Mariner Eucalypt
Pattern: Eucalypt dress by Megan Nielsen Patterns
Fabric: Cotton mariner cloth by Alison Glass from Stitch Sew Shop
Sewn Up: Spring 2019
This spring I decided to take a “sewcation” – two days off of work totally free to spend all day in the sewing studio. My original plan was to sew a swimsuit during this time (I wrote “swimsuitcation” in my calendar) but it was the middle of May and I found myself excited to sew a project I could more easily share as part of Me-Made-May. I had signed up for the challenge with only about ten me-mades in my closet, and I was running out of things to mix and match!
The goal I had set for myself was to “see how it feels to document wearing the things I’ve made” – which amounted to sharing a mirror selfie of my outfit each day on Instagram stories. Until then I had only shared process shots of fabric and tools, never anything completed or on me. And how it felt, I learned over the course of May, was, “a little scary but surprisingly great!” More people than I expected were checking out my photos, commenting, adding little heart-eye or flame emoji reactions. In fact, I was having so much fun sharing and connecting with others in this new way that the idea for this blog came to me as a way to keep the fun going after May ended. All this is to say, as May was winding down, I was eager to have a new garment to break out, and this coincided with my sewcation.
I walked into the sewing shop with a rare lack of plan. I was feeling like my free sewing days merited more of an adventure – I wanted to see what fabric they had in, and pick something fun and new to make it into. As it turned out, they had just received the entire new Alison Glass mariner cloth collection - 20 colors of beautifully irregular mini-stripes!
I had seen this mariner cloth before and been drawn to the texture – the stripe is created by a string of a contrasting color being woven into the fabric – but had never seen so many colors of it all at once. I stared at the set for awhile before selecting the green with lime green (“grasshopper") and the blue with white (“chefware") to color block into a Eucalypt dress. While I was tempted to play with more colors, I decided to go for a more subtle contrast to avoid a court jester vibe.
I originally intended for this just to be a half-and-half dress (no pockets), but after I tried it on, I realized it needed something else. Also, while sewing, I discovered that what this fabric really reminds me of is… dish towels! So that might have made me feel a need to break things up a bit. I decided to add some pockets – my first patch pockets! They’re a little crooked, but I am happy with how the color carrying and stripe rotation helped to balance everything out.
While it’s a bit of a strange look, I think this turned out as a reasonable thing to wear! Since the fit is so loose and comfortable, my intent was to wear this as a pool coverup, but as with most clothes I own, I have been treating it more as an all-purpose dress that I wear out into the non-pool world with reasonable frequency. My favorite part is the subtle hi-lo hem on the bottom, which reminds me of shirt tails on a men’s button-up.
I’d like to make the pattern again to fix a bit of armhole gaping and possibly try hacking on the curved pockets from the York Pinafore. I have my eye on another mariner cloth version that is half white with neon pink, half white with neon yellow. The warm months are running out though, so we’ll see! Gotta get going on that swimsuit first.
~ Photos by Lizzie Epstein - thanks sis! ~
Drawing process reel! Closet floor photo, bus sketch, digital drawing.
