A Rose Print Chantilly

Hello, friends!

Whoa! It’s been a while.  I didn’t expect to be away from this space for a month, but that’s what happened.  I have SOOOO much to share with you as I’ve been sewing like I’m on the Sewing Bee and I have so much sewing accomplished.  I’m just lacking photos, and with this terrible heatwave here in NorCal, I certainly don’t want to spend much time outside taking them.  But I braved the heat to take these photos and I’ll be doing more photoshoots little by little and get them all done.  🙂

Anyway….. what’s been going on?  If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll know that I’ve been busy sewing and traveling and doing fun summer things before my husband starts the new school year (he’s a middle school teacher).  I recently returned from a trip to New York in which we had a wonderful (albeit very hot and humid) time exploring sites within the city that we hadn’t been to before and revisiting places that we love.  As always, I made myself a travel wardrobe.  I didn’t make my husband take any photos of me whilst in NYC and frankly, the heat was almost unbearable and didn’t make me want to take photos anyway.  I’ll be sharing a few NY photos as I share with you what I made.

This, friends, is yet another iteration of the Colette Chantilly.  My other two Chantilly dresses were special occasion dresses with sheer overlays, and I had been looking forward to making a casual one in a summery fabric.  I’ve had this Gertie swiss dot fabric from JoAnn’s in my stash for a while, and it seemed like it would pair well with the Chantilly.  The rose print is like the poor seamstress’s Liberty Carline print and works wonderfully for this dress.

Source: Colette Patterns

I originally purchased this fabric for a blouse, but it sat in my stash for so long that it was apparent that I didn’t want to make a blouse, so here it is now as a dress.  I didn’t have quite enough fabric to make the gored skirt, so I cut out a rectangular gathered skirt instead, and made it a little longer.

I lined the Swiss dot with white cotton batiste, which made this dress so soft and comfortable.  Speaking of fabrics, I was a bit disappointed when I saw the first Gertie fabrics line at JoAnn’s.  I had been anxiously awaiting their arrival, but the lower quality of both the fabrics and the prints on the fabrics wasn’t what I was expecting.  I only purchased this fabric and the black Swiss dot with chiffon roses from the first collection.  I peruse and admire each collection when it comes out at JoAnn’s and I did purchase the blue lemon lawn and the blue beach border print from the recent collection, but it’s due more so that the prints are difficult to find rather than that I think the fabric is great, as in my opinion, it really isn’t….. I know it’s JoAnn’s, but I have found quality fabrics at JoAnn’s.

Anyway…. I do love this dress and on the bright side, the fabric doesn’t really wrinkle, so I don’t have to spend half an hour ironing it.  When I took these photos I had already worn this dress, washed it, and hung it on the line and it didn’t need ironing.  That’s a sure sign of a great summer frock to me!

There really isn’t much else to say about the construction of this Chantilly that I haven’t said before.  It’s been graded up and I did a swayback adjustment.  As I previously mentioned, I also changed the skirt up.  I imagine it would be fluffier with a petticoat if I wanted to go that route.  I recently wrote a pattern review of the Chantilly on the Curvy Sewing Collective site, if you want to read more about my thoughts and opinions on this pattern.  It’s quickly turning into a TNT pattern for me.

How do you like my new labels?  I got them from the Dutch Label Shop.  These are woven logo labels that I designed and had made.  Dutch Label Shop gave them to me at no cost and I’m really happy with them.  They’re such good quality and I love them so much more than ones that I had ordered elsewhere.  I’ve been sewing them into everything!

While I was in NY, I shopped a couple of times in the Garment District.  These days I’m pretty particular about fabrics and adamant about not accumulating a huge stash, but I figured that as I sewed about 14 dresses in the past couple months and used up a lot of fabric, that I could splurge a little.  But I tend to only buy things that I really like, plus I like a good deal.  I was also in search of fabric for this year’s Gatsby Summer Afternoon 1920’s picnic dress, and I didn’t find a good deal on that.  I was actually a bit unimpressed with the prices that I found in the Garment District.  That was, until I shopped at Metro Textiles.

And look who I ran into there!

My husband said I was making weird faces….I guess so…. oh well!

Yes, that’s Carolyn!  And with us is the amazing Kashi — proprietor of Metro Textiles.  I would definitely recommend shopping there.

Silk, shirting weight cotton and silk cotton voile

These are the fabrics that I picked up at Metro Textiles.  I’ll share some of my other finds in a later post as I went shopping in the Garment District on two different days.

Happy Sewing!

• Dress:  Colette Chantilly in rose print Swiss dot cotton, made by me
• Shoes:  Swedish Hasbeens Heart Super High
• Sunglasses:  ModCloth
• Earrings:  Gift