everyone deserves a tea dress

It's no secret that tea is my favorite beverage in the entire world. I grew up spoiled on home-brewed iced tea made from real tea bags, and branched out into hot tea in my college years when I discovered that no matter how many all-nighters I was pulling, I will never, ever like the taste of coffee. It all started with discovering chai in the coffee shops, and went uphill from there. I started going for nice loose-leaf teas somewhere within the last 6-7 years, and I literally have an entire drawer in my kitchen that is dedicated to tea.
See? (For the record, Doug is the one who organized this for me. He's really good at that sort of thing.)

I love my tea drawer.












I also love this dress! You may recall that this fabric was part of my Christmas haul, and only being in the stash for less than 4 months is pretty amazing for me. I wanted to get to this quickly anyway, and the Sew Dolly Clackett event was pretty much the perfect excuse. So it's the perfect dress to sip a cuppa in.



















Just kidding....THIS is what passes for a cup of tea in my world! The mug even says so.

The dress is the Cambie, of course, to continue my theme of all things Sewaholic that seems to be happening this year. Though this is the first "real" Cambie that I've made, since the wedding dress version was so heavily altered and didn't even use the skirt. This time, I cut a straight size 10, because I was going by the bust size and figured the skirt would be ok. I also decided right off the bat to use Tasia's tutorial for the "slightly less sweet" straight neckline, because it looked like it would fit better with the more-or-less linear pattern. I took in the back darts a little bit after the muslin stage. When I got to the point where I was ready to sew the lining in, I discovered that the neckline was gapping. Odd, since it didn't do that on the muslin! So my quick fix for that was to add some darts at the top, right around where the sleeve/strap things meet the bodice.  Whenever I end up making this again, I'll probably just go back to my wedding dress fix and convert the top to princess seams.

The pattern matching could have been better, I guess-- I did try, and did fairly well in several places! But I didn't think to factor in the flare of the skirt, and that skewed things a bit. In my defense, the teacups aren't exactly in a straight line, either. I checked. With a 6" wide ruler. It's not as fitted as I usually make my dresses either, but I think that will actually be a good thing. I recently had to weed several of my handmade dresses that I've had for years out of the closet, because slight post-honeymoon weight gain means they just don't zip up anymore! But those dresses were overall very fitted at the waist, and wovens, and so I think a little extra wiggle room will be a good thing. Especially for things like breathing while playing my flute, and the mid-Atlantic heat/humidity. You know, if it ever actually gets warm and stays there.







The dress is completely lined in the ivory cotton sateen that I've already used to line two other dresses. And I still have about a yard left! I also have about 1/3 yard of the teacup fabric left, which will be perfect for something like jeans pockets. So here's my stashbusting totals:

Total fabric out: Approximately 5 1/4 yards.
Total stash left: Approximately 312.19 yards. Though this total will be going up soon, sadly, because I had a box of stuff I accidentally left at my parents' come home with me recently, and there is some actual yardage in with the scraps. So I need to measure and update.

Oh, and before I forget: I've been going back and forth on this, and I've decided to go ahead and sign up for Me-Made May anyway. So my pledge:

I, Becky, pledge to wear at least one handmade garment and one handmade accessory every day, for the duration of May. (I think my focus is going to be on testing out what I've been playing with in the Wardrobe Architect series, particularly the palette and silhouette picks. Incidentally, with the navy and ivory, this dress fits right in!)