#OAL2017 - Self Drafted Avian Dress

Andi Satterlund of Untangling Knots  and Lauren Taylor of Llaydybird are currently hosting what they call an Outfit Along (#OAL2017) where you knit a garment along with Andi and sew a garment along with Lauren to create an entire outfit.  

 This idea sounded like it was right up my alley so I decided that this year I was going to try and join in.

Now I've been spending money what seems like hand over fist at the moment so I decided that if I was going to do this I had to do it from stash so I took myself off to my Laundry where all my fabric and wool are stored and started looking for things that I could use.

I found a couple of different options but in the end I decided to go with this:

The material is a 100% medium weight duck cotton  that goes by the name "Avian" it's technically an upholstery fabric but since when has that ever stopped me.  I found this a while ago and didn't even think about it - I just knew I had to have it - I'm just glad now that I decided to buy 2 yards of it not just the 1 I was originally thinking of.

The Yarn is Classic Elite Yarns "Villa" in Emerald.  A  70% baby alpaca, 30% bamboo Viscose yarn that is so super soft and snuggly I couldn't resist it when I found it in the 40% off bin at In The Loop.  

Next issue - patterns.  The OAL has official patterns that go with it, but it is not required that you use those exact patterns to join in.  For the sewing portion of the OAL the official pattern is Kim Dress from By Hand London.  I was temped to buy this pattern right up until the point where is traced the outlines of the dress onto a picture of my body.  The style just didn't suit me at all.  I still wanted to keep the same basic idea of a dress though, and I knew that with such a heavy fabric it was going to need to be pretty structured, so I started sketching and ended up with this idea.

I pulled out my basic sloper and started tinkering.

I'm pretty happy with how it all turned out.  The fit of the front of the bodice is great - just one minor issue with the dart points, but they seem to be diminishing with wear which is nice.  

I lined the entire back bodice and the top half of the front bodice with some purple cotton that I had and inserted an invizible zipper down the back of the dress.

I'm not entirely convinced about the back of the dress.  The racer back seems to make my shoulders look huge - and its a bit of a pain to get a bra to fit underneath - you can just see it peaking out of the top here.

I think i'd also like just a touch more width across the back so that the rolls of fat are not quite so obvious.

The skirt is just two large rectangles with 8 equally spaced inverted box pleats.

I even remembered to put pockets in.  I put the pockets into the side seams, which in turn are hidden inside the side pleat.

Whilst this is not a garment I would usually wear day to day I'm really enjoying wearing it.  It'll be interesting to see just how much wear I get out of it though.

Now I've just got to see if I can manage to finish my cardigan in time - it seems to be taking ages to get anywhere.