Crazy print

When we go fabric shopping as a family, more often than not my kids will get completely overwhelmed by the selection and make less-than-satisfactory choices. An exception to this rule seems to be the fabric department at Ikea. Perhaps because their selection is rather limited compared to a full-service fabric store, my kids seem to be able to pick fabrics there that they will actually wear. Last year, I made 2 dresses for my kids from Ikea fabrics, and they have made it into frequent wardrobe rotation. So this year we went back to Ikea so they could pick fabrics for slightly larger dresses.

The photo above is the dress for my younger daughter. She picked a rather challenging super-large-scale print. It was difficult to place the motifs optimally, and I gave it a lot of thought. I ended up using a 6-gore full circle skirt, with basically one motif per gore. I was so proud of my cutting layout that I took a photo of it.

The bodice pattern for the dress came from the Japanese book Simple + 1. I’ve used this bodice pattern 3 times now in 3 different sizes. I drafted the skirt myself, if you can call drawing a big half circle and cutting it into 3 pie slices drafting.

The fabric is a stiff home-dec fabric (cotton, I think), which really works well in the full skirt. It really stands out from the body.

It has mismatched buttons down the front, as requested by the client. She asked for buttons in the front rather than a back zipper so she can get it on by herself. This gave me the opportunity to show off my pattern matching skills.

Front detail

more of the skirt

Back View

bodice lining

Part of my cutting layout. On the left are 3 gores of my 6-gore skirt. I cut in a single layer to take advantage of the print.

Here’s my gallery of Ikea fabric dresses:

One of last year's Ikea print dresses. Click on the pic for the blog post about it.

The other of last year's dresses. Click on the photo for more info on this dress.

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