Feeling Blue

Even though I seem to be obsessed with green lately, green hasn't always been the color surrounding my sewing machine. There was a time when all was blue. ALL.


Before green batiks moved in, blue snowflakes were the rage. For about 20 years, I've been collecting blue snowflake fabric.

Before snowflakes, however, came flowers. Blue flowers. Some of these fabrics, I bought while I was still in my teens!


Blue remains my favorite color, turquoise in particular but with strong affection for electric blue. Somehow the greens, particularly the lime and kiwi shades, began taking over a few years ago when I purchased my first yard of bright green floral batik. So began the green collection.

The greens are very smoothly winding down now, and the blues are beginning to see the light of day once more.

While digging through stash and remnants, looking for adequate fabric to make a dress for spring without having to buy fabric, I stumbled across a quilt project I started so many years ago, I don't even remember when. Some of this stuff could be pre-Colorado, better known as the 70s and 80s.


I don't know if I'll finish the quilt I'd started so long ago or try to farm the squares out for adoption. Even though I may not be as fond of the quilt idea now as I was back before I had proper tools, I still love all this fabric. Many of these blues are remnants of the first work dresses I made after high school and college!

While I was cutting strips from remnants for my "Welcome to the Jungle" quilt, The Lizard asked if I was making a dress. I immediately had a strip skirt design in my head and have been longing to fashion one ever since. Not enough green batiks remain, but I suspected I might have just enough blues from before I had wrinkles and gray hair.


When I first imagined this dress, I planned to knit or crochet the bodice and sleeves. Heck, it was still winter then, and a knitted bodice would have been warm as well as stylish!

I didn't have enough yarn or thread of one color to make the dress top I could see in my head, so I decided to do the bodice in faux denim, perhaps with a crocheted Dresden-plate-type applique on the front at some point. Then I decided to make a jumper instead of a dress so I could wear it with a turtleneck in winter or a T in summer. I might as well get as much mileage from this masterpiece as I can, right?


Or maybe not on the crocheted appliqué...




I was able to use up one of the early blue flower dresses that's been in the scrap pile for a number of years to line the bodice of the new dress. I also was able to salvage the pockets from one of the old dresses that was no longer wearable and install them on this dress.




Pieced dresses in my neck of the high plains take a while, thanks to work and other obligations. I cut the first strips for this dress in February. I finished cutting the strips at the end of March. I began assembling the dress in April. I finished the hand sewing early in May. I got to wear it for the first time last week! And the fabric collection is at least 35 years in the making.

I think this gorgeous dress fermented very nicely. It's my new favorite! (I always say that every time I finish a new pieced dress!!!)

This particular jewel comes just in time to welcome the blue flowers I hope will soon be poking up all over my garden...

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