Long Black T shirt dress

This is very similar to my olive green T shirt dress but this one uses a different pattern. Again its longer length and as long as my available fabric allowed.

 

Well actually its Sew & Sew B6041 which I bought ages ago but this time I never made the grandad collar. It might have been a bit easier to sew that as it worked out. Sewing the neck without an opening was much harder than I usually find it. Thats the fabric choice though I think.

 

I found it impossible to sew the neck on this with a twin needle which was my intention - so making a basic T shirt dress really - which I think is likely due to the very flowy, slippery fabric. Its some kind of synthetic with lycra, and previously I managed successfully to make several pairs of very basic black leggings from this fabric. 

Either way I couldn't get it to look right. I spent absolutely ages unpicking the half sewn neck - twice - and then decided, stuff this I am overlocking the edge and just adding black (stretch) lace to all hems and neck, which works, though gives it kind of a gothic night dress feel. 

The side splits also have lace edges.

 

Still, I always have liked lingerie look dresses so thats fine and if it gets cold of course I can even wear this as a nighty.

With the huge rise in energy costs accross Europe its likely to be a very cold winter for us after all! 

 

I did not add lace to the sleeve edges because I cut these extra wide and long so they can have elastic in the wrists and so they are baggy and hopefully warmer than the 3/4 or short sleeves shown in the pattern views.

 

This will also make it easier to layer other tops ( and leggings) under this if I need to which I probably will since we aim to try to keep the heating down to 15 DegC this winter to save the predicted price increases of around £2500 and I cannot see how we can possibly afford to pay that so keeping the heat to a minimum is all we can do to mitigate this. Its still likely to be a large increase on our usual bills. We normally live in winter at 18 DegC to 20 DegC. Its going to be a cold one, and since the trees and fruit bushes have been laden for at least 6 weeks longer than usual, that also usually signifies very cold weather is on the way. The last year we had this amount of wild fruit on the hedgerows was 2010 and that was a very cold year. I do hope I am wrong in predicting this!

Being black it was quite difficult to get good picture of this dress. Its actually a good dress with my very unwearable and now old pink leather jacket. I bought this jacket from a charity/ thrift shop for about £6 which was pretty good or so I thought then. But, I find this jacket very Barbie which is just not me and maybe if I still don't wear it this autumn I should just donate it back again. It was a bad buy and I think I have only ever worn it 2 or 3 times in about 4 years. Sometimes you just have to accept a bargain buy was not a good one. But I did find it handleable with this dress the day we took these photos, which is the first time wearing this black T shirt dress.

 

I know with so called "sack dresses" most people either love them, or hate them. I obviously like them, and this is very much a basic shapeless sack type of T shirt dress. I like comfortable clothing though which works as lounge wear, as you can probably tell from this blog, because its probably what I make most. But I do also like to wear fitted, dressed up clothing as well. Depends on my mood and what I am doing. 

This was actually a really difficult dress to get decent photos of probably because its basic black, and we tried several locations with different lighting and walking round locally we found these lovely teasels. In the summer this patch was full of oxe-eye daiseys, cornflowers and corn cockles. Its only a small patch of wild flowers that were planted to attract and hopefully preserve the bees but I really like these places they allow to grow more wild these days rather than the weed killered edges you used to see everywhere when I was younger.

I think these teasels are really majestic. They are taller than me. Probably about 3m high. 

The local women's institute ladies will collect them soon for flower arranging and I reckon this year I will follow their lead. I brought a few into the house for winter decorations last winter and loved them despite they really hurt if you touch them being so very prickly but they look really nice.The prickliness does make sticking them in a vase even with minimal fussing, very painful.  I considered even spraying them gold or silver paint for Christmas but never did it last year. I may try a few this year though I did also like their natural look. Maybe just a couple of metallic ones would be good mixed with some natural ones?

This dress also appeals to the Goth in me. I reckon I may try it, next time I wear it, with a studded belt. It does not at all seem to matter how old I get, the old goth bit is still there lingering in the background. I suppose it always will be. What shapes you in your youth never really leaves who you really are. I may not have Lily Munster style hair any more ( yes really I did in my teens) but the authentic me still identifies as Punk/ Goth, but goth as in the days before the term was even invented though its never ever gone away since, despite the goth fashions changing a bit over time. I think we tended more towards the velvet, leather, lace, studs and rivets, almost punk, styles and also the Lily Munster and Morticia looks back then. There were no bought goth clothes then though and we wore vintage or me - made or a mix of both. But then the year I started secondary school (1975, so aged 11) was the winter the Sex Pistols shot to fame ( notoriety?). 

By the time I left school the world had changed a lot and has never realy quite gone back. As time has passed its become freeer though never quite so free as those early 1980s years when it really was a time when you had difficulty telling the boys from the girls and it was not an LGBTQ+ thing then, it was all of us. The world was in many ways much less judgemental. We celebrated difference yet saw the sameness, or humanity, within all of us and we all mixed. But of course that did not last and by the end of the 1980s and 90s we had returned to the world of segregation and judgement and boys looked like boys again and girls like girls. So sad really. I think it was a much freer world when the genders were less defined. I am happy its starting to become accepted again to look and to live how you want to, rather having this forced on you by societal conditioning. 

Back in 1980 ( probably around September to December) they described us in the press ( that is most of the kids of that time) as " long haired punks". It was actually not a nice term, it was meant to be derogatory, and was meant to mean we could not be "real" punks. But then we were really too young to be punks because punk was ended - or so the music press told us. There were though hundreds of younger bands and they were better described as punk than new wave which seems to have became the more usual term. New Wave then was pop music. It was never political.. For us who did still identify as punk the belief and views were there though. I think with most of my generation we are all shaped by those views even now. 

Spikey hair was still very much there but had grown longer - hence the music press description of us as long haired punks I suppose. We spent hours with soap, and hairspray, and sugar solution ( often a mix of all 3!) to spike our hair because hair gel had yet to be invented. If you used soap too much ( soap worked best) you got small bald patches where it made your hair fall out. We were dedicated! Then I would guess about 1981 or 1982 the Damned first used the term Goth and gothic and that is now all history. The Damned were, and still are, one of my favourite bands.

Anyway, reminiscing over. Amazing what a new dress makes you think of! 

And, maybe, with this dress, I will even get into this over bright ,Barbie pink biker jacket with this as well. The black long dress does feel OK with bright pink after all and I do hate wasting money. If I can work out how to wear this jacket that would really be good though its still going to have limited wearbility in my wardrobe and I cannot help but think it would look much better with one of my black biker jackets instead!

Thanks for popping by and see you soon,

Bracken