Striped Ogden
Pattern: Ogden Cami by True Bias
Fabric: Deadstock poly chiffon from Angel Textiles
Sewn up: Summer 2019
I sewed this on a Saturday for a date that same night that I was beyond excited about. I had liked this person for awhile, but had nearly given up on him ever expressing real interest in me. And then, he invited me out on my dream date – a Talking Heads cover band concert in my favorite small, twinkly music venue in DC.
To mark the moment and also channel my nervous elation (two different friends expressed to me that they wished they ever felt as excited about anything as I felt about this date!) I made this Ogden cami.
Most of my clothes are on the modest side and I wanted something slinkier and festive that I could dance in. I am a shy dancer and this fellow is not, so my game plan was to get armored up in a me-made shirt that made me feel pretty and like myself, and would give me a little confidence boost on the dance floor.
I found this fabric earlier this summer at Angel Textiles in LA’s fashion district. I loved the off-primary color of the stripes – gold instead of yellow, turquoise instead of royal blue. I got one yard and it cost one dollar! (!!) The fashion district is a crazy place. I visited it for the first time with my friend / sort-of-sister Lana, a beautiful 19-year-old I’ve known since she was 7 and I was the age she is now. I’ve never watched anyone grow up before and there is a singular kind of delight I get from seeing her and her sister do anything related to art or design, which her mom always jokes that they get from me.
We parked in downtown LA just outside a shop that sold the brightest, shimmeriest costume fabric. It beckoned us in and we wandered among the bright bolts stacked floor to ceiling – neither of us had ever been in such a place. Lana paused by a lavender gingham lycra and said, “Oh my goodness, I am having an emotional reaction to this fabric.”
At the time she did not know how to sew, but I sent her home with the gingham and two other fabrics she had admired. A week later she texted me that she was buying a sewing machine, and a couple days after that she sent me a photo of her out to dinner in a skirt she had made out of one of our fashion district finds. See sentence above about the particular heart-joy this sort of thing gives me.
Speaking of hearts, back to my date and the top I made for it. I was excited that this fabric was sheer but also colorful, so it would still feel like me while also being a little more date-ready than anything I’ve made so far. I lined it in a silvery featherweight rayon so it wouldn’t be see-through.
I would describe the result as wonky but wearable – I think the stripes were printed slightly off-grain, and I cut on the cross-grain to get them to be vertical, so once I sewed it together and held it up by both straps, the stripes had a definite slant to them! And you can sort of see the seam allowance of the lining if you look too closely at the neckline. But since I’m still early on in my sewing journey, and I can’t find anything off the rack in a print I love as much as I love these Mondrian / Bauhaus / CMYK stripes, I forgive these issues.
I had a bit of a Project Runway feeling sewing this up as I had a deadline, and nothing else to wear on my date otherwise. I finished despite some rookie mistakes – starting my French seam right sides together on the first go-around, sewing one of the straps in twisted, making an alteration to what I thought was the neckline but actually turned out to be the back (the similarity of the front and back pattern pieces that people warn you about is no joke!). I put it on five minutes before I had to leave, and with red lips and tight high waisted black jeans I felt exactly how I had hoped I would – pretty, like myself, and ready to lean into the potential magic of a twinkly dance floor date.
Which was good, because this turned out not to be a date, but a group hang. Five minutes into our drink he let me know that his brother’s fraternity brother was on his way to the bar, and that about ten others would be joining us at the concert.
Previous software version of me (thank you Jasika Nicole for teaching me this phrase) would have been crushed – but current me appreciated the humor and sweetness of having been so excited for this outing that I had lovingly sewed all day to have the perfect thing to wear. I recalibrated my hopes, drank some old fashioneds, and danced like no one was watching to Road to Nowhere. Jasika also once said something along the lines of, "no matter what happens, I made my dress." And that is 100% how I felt in this particular moment.
So for me this top will always capture the dreamy morning in LA with Lana where she felt the fabric call to her from the wall, the intense excitement that I know I am lucky to have the capacity to feel, and the funny plot twist of the evening – and my best example yet of “no matter what happens, I made my shirt.” ❤️
~ Photos by Lizzie Epstein - thanks sis! ~
Drawing process reel! Closet floor photo (hello slanted stripes!), metro sketch, digital drawing.
