Barkcloth Kate
Pattern: Kate Top by Tessuti Fabrics
Fabric: Cotton barkcloth from Red Beauty Textiles (sadly now closed)
Sewn up: Spring 2018
When I first realized I could sew my own clothes out of any fabric (any fabric!) I could find, I went on an internet browsing tear. I had an Evernote doc full of screencaps of crazy prints and florals, and added to it whenever I had a lull or a line to wait in. One store in particular had so many beautiful Japanese imports, and I had a favorite picked out – little yellow and white cut-paper-looking dots on a bright field of blue gauze – perfect for a summer dress.
When I visited the site a few days later to make my first-ever fabric order, I was greeted by a stock image of a red balloon and an all caps message saying that the shop had closed – the financials of fabric sales were just too difficult.
I couldn’t get the blue fabric out of my head, and it didn’t seem to exist anywhere else on the internet. So I contacted the shop by email, and was delighted when the kind owner sent me a password that would let me peek back into their site and sneak in one last purchase. While I was there I found a yard remnant of this green floral barkcloth that was on sale for a few dollars. I didn’t know what barkcloth was but I loved the sound of it, and I added it to my cart.
When my order arrived, the size of the print on the blue fabric was not at all what I had expected – the dots were more like quarters than the pea-sized ones I had imagined. The scale surprise recalled for me with amusement the time that my sister ordered online what she thought was a cutting board, but was in fact a full-on wooden tabletop. The three yards of too-large dots still sit in my closet, probably only fit to become pajamas someday. But the barkcloth, beautiful and bright, with the best (bark-like!) texture, was beyond lovely. The large scale of its mysterious flowers was just right.
I made a Kate top with it, one of the first tops I ever made. This was before I had learned the lesson to muslin first, and I did not heed the warning of a blog post I had read that said the darts ran high and the armholes low. When I put it on, all finished, the darts were indeed too high, and the armholes gaped so much I had to pinch out an inch on each side of already-bias-bound armscye. So it’s not the neatest on the inside, or the most flattering on me. But the fabric breathes beautifully, and I adore the print. And I like that it was a bootleg find, maybe one of the last cuts of this lovely shop’s run that ended right as mine was starting. I hope the kind owner who helped me out with that secret password has moved on to something great.
~ Photos by Lizzie Epstein - thanks sis! ~
Drawing process reel! Closet floor photo, coffee shop sketch, digital drawing.
