Edition 30 of the Fibremood magazine is now out and it has so many lovely patterns that it was hard to choose one. In the end I went for the Havana, which is basically a pinafore dress and I thought it would be useful in the spring. It has a subtle bust dart for shaping, side seam overlap and large side slits,

I really like the clean lines and I thought I would make a long one as per the pattern to start with and then a shorter one for summer.

I eventually chose a green, hand printed cotton gauze. I have two different pieces of this fabric in my stash and I feel that it must be precious. Here is the selvedge. It’s handscreen printed in Australia, which is fabulous.

Donald Clark should be a well-known Australian designer, but isn’t. He clearly had a range of skills and talents and some of his work is in various museums around Australia. He had many Aboriginal inspired motifs and I wonder if my fabric is one of them. Apparently I didn’t take a photograph of the actual fabric, but here is the finished pinafore.

Isn’t that the most glorious green?

The fabric is only 90cms wide and I only had what the pattern called for, which meant that pattern matching was an impossibility. I agonised over this, but my desire to finally use this precious fabric won over matching the circles – I would have needed twice as much fabric and the waste would have been scandalous.

The back is ok… sort of. The pattern piece took the whole width of the folded fabric and if I had had the forethought, I would have cut it on the fold and finagled the neck opening. It would have made me so much happier. Hindsight is such a wonderful thing!

The sides are worse! However, the flowy nature of the tunic, and the splits, mean that it’s less obvious.

I did mention that this fabric is gauze and it is quite diaphanous, so it had to be lined. I think this is why it has sat in my stash for so long. Here is the second piece being held up so you can see what I mean.

My natural inclination was to line it in white, off white or green, so I went a-hunting in the stash. I found a white sheet and it was ok, but then remembered a blue bamboo sheet I’ve had kicking around, and wondered how that would look. Surprisingly I loved it! The white caused the green to be over saturated, whereas the blue toned it down a bit. Although I did not enjoy sewing the bamboo – worse than silk for slipping and sliding.

I chose to underline, rather than bagging out and I’m pleased with the choice.

Fibremood have a sewalong for the Havana and I think it would make a couple of elements easier to sew. I thought I would burrito the neckline and here is an in progress shot. Can I say that it didn’t end well and I went back to following the instructions!

The rest of the making was pretty straightforward. I had the best time choosing buttons and finished up with some vintage green buttons from my stash. You’ll notice that one of them has some white showing and I had a lovely time using paint to make it green again.

I’ve worn this pinafore a couple of times already, including to Kings Park to catch up with a friend. Here I’ve teamed it with blue silk zero waste trousers.

And I did sit on that statue for my shown seated shot, although to be honest, it was more of a perch!

I also wore it to lunch at a restaurant on the beach, so took the opportunity for some beach shots. It was windy!

I thought I’d make a video to show the movement, but it wasn’t terribly successful!

I really like this pattern. I have more of this fabric with a different pattern, and am considering what to make with it. It’s a bigger piece and I’m thinking a duster, but time will tell. Here is a sneak peak of the fabric. This is folded to one pattern repeat, so you’ll see how much is wasted when pattern matching!

I had planned to make the shorter version of this pinafore before the end of the month, but it hasn’t happened, and I suspect that it might take me a week or two.

Finally here are my two granddaughters in a scene a bit reminiscent of Driving Miss Daisy. Or Thelma and Louise! Miss G is actually driving that car, she’s been driving it since she was about two and a half. She can control the speed, brake and steer. She does get distracted though (see her kissing her sister?) so her dad is following with a remote control which overrides everything. I should mention that they are wearing seatbelts. Luckily our street is very quiet, especially on long weekends (King’s birthday) when everyone leaves town, so they are fairly safe. I make her drive on the path when I’m in charge though…