“Follow the butterflies!”
I am so excited to show you this lovely make! I recently got the chance to do a partnership with an online fabric shop called Linen Lab - I placed an order and they threw in a few extra items for me. This butterfly jacquard is the item that I purchased (and I will have makes from the gifted linen to show you soon). It is a blend of linen and ramie, another type of plant fibre. I used the same McCalls regency pattern I always do, #7493, and this time changed the darts to princess seams, unpuffed the sleeves, and drafted my own pleated skirt.
I’m not the happiest in the world about the sleeves - you can tell they don’t fit right by the multitude of wrinkles. When trying to take the puff out of the pattern’s existing sleeves (because puff sleeves make me look like a linebacker), I first tried to slash and consolidate to remove volume from the sleeve head - but it still ended up puffy (if less so). This time I drafted completely from scratch and although it looks fine to an untrained eye, the expert sewists will clearly see I had barely a clue what I was doing. Oh well - it’s comfortable and the pictures are still pretty!
I had 3 yards of this fabric and managed to cut the bodice and sleeves (on a directional print, no less!) in a small enough section to leave two remaining lengths of 42” for the skirt. I split one for the back and seamed it to my front skirt piece (didn’t want a seam right down center front), then spent a stupid amount of time measuring perfect pleats before realizing the collapsed length was still too long, taking out all my pins, starting over, and eyeballing it instead for more success. Hubris for the sleeves but somehow I get away with eyeballing pleats!
Green linen/ramie blend with woven jacquard butterflies and thistle flowers from Linen Lab (linenlab.co.kr). Fichu made of swiss dot cotton voile. Bonnet and gloves from Austentation (a shop on Etsy, but they now have their own website - definitely the preferred shopping experience). I did photos on my Pixel 7 with a tripod and a shutter remote at Woodward Park in Tulsa.
Did I Photoshop that invisible zip just a tiny bit in the back? Maybe… because I didn’t have it zipped all the way up and that’s very obvious in the original image. So look at the pretty pleats and if something looks weird, no it doesn’t. The sleeves made it hard to contort, okay?
