Flip This Pattern: Piet Mondrian Inspired Sunki

It's pattern flipping time again. I just love this series...have you noticed?? I love the idea of taking an awesome pattern and adding some personal pizzazz and then every day seeing how someone else flipped it their way and came up with something completely different. 

Frances Suzanne have impeccable taste when it comes to choosing the feature pattern each month. I'll be totally honest. I wasn't sure about this one initially. It looked so wintery and here in Queensland we go from winter to summer without pausing for spring in between. So it is pretty warm and less is more for toddler clothing already. But, like a true pattern addict, I jumped at the chance for a pattern with a discount code and purchased the Sunki dress and leggings. 

As with the other months of Flip This Pattern I started with the sketch of the dress as is. This pattern has a unique design. It is loosely based on an A-line dress but with cool features like curved contrasting pockets and overlapping neck line. My first thought was I'll just make it as intended to get a feel for the design but I'll omit the sleeves. But, when I looked at the lines of the dress, it reminded me of the artworks of Piet Mondrian. His bold primaries with white all separated up with black lines. So I sketched in some lines, grabbed some of the boys pens and started to colour. (I could only find a red felt pen, yellow crayon and blue pencil... we have since been shopping for refreshed art supplies for the kids). 

This was the design I settled on:

So the outline of the dress is identical to the original, minus sleeves, but I changed up some of the construction to fit with my design ideas.

• I omitted the sleeves
• For the pockets I cut off the seam allowances and constructed with bias binding rather than the way the pattern instructs
• For the neck line I again cut off the seam allowance and used bias binding to finish the raw edges and attach the facing to the main dress pieces
• I made the zip shorter. This was purely so I could have uninterrupted white across the top of the back and still have my black bias lines intersecting just below the zip
• I left the overlapping parts of the shoulders unstitched giving it a little more ease when I pull it over Eloise's head
• I made the main pieces from a patchwork of different colours to fit my design.
• For the extra seams (the seams I created making the patchwork) I sewed with the seams on the right side and then enclosed them within the bias binding. This way there were less seams on the inside to annoy miss E 
• And rather than hem it I used bias binding to finish the hem too
• I used 2" wide strips to make the bias binding for the pockets, neck, armholes and hem. I used 1" wide strips to cover the seams and divide the colours. So all the black parts ended up 1/2" wide :) (I love my bias binding maker).
• I also made up a pair of the Sunki Leggings, I didn't flip them, just made them 'as is' to complement the dress.

And this was my finished dress:

(In other news... my mannequin should arrive in the next week or two so my finished garment shots should improve considerably...I'm so excited)

Some of the details: The fold over shoulder pieces, the shortened zip and the inside view of the seams.

Eloise just loves bags at the moment so I made up a miniature version of the Paco Bean Dottie Bag to match the dress.

How cute is my little miss? Shame about the bump on her forehead :/

I'm so pleased with how this dress turned out and the fit is pretty good too.

Eloise was pretty happy with it too. I made up a simple headband from the same fabric as the leggings. It helped keep that wild hair under control.

I think I like the back of the dress the best? Though the curved pockets at the front are pretty darn cute.

Thanks for popping by. Be sure to visit Frances Suzanne to see all the other flips for this month.

As always, I love hearing what you think, so feel free to leave me a message :) 

Kerry xx