised dress aside, I jumped straight into this one. It was easy as I already had the pattern traced off in the size I'd used and was making no alterations at all. I guess that's the beauty of an easy-wearing outsized dress.

The lightweight linen behaved perfectly for this dress. In fact it was easier to keep the pocket edges crisp and neat with linen compared to the washed cotton version I made for myself. It's an awful lot of fabric to wear, so you wouldn't want a heavier linen - this one is quite lightweight and semitransparent if held up to the light. However, with all the gathering at the front and the big pockets, there are almost no areas where the fabric is single layer. So, while back lighting might give a bit of a leg silhouette it's certainly not a see through problem dress. This same fabric in a simple shift shape dress would definitely need a lining.

The buttons are more of the same carved wooden ones I used for my dress. The pattern which is slightly reminiscent of a starfish, or sea anemone was just perfect for this dress.

As you can see, I made no attempt whatsoever to pattern match the fish across any seams. You could say it was laziness, but since the pattern pieces are so enormous, to pattern match would require an insane amount of yardage. From memory, we bought about 5m of this fabric and I maybe used about 2.8m. I'm trying to convince Flipper that this is the perfect shirt fabric for a non-Hawaiian tropical shirt.

I think it makes pretty great fabric for a cool, loose, easy-wearing mum-at-the-beach dress too!