The Magic of Stone (2): Hoodie Dress

October 28, 2018October 28, 2018 ~ Nathalie Sheridan ~ Leave a comment

And that’s it. The stone dress with elephants. Body armour for bad days.

Fake Pockets

fake elephant pockets — No. It’s not fake news, I cut out circles left and right to the waist and placed the lining in as design element and to make it look like pockets.

Of course it needed a hood.

Hood details with elephant lining — The lining for this dress is a maxi skirt I bought in ASDA. It looked horrible on me so I just cut it up, because I loved the elephants, and used it for lining.

and bell sleeves

I have a thing for bell sleeves — and as the original pattern’s arms were way too short for me anyway, I thought this was my chance to add some bell sleeves. I also placed more elephant lining into the bell part of the sleeve for a nice two colour effect.

Oh yes and sleeve extensions for long arms.

bell sleeves — You can see the sleeve has an extension just before the bell part. This was a mistake from my side I didn’t realise just how short the original pattern was, but it turned into a nice design element. I created the hood in such a way that it looks like a wide collar from front and the elephants create a visible contrast

Too short?

Do I need to make these dresses longer? — My friend today pointed out one of my dresses might be on the short side; and I realised they are mostly the same length. But I don’t want to look like my great-auntie either. Hm. Maybe adding a hand-width but keeping it above the knee? Length below the knee looks horrible on me, I tried that before.

It’s all about details

Adding little details brings everything together. It’s not quite straight though.

Sleeve details — I added some details to the dress

I am using the selvedge details as design element

selvedge details — The fabric has some really interesting selvedge details so I left it as it was and used it as design feature for the dress

The original pattern was a pullover.

I used a jumper pattern — and extended it with the French Curve. Hence the long darts that look like seams in the back, they came about during the final fitting.