Ikat Dress

With an increase of my stash, I vowed to sew mainly my recent purchases - I brought many meters from Thailand and Laos, and for once, I have restrained myself to buying fabrics which I would easily wear - read darker colours and any combination with black. From my past experience it is just so easy to buy colourful fabrics on vacation because that is what you see everywhere and all the time. So this time, anytime I was buying a piece of fabric I tried to imagine what I would sew from it and and where I would wear it.

Therefore I bought two pieces of ikat cotton (probably woven manually) - one in black and one in dark green. I have barely 1 meter of each, fortunately they are quite large. So I had the great idea to sew a little dress I could wear just before the weather gets really autumny and cold.

Of course, not thinking that a large ikat would probably mean pattern matching.

I used the same combination of patterns as on this dress. Actually, it is one of my big summer favourites, so creating a similar one for a different season just seemed like a good idea. I managed to cut the skirt with the same pattern and then only had very little for the top pieces. So the skirt is ok-ish, but the front and back of the top are not quite the same. Oh well, I will have to live with that, because it was either that or not sewing the dress at all.

I hesitated little bit what colour to keep around the waist and in the end went with black - that means no need for pattern matching between the skirt and the top and also - better have the slimming black where I need it.

The dress came together rather quickly - I cut it out on Friday evening and finished on Saturday evening and that includes a little correction on the fit in the waist area (once the dress was almost ready, I released the back darts by 1cm each).
The pattern is very simple, no sleeves insertion, only the invisible zip on the back. The dress is of course lined with a fine black silk - once you get used to this luxury it is hard not to continue.

All in all, it is a great basic dress, goes with black, as well as grey. And it got already worn - shall I wish for more?