Secret Flamingos Modified Flora

When I made the flamingo dress for my friend’s newborn baby, I really wanted one in my size but only had enough of the fabric left for the lining, which I thought could be a bit more of a grown up version anyway. 

For the main fabric, I used Rifle Paper Co’s Cheshire Cat striped fabric. This one is a mid weight cotton so it has a really nice structure but it’s still light enough for the summer.

I used the flora pattern from By Hand London, one of my favourites. This time though I wanted to add some more detail to the shoulders, so I self drafted some ruched shoulder straps. I did a quick search to see if anyone had attempted this before with the Flora and saw Shauni’s on her blog The Magnificent Thread which I loved so I drafted some similar.

I’m really pleased how they turned out and I can definitely imagine this style working well in a lot of fabrics.

I spent a lot of time pattern matching the zip and I’m glad I did since it turned out quite well! I attached the zip on one side then marked out each stripe on the other side of the zip before attaching to the other side. 

For the skirt, I was really in two minds about horizontal or vertical stripes; I was worried about vertical ones in case it looked too Beetlejuice but I actually like the contrast and it works well with the length.

I normally make my dresses quite long (well I’m quite short) and then cut to length after attaching the skirt however the selvedge on Rifle fabrics is so lovely that I cut it to length first so for the hem, I could just turn it up and sew a single line of stitching. 

This dress definitely feels a bit special when you wear it; something to do with the secret flamingos probably.