Falling for Cotton: Part Deux

Holy smokes, September has FLOWN by!  Between the Etsy shop, my PTA duties, my mom duties, and my kids' crazy schedules, I'm amazed I was able to finish this dress at all! Seeing as #fallforcotton ends on September 30th, I'm just squeaking in on the deadline.

Apparently, I'm a glutton for patterns of many pieces right now.  Here are the pieces for this dress:

Ack!  So many pieces!

Here are the edits I made to construct my dress:

First, I cut the back piece into two pieces just below the shirring lines and added 5/8" seam allowance on each new piece.

Marked

Cut

Due to the limited amount of skirt fabric I had, I also narrowed the front skirt pieces - the original has 3 pleats on each side, mine only has 2. 

I did end up using the floral fabric for the skirt, collar, and to do fabric covered buttons.  I read a great tutorial on doing fabric covered buttons without a kit here.

I have to say, this really is a comfy, do-anything kind of dress.  I wore it to church and received a compliment from a woman old enough to be my mother (or my mother's older sister), and then, when I wore it to pick up my son from school, received compliments from two 3rd grade girls, which pleased me to no end!

Front view selfie.

The back view.  I really need somebody to take my FO pics for me.

Behind every good dress is a good seamstress, and behind every great seamstress is a cat.

What's Cooking? Watermelon Chutney!

Wow, two food-related posts in a row - I'm on a roll!

At last week's CSA haul, I came away with a very heavy bag laden with one red watermelon, one yellow watermelon, and one cantaloupe.  That's a lot of melon!  Considering that neither of my children will eat cantaloupe, and my son won't eat any type of melon, I knew I needed to find a recipe that used a lot of watermelon and had a decent shelf life.  I've heard a lot of people talk about watermelon pickles, but I wasn't really in the mood for pickling.

It's Melon Mania around here!

As I pondered what to do with these melons, I remembered hearing an NPR segment, Cook Your Cupboard, with Nigella Lawson.  She says of chutneys:

"It's a very good way of using up whatever produce you get that's inexpensive and in season. Cook it up with some chopped onions, brown sugar (or white is fine, too), cider vinegar and some apples (the pectin qualities of apples means that whatever you use tends to set). You can put it in jars, and it can last up to a year."

Maybe that's common knowledge, but to me it was a revelation.  I wasn't exposed to foods like chutney until I was an adult, so the thought that it was easy to make at home was incredible.

Having decided that my two watermelons fit the bill for "inexpensive and in season" produce, I looked for a watermelon chutney recipe online.  I found this one from the National Watermelon Promotion Board (who knew such an organization existed?!?)

The recipe, created by Chef Joe Poon, is as follows:

Ingredients

4 cups watermelon, juiced

2 cups watermelon (white part), diced small

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar

1/2 onion medium, white and sliced

1 tablespoon minced garlic

1 tablespoon minced ginger

1/2 teaspoon mace

1/4 teaspoon cloves, ground

1 tablespoon minced jalapeno peppers

1 teaspoon lemon zest

1 lemon juiced

2 tablespoons currants

2 tablespoons roasted walnuts

Instructions

Reduce watermelon juice over medium heat to 2 cups. Combine all ingredients, and simmer until almost dry. Chill and serve.

Servings

Makes 1 pint.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I am not a stickler to the rules.  Do you remember that line in Pirates of the Caribbean where Capt. Jack Sparrow (my second-favorite Capt. Jack) says the Pirates' Code is really more like a set of guidelines?  Yeah, that's how I feel about recipes.

Here are my edits, additions, and omissions:

Watermelon juice - 2 c. yellow watermelon juice, 2 c. red watermelon juice

Oddly enough, the above do not mix to make orange.  Color wheel fail!

I doubled up on the garlic, because garlic makes almost anything better.
I omitted the mace, because WTF is that anyway?  Apparently, it's not this:

The ginger and cloves were eyeballed, and I added some allspice (maybe 1/2 tsp?) because hey, why not?

I was out of both currants and walnuts - I don't like walnuts anyway -  so I substituted raisins and pecans.

Here it is without the watermelon chunks.  The brown sugar made it really dark.

I added the watermelon chunks in at the very end so they wouldn't get too mushy. 

The red watermelon seems sweeter, but the yellow watermelon is firmer.

