Stylish Dress Book 3: Dress N

Black and red batik dress
Black and red batik dress

Still not a sunny day today, but eventually I managed to take some decent pictures of my new dress. By the way, I really like this dress, the shape, the ruffled sleeves, the pockets, and the pattern of the fabric. It’s officially spring now!

The fabric is vintage Javanese cotton batik that used to belong to my mother. It has black and red pattern, which are quite unusual choice of colours for traditional Javanese batik. The quality of the cloth itself is fabulous, the weaving is so tight that I had difficulty pinning through it. The fabric has a little hole in the corner so it’s not perfect anymore and that was why my mother allowed me to cut it. When she gave it to me, my mother said that I can use it for myself, but I can not use it to make stuff for other people. Can’t agree more with her, this fabric is too gorgeous I’ll definitely keep it for myself!

Beautiful vintage fabric is always so intimidating. I’m always afraid that I would make mistake when making something out of it. But when I browsed through my new ‘Stylish Dress Book 3’, I noticed dress N and  thought that it would be perfect for this pretty fabric. The shape looks pretty simple with rounded neckline, pockets, and ruffled sleeves. Well, you might have noticed that I like ruffles or gathers as I’ve used them for almost all of my dresses (or maybe all of them!).

Dress N - Stylish Dress Book 3The ruffles on the sleeves of this particular dress are attached after the dress is finished, so they’re sewn onto the dress and not on the armholes. I cut my ruffles on the edge of the fabric because I like the white strips on the selvedge. Then I handstitched them to the dress with red embroidery thread.

The dress has neckline facings sewn on the outside. In the book, it uses different fabric for the facings, but I just use the same fabric and added some red Japanese cotton binding strips to define the shape. The same binding strips are also used to finish the inside of the armholes.

The pockets are actually very interesting as they are not patch pockets, but parts of the lower front dress. The pattern of the fabric makes it hard to see the pockets, but you can see it more clearly in the technical drawing.

I use the side edge of the batik cloth for the hem, it has these interesting triangle patterns and I don’t have to finish the hem! Just like almost all projects from Stylish Dress Book, this dress has no zipper, buttons, or any other fastenings. You can put it over your head as easy as putting on a T-shirt. Love!

Black and red batik dress Black and red batik dress

Black and red batik dress Black and red batik dress

Black and red batik dress Black and red batik dress

Pattern is Dress N from Stylish Dress Book 3.

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