A dress, body image woe, and the problem of what to make next

1. I made another Lady Skater dress. I really love my black/white/red floral explosions version and wore it more than I expected this winter. (I have never historically worn a lot of dresses and as a result I always feel weirdly exposed when I do wear them, hence my surprise at how often I wore this one.) I made this new one because I wanted something really comfortable and easy to wear. This dress pattern is basically pyjamas in dress form, so it was the first thing I thought of when I decided I wanted a knit dress. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out too well.

Turquoise Lady Skater Dress as modelled by Flossie and a close-up of the fabric (the actual dress colour is closer to the whole dress photo)

I made no changes to the pattern at all, except I used a cap sleeve rather than an elbow length and did a nice little cuff on the end of it with a spare strip of fabric left over from binding the neckline. The fabric is a pretty nice turquoise colour viscose blend that I bought from Croft Mill a couple of years ago. It's not really got the recovery I prefer overall, but was nice enough to handle (which is just as well, because I've got 1.5m left). I love the colour, but I am not sure that the print -- which was sold to me as cogwheels, but I think is more stylized flowers -- really does me any favours. Tiny ditsy prints are not something I ordinarily wear either. The sewing turned out better, if anything, on this version. I'm on this kick where I am being extra careful with how I sew everything. With knits that's meant trying to get all my seams pressed exactly in the right direction and match up perfectly, etc etc. I mean, not to say there aren't little flaws in the dress, because there are, but there are definitely fewer compared to things I was making even 6 months ago.

The fit, however, eh. Not great. This is the problem with knits though, even if you get a pattern right with one fabric, even a small difference in stretch means that the fit goes haywire. The weird thing on this is that I changed NOTHING about the position of the waist seam, and yet somehow it's way more ugly and awkward where it hits me. I think it's because there's less length-wise stretch (i.e. hardly any, compared to the black dress) and so it's just differently positioned. At the moment I probably wouldn't wear this dress, if I'm honest, because the fit is so unflattering. It's a tiny bit better with a belt but I have stomach pain from my medication and don't want to wear belts at the moment.

2. Despite my cast iron resolution to be better about posting photos of myself, I am really unhappy about my body at the moment and it's a real struggle to do so. This is not said to elicit sympathy or compliments from commenters, even though I think our knee jerk reaction when female friends tell us that they feel bad about their bodies for whatever reason is to tell them they look beautiful. This may be true, and believe me I am a whole-hearted proponent of the argument that not only is beauty not restricted to the increasingly narrow commercial representations of it but that beauty isn't, shouldn't ever be the measure of our worth as women or human beings.  However, it is much easier to SAY it, and even to apply it to the women who surround me, than to apply it to my own life.

The dress as modelled by yours truly

As a result, I look at this photo, and even while I'm trying to be critical of the dress, I find myself being critical of the body inside it. For example, I really don't like the cap sleeve length on me AT ALL, and I really don't like the waist (which I tried to fix by putting a belt on to help pull the dress waist seam up a bit, but I am not sure this helped). Unfortunately, I run out of criticisms of the dress at that point and my analysis devolves into lengthy wailing of why does my bust have to be so huge and prominent, and why are my arms so fat, and why is my stomach so protruding, and so on and so on. It is hard to believe, when I am caught up in this kind of thinking, that it is a good idea to post photos online, but sometimes, like today, I'll make myself do it anyway.

3. I am slowly working my way through minor pattern alterations on the Carme blouse before I cut into fabric. I am making my first version out of black cotton lawn. However, as the turquoise dress is at least temporarily consigned to the Wardrobe of Woe, along with the unfortunate green linen not-a-skirt, where perhaps the passage of time will make me like them more, and I still want a jersey dress. I don't want another turquoise one, because that seems like overkill, and I am actually a bit short on suitable jersey fabrics (which is to say, I have 27.5m of jersey in stash, give or take, but a lot of it is either too heavy, too light or too high in polyester content for summer).

That leaves me with one viable choice: a cotton t-shirt jersey in a gorgeous shade of red that I bought, coincidentally, at the same times as the turquoise one I used above. I have 3m, so there's no real limit on patterns from that perspective, but I am really concerned about the recovery of the fabric. The last time I used a cotton jersey it all went horribly wrong, so I want a pattern that involves minimal fabric handling and that will not look too terrible when in bags out over the course of the day. That suggests a looser fit to me. Also, because I'm in so much stomach pain from my meds, I don't want anything really that binds at the waist like a wrap dress or a dress with a waistband , so I was kind of thinking empire line or high waisted, possibly. (And also, I don't like Colette, so not Moneta). Any pattern suggestions? Alternatively, I suppose I could go for empire waisted, loosely cut woven dress, in which case I have more fabric choices.