A Souvenir from Jaipur

I mentioned late last year about my daughters trip to India and my hopes for a piece of silk on her return.  She did in fact return with silk in the form of a beautiful scarf for me, and also a genuine Pashmina which I am looking forward to wearing as the weather cools.  She also picked up a couple of beautiful Saris, one of which was gifted to me to make something for myself out of.  It isn't silk but neither did I expect it to be when a Sari uses an extraordinary amount of fabric.

It was actually purchased in this street at The Pink City which is very different to the type of malls I am used to.

The fabric is a beige spot with red spot borders on either side and two additional borders at one end, both in complimentary red spot prints.  The fabric is a light weight crushed satin and while the fabric is lovely, the way I have styled it definitely is not!  There is definitely an art to wrapping a Sari!

I pondered the fabric I had been gifted for a few weeks before deciding on Vogue 1371, a Tracy Reese pattern.

Beige is a colour I like but unfortunately it does very little for my skin tone.  My challenge was how to incorporate the beige without it being close to my face.   My solution was to cut the front and back skirt panels from the beige spot fabric and the bodice and side panels from the different red spot panels.  To add interest, I used small amounts of the beige in the shoulder panels and facings, most of which are not seen anyway.

For some reason, this pattern stipulates shoulder pads, but with visions of 1980's power suits indelibly etched on my brain, I could not bring myself to include them.  Instead I cut four shoulder facings instead of two.  I also left off the fussy neck bow.

This dress is not designed to be lined but because of the filmy weight of my crushed satin, I felt I needed some stability as well as protection from being a little see through.  I decided to line it using some bemsilk from Lincraft.  The bodice I interlined using the bemsilk and for the skirt I made a separate lining.

Typically of Vogue's designer patterns, it produces nice results.  I probably wouldn't make this dress again but only because I have no need for two very similar dresses in this style but I can see this dress being a keeper for a very long time.