Hey there it's Haley and I am here with another at home edition of our monthly
fabric videos. Today I'm going to talk about the Blake dress and the Micah
dress from the July issue of Seamwork.
Let's start out by talking about the Blake dress. The Blake dress is a knit
shift dress, it has a straight across neckline and some nice wide straps that
are going to work with most style bras. For this dress you're going to want to
look for a fairly stable knit. Don't go with anything that's really lightweight
like a rayon jersey, won't have the stability that you need to make this
dress look its best. What I'm gonna recommend instead are fabrics like
French terrys, pontes, some interlock knits would work really well. You don't
need to necessarily worry about whether it's four-way stretch, a two-way stretch
is going to work just fine for this project. Let's take a look at some of our
staff makes and see what they made their dresses out of. Here we have Taylor
wearing a beautiful green Blake dress. The fabric she chose to work with is a
bamboo French terry from Hart's Fabric. She really liked this fabric because the
fiber content, which is a bamboo rayon cotton and spandex, really allowed enough
structure so that it was nice and stable at the neckline but it was also really
soft and enjoyable to wear. And here we have Chelsea. She made the pattern hack
version of the Blake dress which has some really fun color blocking.
She chose to work with a organic interlocked knit she got it from Fabric
Worm.com Interlock is a good choice for this
because it has two-way stretch and like I mentioned before you don't need to
worry about a four-way stretch for this particular project. This fabric I've
worked with it before, it has a really supple soft texture and it has that
stability that we're looking for for the Blake dress. I'm gonna show you some
fabrics from my stash that I think would work really well for the Blake dress. First
up I have this rib knit. Now not all rib knits are going to be
great for this project but this one in particular is really stable, it is a
cotton spandex poly blend from Fabric.com it has a little bit of crosswise
stretch but overall it's just really stable and it's gonna hang really nice
at that straight neckline. And then I have this really great quilted knit from
my stash this is one of those fabrics that has a little bit a stretch again
in the crosswise but generally really stable. Blake is gonna be really good for
for those fabrics in your stash where you're like if "I don't like this is stretchy
enough to make a t-shirt" maybe you're a little bit stuck on it, Blake is a great
project I think this would make such a great cool textured dress. Next let's
talk about the Micah dress. Micah is a midi length dress with ample ease, it has cut
on sleeves, a v-neck line, center front and back seams, and also a really great
faced split hem which lets you show a little bit of leg. This particular dress
is going to work really well for a pretty wide variety of fabrics you could
use something really lightweight like a silk would be really lovely, or a cotton
voile that would give you a much softer more drapey silhouette, or you could go
with something like a linen or something that has a little bit more
structure to it. In general this is just going to be a really versatile dress in
terms of fabric. Let's take a look at some of our staff makes. Here we have
Sienna. Sienna made a really cool version of the Micah dress out of a yarn dyed
fabric. The fiber content is a linen cotton-blend, it is actually the Essex
linen from Robert Kaufman. This fabric is just really versatile in general it is
great, I have like a few cuts of it in my stash. It's phenomenal, what really works
about it for the Micah dress is it has that great balance of structure but it
also hangs nicely and isn't too boxy and two-dimensional looking. It is a really
great option if you want your sleeves and the general shape of this dress to
just have a little bit more definition. Sarai made the member bonus version of
the Micah dress, which has a modesty panel in the neckline, if that deep
v-neck is just not your thing. Her fabric is this really great plaid tensel linen
blend, she got it from Stonemountain and Daughter. She told me that she thinks it
has that perfect blend of qualities - it's really breezy and drapey, but totally
opaque, you don't have to worry about any sheer business happening with this
fabric. She also commented that it just feels really luxurious and amazing
blowing in the breeze, so to me it sounds basically like the perfect summertime
dress. Let's take a look at some fabrics from my stash that are going to work
really well for the Micah dress. I'm actually to show you two different
linens from my stash that have a little bit different hand to them if you can't
tell, I love linen. First up I have a cut of
the Essex linen from Robert Kaufman, yes this is the same fabric that Sienna used,
but if you're not familiar I just wanted to show it to you guys because again I
think it's just the best. This is a colorway called mocha, don't let that
fool you, it is actually a really lovely kind of lavender color but still very
earthy. You can see here that it has this really lovely drape, it's opaque which I
love but it also has like a little bit of structure and body to it and I think
that the cotton fiber content really helps it along with that. Next I have a
really great linen print that I got from Blackbird Fabrics. I'm really obsessed
with this fabric it has this cool kind of pebble print, this is 100% linen and
you can see that it collapses a little bit more generously than the cotton
linen blended. I think that Micah because you have those big long panels it works
really really well for a print. I think that the Micah dress is a really great
place to use a print because you have these big long panels to work with. You
can see that the linen, the 100% linen hangs a little bit heavier and doesn't
have quite as much body as the cotton linen blend does. And that's just
something to consider if you want to go the linen route, if it's a blend how is
that blend could impact your final product. Thank you for joining me for the
July edition of our fabric videos. What are you guys gonna make Micah and Blake
out of? Let me know in the comments! Can't wait to see what you make! Happy sewing!