Wattlebird Cami and Fawn Skirt Pattern Review

If I've ever poured all my love and energy into making something it was this project right here. My avocado dyed, hand-embroidered, hand-finished Wattlebird Cami & Fawn Skirt set. I started this project with the intention to make the Wattle-Fawn Dress hack, but it evolved into separates that can be worn together to look like a dress. This is the most involved I've ever been in the process of making a garment, and that makes me so proud of the finished pieces.

The Wattle-Fawn dress is a mash-up of two patterns by Common Stitch: the Wattlebird Cami and the Fawn Skirt. I bought the PDF version and had the pattern printed at my local copy shop so I wouldn't have to do any paper piecing. It was an investment to buy this pattern (which Common Stitch sells as a package including both individual patterns), but I really think I'll get a lot of use out of it. I love both the cami and skirt on their own, and I think I'll be doing plenty of future sewing from these patterns.

The fabric I used for this project is a handwoven 100% linen from Maiwa Supply. I dyed the fabric naturally using avocado skins and pits to get the peachy pink colour (you can read more about that here). I cut all my pieces like usual, except for the front cami piece. Because I knew that I would be embroidering that one I thread basted where I would be cutting later, and then left myself plenty of fabric all around that thread basted line so that the piece would comfortably fit into my embroidery hoop. I decided not to sew a mock-up for this dress, mainly because I'm not usually too picky about how garments like this fit. The Wattle-Fawn dress is designed to be a loose fitting flow-y dress without too much structure (and also no sleeves to fit!) so I figured I wouldn't have a problem just jumping straight into it, and making small adjustments later if necessary. Of course this bit me in the butt later when I realized that the dress was a little too shapeless for my preference, but turning it into a set of separates was a quick fix for that.

I wanted an all over embroidered floral print for the cami piece, so I tested a couple flower ideas on some scrap avocado dyed fabric, and once I had my plan I sketched it all out on my thread basted piece with pencil, measuring to make sure the flowers were equally spaced. Pencil doesn't wash out as nicely as a marker made for this purpose, but it's what I had on hand and I would be covering it all up with embroidery anyways. I went about embroidering, and 38 hours of stitching later (spread out over a couple weeks of course) I was ready to start assembling.

I wanted to cover the back side of the embroidery because I thought it might irritate my skin, so I lined just the front cami piece with another piece of the same pink linen. I used the flat-lining method, essentially cutting a double of the piece I wanted to line, laying them on top of one another, and from that point treating it as one single piece. Flat-lining gives you a chance to finish things really beautifully by hand, hiding stitches and seams in the lining. One of Bernadette Banner's videos explains the flat-lining process really well: linked here. I also hand finished all of the binding and straps because every time I try top-stitching fiddly bits like this on my machine it never turns out as straight or neat as I prefer.

I pieced together the skirt, getting mildly frustrated by all the gathering, but it came together fairly quickly. I basted the cami to the assembled skirt because I though I might want to shorten it, and it was here when I tried it on to fit that I realized it was not quite the look I wanted. The lack of a defined waist coupled with all the volume in the skirt was just making me feel shapeless. I decided to take them apart and just hem the cami and keep it as a classic Wattlebird cami, and finish the skirt as a separate at well. The Fawn Skirt is finished with an elastic waist, which gave me the waist definition I wanted. I'm pretty happy with this solution because I feel like I will get a lot of wear out of the cami on it's own, making the garments a lot more versatile than if I just had the dress.

If I do decide to try the dress hack again it would be with a much more drape-y and flow-y fabric, and I would probably insert ties in at the waist seams so that I could cinch the waist in and tie a bow at the back. But for now I'm smitten with my outcome from this first try and looking forward to a summer in avocado pink!

A First Attempt at Avocado Dye

My first time using a natural dye was at an Indigo workshop I took a couple years ago through Maiwa (a textile school and shop here in Vancouver). I loved the process but it all just seemed so daunting to me. The workshop was a one evening event, so we didn't go into detail about all the chemicals and steps that were used, and I went home feeling like it was something I couldn’t replicate at home without taking more classes.

