Next Up: McCall's 8841

Here's an old pattern (1997) that I'm going to try out w/ some "designer" rayon I got at G Street Fabrics recently.

I feel like I spend a lot of time trying to recreate clothes I've left behind...and wish I hadn't!  How pathetic is that?!  Anyway, I had 2 dresses made in China that I loved, they were cotton prints, indigo-dyed*. They got left behind when we headed south because we knew we wouldn't need work clothes for a while.  But I miss them.  

I usually work with cotton, so will be curious to see what happens when I try to sew with a slippery fabric.  I've already got my ballpoint needles at the ready!  

Because of the fabric, this will be a bit dressier, so we'll see how it turns out.  If I like the pattern I may make a few of them.  A simple summer dress--I always need more of those!

*The dye wasn't set!  (After a hot & muggy day in Hong Kong, the blue dye was crawling up my neck & down my arms! I had to go to a grocery store, buy a box of salt, and soak them overnight in salty water in the hotel room sink!.  That set the dye, and I got a lot of use out of them when we lived in Taipei.)  If you have fabric & the dye isn't set, try this...be fairly liberal w/ the salt--there are probably guidelines somewhere on the innerweb--but don't soak it more than a few hours or overnight as salt is fairly corrosive and weakens fabric.  You'll see them using salt in the dying workshop in Indonesia in the batik video I linked to recently.