Maker Feature: Carnation Giant Flower Dress by Silvia Liu
Greetings!
I am Silvia (instagram @mauve.cloud.studio) and I live in Queensland, Australia. I have the honour of talking about one of my DIY dress using Julia’s textiles here today. When Julia released her collection of Giant Flower panels, initially I only ordered one flower (guess which one?). Then over the next few weeks, I could not get the other ones out of my head, and after much thought I decided to get them all! When they arrived and all laid out on my sewing table, I knew I made the right decision. I love art and flowers, and above all, FABRICS, so naturally I fell for this collection. I started my own series of sewing through all the flower panels.
Tiles of folded flower panels sitting pretty together.
It wasn’t easy to decide on which flower to use first, but the Carnation jumped out to me, as it is meaningful to me. When I was young, my dad took us kids to visit our beloved late mother’s resting place a few times a year, and we took turns choosing the bouquet at the florist to bring to her. When it was my turn I always picked the carnation, as it is the flower that symbolizes maternal love. On a lighter note, I grew up with Nestle’s Carnation Evaporated/Condensed Milk and it is sooooo delicious with milk tea and various drinks and desserts!
The flower meaning of the carnation is motherly love. The carnation panel becomes the first work of my Giant Flower Series.
Nestle Carnation Milk is a big part of my childhood memories!
I was holding my toddler son and infant daughter, and the Mother theme was strong in my mind. Having decided to use the carnation panel to represent motherly love, I looked for inspiration on Pinterest on how to best use my panel. I came across this design by Greta Constantine 2021 resort collection and one of the dresses piqued my interest. It has swirls of ruffles stitched onto the top part of the bodice. I thought that looked nice, and perhaps I could do something similar and add some dimension to the garment, while having the printed carnation at the front.
I then searched for a pattern to use, as I don’t know how to draft them myself. I looked through my pattern collection and came across Pattern Fantastique’s Calyx Smock that I had purchased years prior. Well, calyx is a botanical term for the anatomical part that consists of the sepals of a flower. And, when I read the pattern description, designer Nita from Australia created it as inspired by her own mother’s apron. Wow, now we have the Mother and Flower meanings interlinked perfectly between the pattern, fabric and sewist (me)!
Pattern Fantastique Calyx Smock, modeled by designer Nita herself. Image from Pattern Fantastique website.
I then looked at what fabrics I could use for other parts of the smock, especially the back, since the carnation panel is 58” tall x 36” wide and not enough to make the whole dress. I found some metallic striped rayon in a dusty pink in my stash, and had 1 metre of it. I also found 2 metres of tulle with 3D flowers along one edge, in a gray and dusty lavender colourway. Well, that’s perfect, now I can just use those pre-made flowers instead of sewing ruffles onto the dress as I previously planned.
Tulle with 3D flowers along one selvedge, from my stash. I bought this more than 10 years ago.
To integrate the 3D flowers, white poplin carnation panel at the front and dusty pink rayon at the back, I thought it would be best to overlay the plain tulle over the whole dress including sleeves to give a more coherent look. And since there were 3D flowers at the lower border of the tulle, I’d leave them there on the bottom of the skirt too, and cut some individual flowers to sew around the neckline. To do that, I cut the pattern pieces in both the base fabric and tulle with the latter being longer and utilizing the 3D flower hem. I then basted the different fabrics of the same pieces together along the edges except at the bottom, so the two fabric layers can be used as one during garment construction.
Cutting the pattern pieces in both tulle as an overlay, and the carnation+rayon as base fabrics.
Then I followed the pattern instructions to sew up the smock. The outer tulle is not an “overlay dress” in the sense that the side seams are sewn into the base dress, and they do not float free. I thought this might look a bit neater since the tulle is sheer, so separate side seams would have shown. I had some leftover plain tulle pieces and decided to use them as well. I cut rectangles out of the scraps, as many as I could out of the remaining pieces, all at 5cm tall. I joined them together and gathered along the long edges onto the sleeves.
Joining and gathering scrap tulle onto the sleeves.
Lastly, I carefully cut out some 3D flowers from the scrap tulle, even joining some halves together to form a whole flower. Then I pinned and hand-sewed them onto the dress around the neck. I didn’t have enough flowers to go all the way around, so the backside of the left neck had no flowers. The dress was done!
There are so many uses for the panels, not just garment sewing. As for the one flower that I initially ordered before all others, that was the Poppy. I chose it with the intention of hanging it up on my window this Remembrance Day!
My initial purchase was the Poppy, for Remembrance Day.
Poppy taking its place in the window in honor of Remembrance Day.
Thank you for reading. I will continue my series and sew through my Giant Flower panels. There are many amazing items made by other sewists (and Julia and her mum too!) on Instagram, if you search with the tag #giantflowertextile. I hope you have looked through all of Julia’s fabrics. Do you have a favourite flower?
- Silvia
Thank you so much Silvia for sharing this incredible dress project. See more of Silvia’s amazing sewing at her Instagram @mauve.cloud.studio!