All in all, it took me about 3 hours start-to-finish and yielded 1-1/2 pints.  Once the jars were cool enough, I moved them to the fridge.  I plan on using the 1/2 pint tomorrow - I'll be sure to let you know how it turned out!

Watermelon Chutney Recipe created by Chef Joe Poon for the National Watermelon Promotion Board Ingredients 4 cups watermelon, juiced 2 cups watermelon (white part), diced small 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar 1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar 1/2 onion medium, white and sliced 1 tablespoon minced garlic 1 tablespoon minced ginger 1/2 teaspoon mace 1/4 teaspoon cloves, ground 1 tablespoon minced jalapeno peppers 1 teaspoon lemon zest 1 lemon juiced 2 tablespoons currants 2 tablespoons roasted walnuts Instructions Reduce watermelon juice over medium heat to 2 cups. Combine all ingredients, and simmer until almost dry. Chill and serve. Servings Makes 1 pint.

- See more at: http://www.watermelon.org/recipes/Watermelon-Chutney-156.aspx#sthash.qlA6KPWJ.dpuf

Conquering the Walkaway Dress

If you like mid-century fashion and you like sewing,  you've probably seen the Butterick 4790 pattern, also known as the Walkaway Dress and originally numbered as Butterick 6015.  A wrap dress in 3 pieces with only 3 seams this dress was originally released in 1952.  According the the Vintage Patterns Wiki,

"...[I]t was dubbed the 'walk-away' dress, because it was so easy you could "Start it after breakfast... walk-away in it for luncheon!".

It's simple yet flattering wrap design and easy construction were what made it so popular. Sales of the pattern were so great, that at one point manufacturing of all other patterns ceased, and only the 'walk-away' dress was produced until all back-orders for this dress could be filled."

 One look at the pattern's front illustration and you can understand why this dress was a phenomenon unto itself - it looks effortlessly elegant.

I mean, look at the girl in the blue version - she's like Elizabeth Taylor going to the farmer's market.   The girl in the black and white dress looks so chic and polished (and OMG the gloves!!)  To achieve that sort of glamour with a pattern billed as "Quick & Easy", well who wouldn't want to make this???

Unfortunately, the photo accompanying the reissue of this pattern isn't nearly as flattering...

This is either the world's fanciest hospital gown, or fluffiest apron.

Despite the questionable image above, I was determined to make this dress.  I read a lot of reviews from other home sewers and found all sorts of fit issues.   Luckily, I happened on a great tutorial on how to make a finished garment that looks like the pattern illustration on Edelweiss Patterns' blog.  I bought a fun cherry print fabric in a cotton/poly blend from Amazon - the black was not as saturated as I would've liked, but the fabric had a really nice, crisp hand, which worked very well for keeping the circle skirt flared without the aid of a petticoat. 

How retro!  How fun!

I made the modifications suggested by Edelweiss Patterns - turning all biases to the inside, redrawing the upper back piece to taper out in a diagonal line so that the front closure is less of a U-shape (as the above photograph shows) and stays true to the V-shape of the original drawing - and also made a number of modifications of my own. 

First, I took ~2 inches off the front piece at the waist.  I'm quite short waisted and found that when I wrapped the front piece, it closed below the narrowest part of my waist.  This resulted in a bizarre (and unflattering) shifting of the front up, so that the shoulder seams were actually sitting above my shoulders.  Speaking of shoulders, I also rounded the shoulder seams, taking in 1/2 inch at the collar side and increasing to 1 inch on the arm side.  I had read another review of this dress where the dress wearer complained that the dress kept pulling back, which the sewer contributed to the weight of the circle skirt being much heavier that the front sheath piece.  There may be some truth in this, although I found my alterations solved this problem.  Just to be sure, though, I finished the circle skirt with a very narrow hem, but the front with a deep hem, to give it a little extra weight. 

Here's the finished product on Colette, my dress form (please excuse the mess):

After taking the dress out for a test drive, I realized that even though I had added an extra snap to the front closure (bringing the total to 4 snaps), I still had a near wardrobe-malfunction when setting my toddler down.  Luckily, this was easily remedied by a hook-and-eye closure. 

Hook-and-eye and four snaps - do you think I'll set off a metal detector?

All in all, this is definitely a pattern I'd make again, and has garnered tons of compliments from strangers.