This summer I made a shirt dress out of an Alice in Wonderland inspired quilting cotton by Tula Pink, and it is truly one of my favourite dresses to wear! Since Alice in Wonderland is one of my all time favourite stories, I immediately fell in love with this flannel and knew that a wrap dress would be the perfect lazy day dress. The flannel is incredibly soft, and since this wrap dress isn't too structured it is so comfortable.
Funnily enough, I have never actually seen the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland. I have never been a huge fan of animated films, so I never got around to it - but I love the print on this fabric! The playing cards and bottles with "drink me" signs are so cute, and they remind me of some of my favourite scenes in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. One unfortunate thing about fabric prints inspired by Alice is that they always refer back to the same few, most iconic scenes. I know why they do that, but there are so many quirky scenes in the book that deserve way more attention. My personal favourite scene is "Pig and Pepper" in chapter 6, when the Duchess's cook is making soup with too much pepper and making everyone sneeze and the Duchess hands her baby to Alice, when Alice realizes that the baby is a piglet. For some reason this scene has always stuck with me and I find it hilarious (which says a lot about my sense of humour). I also have always loved the scene with the Mock Turtle telling his sad story about mock turtle soup while the Gryphon keeps interrupting him.
The best part about Alice in Wonderland is how bizarre the entire story is. Funnily enough, I don't usually enjoy stories like this. I don't read fantasy or sci-fi very often, and as a child I didn't like when they showed an animal talking to a human in books or movies (I was a very literal kid). Despite this, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass were some of my favourite stories as soon as I read them for the first time. I even still remember reading Alice for the first time. My parents have a beautiful collection of leather-bound classics that have always been a foundation in our house. I used to play with the books by stacking them up and making them into little houses for my toys, but once I started to enjoy reading in elementary school I decided that I wanted to read some of the classics. I read Little Women, Asop's Fables, and Alice in Wonderland while I was still very young. Alice always stuck with me, and I have been trying to find books, movies, and items inspired by the story ever since.
I admired this fabric for quite a while before I actually bought it, since I did not have concrete idea of what I would make with it at first. I usually try to have a plan in mind before I buy fabric, just to make sure that it would fit into my closet as a finished garment and that I would actually use it. When I thought of this really simple wrap dress pattern from 1956 for this fabric, I decided that it would be a match made in heaven. The fabric is the softest flannel, so the not-too-tight or structured wrap dress is great for a comfortable, easy to wear garment. This pattern only comes in three sizes (which is very unusual for sewing patterns), but luckily the size small fits me really well without having to make huge adjustements. I have used this pattern before, so it was a breeze to cut the dress out and get started.
Although this dress is very simple, it took me a very long time to make it. I first started the dress during the summer in the middle of a heat wave. Working on a flannel dress while it was +40 outside and I had no air conditioning was a very sweaty endeavour. However, I was so excited about the project that I couldn't help myself! Plus, I did a ton of hand sewing for it and having a hand sewing project while I lied around the house like a beached whale was ideal. The amount of hand sewing that I used to finish this dress was one of the reasons why it took me so long to complete. I flat felled each of the inside seams by hand (flat felling is a technique of folding one side of the seam allowance over the other side in order to hide all of the raw edges to prevent fraying) so that the dress would last a long time and have a satisfyingly clean finish on the inside. For the bias binding, I sewed the first side on by machine but whipstitched the inside of the bias binding by hand for a seamless look on the outside. Unfortunately, my bias binding is too wide for my liking, but I was unable to find anything else at the time.
Another reason that this dress took so long to finish is because after I did all of the hard work, it was time to place the pockets. For some reason, this very easy task stressed me out and I put the project aside for multiple months. Then last week I had another task on a different project that I did not want to do, so I pulled this dress back out. The pockets took me very little time and effort to place, the buttons and hand sewn button holes took me less than an hour, and then I was done!
I am so happy to finally have this comfortable dress to wear during exam break and I am thrilled to be able to spend more time looking like Alice in Wonderland!
Thank you for reading!
~Katherine
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