A fun dress for work

This spring a friend of mine who is in a bunch of sewing FB groups told me about a limited sale of a special printed fabric, and when I saw the fabric I knew that I to be in on it. It took me a while, but this is the finished dress that I made from the fabric.

I fell love in the fabric because of the symbols and the colour. While most people see this symbol as a female sign

it's also the old chemical sign for copper. There is a connection since it was originally a symbol for the love godess Afrodite or Venus, and according to Greek/Roman mythology she was connected to the island of Cyprus, and on Cyprus there were a lot of copper mines. Afrodite/Venus was early on connected with copper, in fact the word copper comes from latin "cuprum" meaning metall from Cyprus. The male sign is likewise also the sign for the war good Ares/Mars and iron.

I work at Falu Gruva - an historical copper mine, even if there are a lot of other stuff there as well, and a UNESCO world heritage site. The mine has used the symbol since at least the 17th century and it can also be found in the Falun coat of arms. This is the current logo for the Falun mine.

The orange and navy colours were also a reason why I liked the fabric. We use a lot of orange in our graphic profile, and the combination of orange and blue is also used in the traditional folk costume of Falun (Stora Kopparberg). As a feminist I also think it's fun to play around with the symbol, and I'm definitely aware that for most people it doesn't mean copper.

Anyway it took me a while to come up with a pattern for the dress. I had a limited amount of fabric and I was also a bit bored with my standard jersey dress pattern. In the end I found the pattern company Simple Sew patterns and decided to order some patterns from them. For this dress I chose the Lena wrap dress, which is actually a faux wrap dress and not a full wrap dress.

When I had cut out the patterns I realized that I didn't have enough fabric for it, but I found a scrap piece of blue jersey from my "I heart SW-dress" and a really thin piece of jersey from my fandom fashion Enfys that I could use for a lining. I used the blue fabric for the waist band and I had to cut the sleeves in half, with one part of the printed fabric and one in the blue, to get a full sleeve. I think that gave it a fun detail though. I also chose to skip the bottom of the skirt and instead I simply cut out the skirt and the bottom as one piece. The skirt is quite big though and takes up a lot of fabric, but if you have enough fabric you get a nice swirly skirt.

The pattern was a real joy to work with. It says that the skill level is adventurous beginner, and I thought it was a very easy pattern to use. One should note that the lining pieces are exactly the same as the outer fabric pieces so I chose not to cut them out and instead just used the outer fabric pattern pieces for the lining as well. All the markings are clearly marked, and there are not a lot of them either. The instructions are well illustrated, the one thing that's not in the pattern itself is the setting of the sleeves, but there it says that if you are unsure about setting sleeves you should go to their video instructions online. I also like that you had all the sizes in one pattern envelope, you don't have to wonder if you should buy the plus size or regular pattern.

The pattern ended up a bit big in the bust for me, but that's not uncommon for wrap dresses. My bust simply is proportionally a bit too small for my size. When I wear the dress for work I will have to put a safety pin or some tacking stitches or else it might be too revealing

This is a pattern that  can definitely recommend and I look forward to trying out more patterns from Simply Sew.

The dress with flash