Queue Instagram, where there's always someone making these types of things look effortless. I follow a lot of people in the craft community and started to see swatches of pale pinks, golden yellows, and olives greens in my feed, all dyed naturally with kitchen scraps. I went back to Maiwa and read through their free PDF about natural dying (you can find that here). I also bought the e-book from Rebecca Desnos, a natural dyer I follow on Instagram who has found ways around using harsh chemicals (you can find her book here). Both resources were incredibly helpful. I decided to start with the process Maiwa suggests, and later I might experiment with the chemical-free natural approach and do some side-by-side comparisons.

Maiwa sells dyestuff and concentrated powder dyestuff, and so their instructions focus on those that they sell, not necessarily kitchen scraps. So I referred to both books, Maiwa for their scouring and mordanting instructions, and Rebecca Desnos for specifics on avocados. I chose avocados as my first experiment because it seems like so many people have had success with them, they're easy for me to get a hold of (I work in a restaurant), and I love the peachy hues that they produce. From what I've read they also have tannins in them so the dye tends to be more colour-fast. I spent a couple weeks collecting avocados, which I kept in the freezer until I would be using them. While I was collecting I wrote up a plan. I would be dying a large piece of linen fabric to make a dress out of, along with some smaller scraps of fabrics and lace I had in my stash which I wanted to experiment with. Some were cellulose fibres (made from plants), and some were protein fibres (made from animals).

Materials to dye:

• 3m handwoven linen (cellulose)

• small cotton hankie (cellulose)

• 2m cotton lace trim (cellulose)

• small scrap of linen tape (cellulose)

• fat quarter silk rayon velvet (protein)

• 1m silk rayon velvet ribbon (protein)

• fat quarter silk habotai (protein)

I won't be going into detail about the scouring and mordanting process that I used as this blog post isn't intended to be an instructional post. I tried to follow Maiwa's natural dye PDF as closely as possible, using different agents and processes for the different types of fibres (cellulose vs. protein), and measuring everything based on the weight of the fibre. I wore protective gear when measuring or touching any chemicals and every vessel and tool used will never be used for food again. I now have a set of dishes exclusively to be used for natural dying.

Cellulose fibres:

• scouring: soda ash and synthranpol

• mordanting: alum (mordanted twice)

Protein fibres:

• scouring: Orvus paste

• mordanting: alum

The whole process of scouring and mordanting took an entire day, morning until night. I only had one large pot dedicated to dying so I was doing everything one step at a time in my small apartment kitchen. I'll be looking in thrift stores to build my collection of large stainless steel pots so that this process can go a little quicker, and hopefully I'll try my next experiment in the summer so that I can do some of this outside on my patio.

Next I started to make my avocado dye. The total weight of my fibre was 550g, and I was using 850g of avocado stones and 200g of avocado skins (total weight of dyestuff = 1050g). The weight of my dyestuff was about twice that of my fibre, which is more than most people recommend but I didn't think I would mind a darker colour so I just went with it. I fully submerged my dyestuff in a pot of water and let that simmer for 2 hours. I then let the temperature come down and used gloves to mash everything up, and then brought it back up to a simmer for 2 more hours. At this point my "dye" looks very brown and I was starting to feel like I did something very wrong. Anyways I carried on and put my fibres into the dye bath, topping up with hot water so everything was submerged and could move easily in the bath. After 9 hours the fibres are a light brown colour, not at all what I was hoping for. I ended up leaving everything to soak for 4 full days because I got sick and just didn't have the energy to pour the water out and rinse everything. When I did finally empty the bath and rinse the fibres the colour was still a little more brown toned and pale then I was hoping for. Before I could wash and use the fabric it needed to rest for 2 weeks. During these 2 weeks I felt like the colour set and started to look more pink.

After washing all the fibre I was really happy with the colours I got and I'm not sure if the colour did get more pink over time, if the brown tones washed out, or if I just grew to like it more over time. Anyways I'm very excited to turn the linen into a Wattle Fawn dress by Common Stitch (check out the pattern here), more on that to come soon.