Tweedledee & Tweedledum

from Wizard of Oz’s Emerald City, we now move on to Alice in Wonderland, another fave story of mine.

every time i see fabrics that even remotely reminds me of Alice in Wonderland, i think my heart skips a beat. that’s what happened when i saw this jersey fabric from So Cute brand. it’s an Alice in Wonderland fabric without Alice herself. 😀

 

at the same time, for many years–i’d say about 8–i had been waiting for harlequin print fabric. i did find some before this, but they were too colourful and all the wrong colours, the fabric was wrong (stiff cotton), or then the print was too big. by some miracle, though, i finally found the right one this year: in the form of another jersey fabric. perfect!

i honestly wasn’t thinking of combining the two, until i washed them and they sat nicely on top of each other in my cupboard. what a lovely marriage, i thought!

at first i only planned to make one dress, using the same pattern i used years ago for my optical illusion stripey dress. but after cutting the pieces, surprisingly i still had quite a lot of the fabrics even though i only bought around 1 m of each fabric. so i had yet another crazy idea to make 2 dresses using the same fabric-combo, but different style. i did them both back to back, giving birth to them at almost the exact same time, LOL. ladies and gents, meet Tweedledee and Tweedledum!

self-made dresses, Crocs boat shoes (left), shoes from Dappermarkt – Amsterdam (right), IKEA ceramic coaster used as background.

Tweedledee is based on pattern #121 from Burda Style magazine 09/2012. the original pattern’s front piece is actually double-layered: the side piece also covers the middle front part and then there’s another layer of just the middle part sewn on top of the side piece. that’s what i did with my stripey dress years ago, which looks fine but is always a little too heavy on the front because of that.

so this time i cut the side piece’s middle front part off and did everything in just one layer. the result, even though i actually copied the pattern 1 size smaller than my current size, is a loose-fit dress. go figure!

when i was done sewing Tweedledee, i thought it looks so much like a Desigual dress! well, So Cute brand is supposedly a sister brand of Melli Mello, which is kind of similar to Desigual, so no surprise there. to add a little bit of the ‘jester’ touch, i decided to sew colourful plastic stones on the neckline. i love the result!

Tweedledum is more of an ‘accidental’ child, haha! it means that i didn’t use any pattern, except that i laid down the fabric, put my Marimekko dress on top of it, and cut the fabric according to the Marimekko dress. and then i added the sleeves from some ready-made pattern, and decided to cut away a small triangle from the back side just to add a little detail.

it was supposed to be a quick & easy project, but of course mishaps kept happening: i ran out of my good sewing thread, tried to sew it with another sewing thread of lower quality and my sewing machine got jammed, sewed the collar binding too loose which made the whole dress look ill fitted.

the next day as soon as the fabric store was opened i ran there to buy more sewing thread, ripped all the seams off the neckline and re-sewed the whole neckline after work (i think it was about 10 pm when i finished sewing the whole dress. sorry, neighbours!).

though the back side is still a bit weird (me & my great idea to do triangular cut-out!), i must say, i love Tweedledum as well!

i guess you can’t really say that they’re midi dresses, but i’m currently loving knee-length skirts/dresses. they’re just much more appropriate for all kinds of things, even for work.

did i hear you ask out loud, would i really wear these dresses to work? my answer is, yes i would. i know, i’m lucky to work at a place which allow me to wear all kinds of clothes! 😉

although in the story Tweedledee and Tweedledum never agree with each other, i think these dresses go along perfectly well together. at least maybe until Alice comes along.

PS. i just realized now after i finished writing the post that usually Tweedledum comes first before Tweedledee. sorry for the mix up, but i was too lazy to change the names/pics! 😀