The Jo March Dress

My sewing projects have been filled with patchwork, colour & Japanese yarn dyed cotton recently & it’s been a lovely time.

I designed this dress below called the Jo March dress, lovingly named after one of my favourite female leads because it felt like something she would wear. Pockets, a voluminous skirt, a tulle petticoat that peeks underneath & cute bust pleats are some of my favourite features. I wanted to make it really wearable & able to be worn over layers of clothing too for extra versatility.

I’ve made it in patchwork material, in secondhand tartan & the aforementioned Japanese yarn dyed cotton & I love how the vibe changes with every different fabrication.

Here are some of my recent makes of the Jo March Dress

My first go at the design.

A slideshow of another JM dress I whipped up using a huge array of blue scraps! I love how the vibe is so different with this one.

This one was created with 5m of patchwork material that I created at the beginning of the year by patchworking 10 4”x4” squares together every day! It was so special to finally use it up.

And a bunch of dresses made with the yard dyed cotton! It’s so sweet working with these fabrics, they somehow feel so wholesome & lovely.

I think I’ll make some more, but for now these voluminous dresses will live here & in my memory!!

a wedding dress for a fairy

Made from secondhand material, offcuts, scraps and leftover tulle. Embellished with meters and meters of secondhand laces & trims as well as hand-sewn ribbons, beads, and sequins.

The dress a fairy would wear to their wedding, crafted from treasures they had found & collected over time.

I was feeling in a funk around this time. Had been working on back-to-back custom orders for a few months, sewing the same dress which involved countless hours of brain-numbing work. This piece came about daydreaming at the machine, wanting to use up my scraps, play with colour & just see how much fun I could have making a dress.

I probably sketched the piece in early May & spent June/July creating this piece slowly. I patchworked the dress together using secondhand fabrics, and once the skeleton was complete I began adding details. The details took a long time & I felt a little silly pouring tens of hours into the hand sewing of beads and sequins. It felt important however to say yes to every idea I had in my brain as I felt this was the only way I would get out of my funk.

This piece is a just a wholehearted, passionate, time consuming, joyous YES. The volume in the piece felt so lovely to wear & I love how many stories are preserved in this pieces through all the fabrics & added details!

I ended up roping my boyfriend into driving 3 hours south to Lennox Head with me to take some pictures by a cliffside whilst the sun was setting. It was pretty magical. We even saw some whales!